Middlemen in English Business 309 



be shown more fully under the title "Shops and Stores," the mercers 

 tended to handle a wider variety of wares, in particular, luxuries and 

 fineries, whereas the draper stayed by cloth more exclusively: the 

 mercer became the typical retailer, the draper the typical wholesaler.^ 



The Drapers Company of London grew very fast in numbers, exten- 

 sion, and exclusive privileges. At the St. Bartholomew Cloth Fair 

 they had the right of search and marking for three centuries and a 

 half, i.e., till 1737. Blackwell Hall was devised by the City and 

 Parliament as a compromise in the rising contest between the country 

 drapers and the London monopolistic drapers. The former were 

 conceded the privilege of display and sale in gross on certain market 

 days in this Hall and nowhere or time else. An attempt was made in 

 1406 to prohibit the country draper from selling to other Londoners 

 than the drapers; but an act of Parliament maintained for the country 

 drapers the freedom "to sell their cloth in gross to all the king's liege 

 people."' 



This was the common principle of regulation of sales within any 

 town: the outsider might sell at wholesale only and in particular mar- 

 kets and on particular days only. A very representative regulation 

 was, for instance, laid at Beverley in 1561 as follows: " ... no 

 farranor (shall) . . . bringe any kind of clothe, in packe or paks, 

 or otherwise, to the saide towne to thintant to sell the same or any 

 parte thereof, shall not open or shewe the same packe or packes of 

 clothe or clothes on any privaite house or place within the same towne 

 upon the market dale onely; and in the weake dale, to repaire to the 

 common hall, or place there appointed for the same to shewe there 

 saide clothes, and to taike ther most gaine by hoolesaile onely, and not 

 to cut by yarde but only upon the markitt dale in open faire or mar- 

 kett . . ."3 



The draper, as has been shown, was in the early centuries both 

 retailer and wholesaler of woolen cloth. The retail function became 

 less and less his and was given over to the mercers. By the middle 



' In Fuller's time this difference in wares was evidently apparent, for in his 

 Church History, VI, I, 275, is found "Thus the Draper may sooner sell forty eels 

 of freeze and course cloth, than the Mercer four yards of cloath of gold." See the 

 working-out of the process in York, V. C. H., York, II, 416. Some times the dif- 

 ferentiation was somewhat based on the sex to which they respectively catered, 

 the draper tending to handle men's cloth especially. See list of goods sold by a 

 draper or men's mercer given in Besant, Eighteenth Century London, 240. 



2 7 Hen. IV, Cap. 9. 



3 Selden, XIV, 106. 



