190 Animal and Animal Products Trades 



The degree of importance of the drover can scarcely be realized 

 now when the method of driving cattle to market hundreds of miles 

 has been superseded by cattle-trains and ships. In the days when 

 the black cattle from Ross, Scotland, and the neat-cattle of Brech- 

 noch, Denbigh and Somerset met the Surrey cattle at Smithfield after 

 tramps of months' duration and by pathless country, there was an 

 essential need for a competent drover. And in performing the act of 

 dri\ang for one or more remote cattle-raisers every opportunity was 

 offered him enroute to buy and add to his herd from the farms he 

 passed. A priori, it seems plausible that the first drovers were cattle- 

 raisers or their servants, and that their middleman business was adven- 

 titious in the above manner; and that with the accumulation of capital 

 they entered more fully into the business of buying cattle to sell at a 

 distant market. 



Edward VI inaugurated a license system for the control of the 

 drovers. This was part of his general scheme for protecting the 

 consumers against the malpractices of the middleman in the neces- 

 saries of life. Every drover was required to procure a written license 

 from three justices of peace of his district, which entitled him to buy 

 cattle at his ''free Liberty, and Pleasure, and to sell the same again 

 at a reasonable Price, in common Fairs and Markets distant from 

 the Place or Places where he shall buy the same forty Miles at least. "^ 

 Ten years later certain qualifications were laid which the licensed had 

 to meet, viz., to have had a three-year residence in the district, and 

 to be a married householder at least thirty years of age.- By another 

 act a century later (1670) no drovers were to be licensed within eighty 

 miles of London, and each drover was required to enter bond. This 

 was passed to correct abuses on the Smithfield market.^ But like 

 the badger's license, after commerce broke the regulatory shackles 

 and entered a freer course, the drover's license was evaded and 

 neglected.'* At the same time the middleman element in this business 

 was passing from the dro\-er to the jobber. 



JOBBER. 



The jobbers bought cattle and sheep either at Smithfield market 

 or at the nearby towns along the roads by which the animals were 



1 5-6 Ed. VI, Cap. 14, Sec. 16. 



25 Eliz., Cap. 12, Sec. 4. 



' See treatment below under the caption "Salesmen at Smithfield." 



* For the process of decay, see "Essay against Forestallers," 14. 



