■ Middlemen in English Business 261 



and Cumberland, was spun into tine yarn, and in this form was then 

 carried by horse-pack, averaging a hundred packs a week, down to 

 London and manufactured into various sorts of cloth at Spitalfields.^ 

 A third portion of the Leicester district wool was bought up by brog- 

 gers and taken to Stourbridge Fair, ''and thence to Norwich and to 

 Braintrey, Bocking and Colchester, where 'tis wrought into stuffs and 

 bays."- The Stourbridge Fair was the greatest and most famous 

 wool market of England.^ Particularly did the wool from Lincoln 

 find its way through Stourbridge into Norfolk and Suffolk, proximity 

 likely accounting for the fact. 



The third wool-producing region embraced York and Lancaster 

 and the counties on the north. The poorest wool of all came from this 

 district: it is one reason why this district never competed in the better 

 classes of cloths. Besides the wool was not produced in great enough 

 quantity to pro\dde much for export while England was exporting 

 wool, nor enough to proA-ide the Lancashire clothmakers as early as 

 1654.*^ Consequently, Lancashire began at this time to import this 

 raw material. Roberts in 1641 said "The town of Manchester 

 . . . buys the yarn of the Irish in great quantity, and weaving it, 

 return the same again into Ireland to sell; . . . buys cotton wool 

 in London that comes first from Cyprus and Smyrna and at home 

 work the same, and perfect it into fustians, ^'ermillions, dimities, and 

 such other stuffs and then return it to London, whence it is vented 

 and sold, and not seldom sent into foreign parts. "^ The Lancashire 

 clothmakers preferred to buy Lincoln wool but were usually overbid 

 by the Norfolk and Wilts clothiers; the Irish wool was of poor quality: 

 one buyer declared, "Irish wool is the best at first show, and the more 

 a man deals \vith it he shall fynd it to be worse and generally worse. "^ 



1 For contemporary authority on the distribution of Leicestershire wool, see 

 "Atlas Mar. et Com." 109 (1728); "Essai sur L'Etat," 29-30 (1765); it will be 

 noted that in this interval the northern manufactures were being established, and 

 that at the later date the wool was mixed with the coarser wool of the North and 

 manufactured more into kerseys, etc., at Halifax, Bury, etc., and less was sent to 

 London in the form of yam. See also Defoe, Com. Eng. Tr., 189-193 (1745); 

 Defoe, Tour, II, 36-7 (1745); St. P. Dom., Jas. I, LXXX, 13 (quoted in Unwin, 

 Ind. Org. 188-9). Comparatively little change had taken place in the distributiorL 

 of the wool from 1616 to 1755. 



2 Morton, Nat. Hist, of Northants, 16. 



3 Defoe, Com. Eng. Tr., II, 188. 



* S. P. Dom., 1654, LXIX, 7; V. C. H., Lancas., II, 377. 



* Lewis Roberts, quoted in V. C. H., Lancas. II, 301. 



6 Exch. Dep. by Com. Tiin. 28, ch. II, No. 29; V. C. H., York, II, 415-6. For 

 further discussion of the sources of Lancashire raw materials see Ure, Cotton Mfg. 

 I, 185. 



