Middlemen in English Business 289 



woollen, linen or cotton. The cottagers were employed entirely in 

 this manner, except for a few weeks in the harvest."^ Pococke's 

 horse-boy in Lancashire in 1751 said that "his father paid six poimds a 

 year, kept a horse, three cows, and forty sheep ; that his father and he 

 wove woolen both for their clothing and to sell."- Rochedale in 1778 

 was a place "famous for manufactories of cloth, kerseys and shallon. 

 Every considerable house is a manufactory, and is supplied with a 

 ri^^ilet or little stream, without which the business cannot be carried 

 on."' Housman pictured Leeds as the center of the broad-cloth 

 manufacturers, all of them living within a radius of two miles but none 

 in the city proper, all in the suburbs. They were "generally men of 

 small capital and often annexed a small farm to their other business." 

 Some of them had "a field or two to support a horse and cow."^ 



These rural manufacturers brought their cloth to market them- 

 selves or sold to agents of the merchants. If they brought it to 

 market they were generally required to sell it wholesale and in public 

 market only. In 1551, as an instance, York constrained the "Ken- 

 daill men yt bringeth wollen clothe to this citie to sell" to "selle in 

 grosse in the . . . Thursday Markett or Common hall and not 

 to goe hawkynge and sell in any other place upon paine of forfaiture 

 of their clothes;" few exceptions were allowed.^ The dispersion of 

 the weavers made it necessary for the merchants to buy at such 

 markets or else employ local agents. Sometimes local piece masters, 

 or fustian masters, independent men of business and not merely 

 agents of merchants, assembled the local product. But usually the 

 public markets were used as both places of sale of cloth and of pur- 

 chase of raw materials. After the warping mill was invented the 

 merchants generally furnished the warp to the weavers instead of the 

 weaver making his own warp.^ In any particular market town these 

 resident merchants composed a goodly fraction of the tradesmen. In 

 Leeds in 1798, of 309 cloth tradesmen and artisans, 148 were mer- 

 chants and 35 were wool-staplers. '^ 



Occasionally there are fomid in the north clothiers who conducted 

 a trade organized like that of the west of England. Weavers and 



^ Raddiffe, 59; Butterworth, Oldham, 101; French, Crompton, 4, 5, 9; V. C. H.. 

 Lancas., II, 382. 

 '-' Pococke, I, XIV. 



^ Earw^akers, Local Gleanings, II, 17; V. C. H., Lancas., II, 378. 

 * Housman; V. C. H., York, II, 422. 



^ York, Munic. Rec. XX., fol. 63a., 27 Oct., 1551; V. C. H., York, HI, 451 . 

 ^ Chapman, Lancas. Cotton Ind., 15-16. 

 ' Woodcroft, Brief Biop;., 2; V. C. H., York. IT, 422. 



