314 Textiles and Textile Materials Trades 



The mode of conveyance was pack-trains of horses or mules, driven 

 in single file, each horse tethered to the one in front. The lead horse 

 carried a tinkling bell to apprise travellers of their coming. Each 

 horse carried two packs or panniers balanced across its back. These 

 trains moved along the narrow paths and roads, veritable caravans. 

 They were exposed to all kinds of weather, roads, and classes of people 

 travelling.^ They travelled chiefly in summer because of the badness 

 of the roads in winter. 



They sold by wholesale to shopkeepers and chapmen, gave large 

 credit, and did a large business. It was "ordinary for one of these 

 Men to carry a thousand Pounds worth of Cloth with him at a Time, 

 and having sold it at the Fairs or Towns" to send "his Horses back 

 for as much more, and this very often in a Summer."'- An estimate 

 of the total value of goods so distributed in 1728 placed it at above 

 /j 100,000 in three months' time.^ The counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, 

 and Essex were supplied with "prodigious Quantities" of York- 

 shire kerseys by the merchants of London.^ There was thus a com- 

 petition between the Manchester Men and the London wholesalers 

 for the custom of the retailers of cloth, and the long continuance 

 of the former attests their economic service in the distribution of the 

 northern cloth. 



Chapman. 



"Chapmen" (cheap, man) was originally an inclusiv^e name for all 

 dealers; by the sixteenth century the term had become restricted to 

 the small pedlar or retail dealer.'' The term "petty" was often pre- 

 fixed. In 1639 petty chapmen were described as those who "buy up 

 commodities of those that sell by wholesale and sell them off dearer 

 by retaile, and parcel them out."^ Before the rise of country stores 

 all retailing in the country was done from temporary booths at mar- 

 kets and fairs, or by itinerant dealers. From the latter fact the term 

 chapman acquired the concept of our modern pedlar or hawker. 

 This meaning was in vogue in 1745 when the chapmen were defined 



1 Mantoux, 96-7, quotes a description of a personal experience given in the 

 Francis Place, Add. MSS 27828 Br. Mus., p. 10. 



-Defoe, Tour, III, 92; some made fortunes in this business, see Th. Walker in 

 "The Original," No. XI, Jidy 29, 1835. (Quoted in Mantoux, 96.) 



3 Atlas Mar et Com., 108. 



* Defoe, Tour, III, 70-1 ; see also Posllethwayt, Diet. s. v. British Empire. 



'" Palgrave, I, 262. 



*Hom & Robotham, XLV, Sec. 401; cf. Defoe, Com. i-"ng. Tr., II, 58, for quite 

 the same meaning in 1745. 



