Middlemen in English Business 293 



even in very early times. Some clothiers of Surrey and Hants in 

 1587 petitioned the Council against Andrew Marche of London, to 

 whom they had granted credit in such great sums that his intent, so 

 they believed, was to defraud them.^ During the dearth of 1619- 

 1622 the clothiers of Suffolk were reported to have lost more than 

 £30,000 by the bankruptcies of the merchants.^ In a petition of the 

 justices of Suffolk to the Privy Council, 1619, they said that the failure 

 of one Cragg a merchant beyond seas bankrupted several merchants 

 of London and these failures in turn " overthrew the estates of divers 

 clothiers" of Suffolk. One Gerrard Reade a merchant of London 

 failed for £20,000 debt due the clothiers for cloths bought.^ Much 

 of this credit business was occasioned by the clothiers' evasions of the 

 public (open) market and their commitment "to clothworkers to make 

 sale of our (clothiers') cloths who many times commend us to men 

 that are not able to pay," and "We are forced to lay our commodities 

 to pawn upon a bill of sale to pay our poor workmen and others that 

 we be indebted unto and to pawn £40 worth of commodities for £20 

 and to give £10 in the hundred."'* The credit operations of the factors 

 at Blackwell Hall will be discussed under that caption later. 



Particular pains were taken to maintain the quality of the cloths of 

 this east district. At Colchester was "Dutch Bay Hall;" here, both 

 before the processes of fulling and finishing and after, the cloths were 

 searched and sealed with leaden seals by officers specially charged 

 with that function, before they could be removed for sale. No im- 

 perfect cloths were sealed. "Colchester Bays" gained a wide reputa- 

 tion for honesty and perfection; they sold readily in Colchester, 

 London, and abroad "without the bales being even opened for meas- 

 urement or examination and solely upon inspection of the seals they 

 bore."^ This dependability facilitated foreign trade particularly. 

 "The Colchester and Bocking Bays" were "of great esteem among 

 the merchants."^ "Great quantities" . . . were "carried into 

 Spain, not only to cloath the Nuns and Friars there, but into America 

 for the use of their colonists on that Continent."^ Spain, Portugal 

 and Italy, and through them, America, were the foreign market. As 



lActsof P. C, 18 Je 1587. 



2 S. P. Dom., Jas. I, CXXVIII, 67. 



3Ibid.,CIX, 126. 



" S. P. Dom., Eliz., CVI, 48; V. C. H., Suff., II, 259. 



*V. C. H., Essex, II, 388-9. 



« Cox, Mag. Brit. I, 722. 



^Ibid., 707, 709, 711-12; Defoe, Tour, I, 20. 



