Middlemen in English Business 345 



Besant has portrayed the daily Hfe of certain tradesmen of the 

 eighteenth century as taken from their diaries. One was Thomas 

 Turner of East Hothley, Kent, a general dealer and storekeeper, who 

 lived from 1728 to 1789. " He was prosperous in his business, . . 

 read a good deal, . . . was much respected for his knowledge, 

 . . . enjoyed the company of his friends" and drank considerably. 

 Tradesmen were members of several clubs usually and frequenters of 

 the taverns for social purposes. They often had country houses on 

 suburban roads and fitted them up quite elaborately. They sent 

 their children to good schools, and were acceptable in the best society 

 of the country families.^ Some metropolitan tradesmen encouraged 

 manufactures in the country towns. For example, one Greaves of 

 London fostered the production of tameys and prunellas and various 

 kinds of figured and flowered stuffs of Kidderminster in the period 

 about 1717.- 



With few exceptions until the thirteenth century no permanent 

 shops were to be found in the country market towns. Commodities 

 were bought and sold almost exclusively at public markets. This 

 was true of Hants in the far south^ and of Lincoln of the far north.'' 

 William of Malmesburg (time of Henry I) called Lincoln "an emporium 

 of men coming by land and by sea"^ and some shops of a more or less 

 permanent character are reported there in 1231-4.^ In Nottingham 

 at this time practically everybody lived by agriculture. The popu- 

 lation was sparse. At Blyth there were fifteen tradesmen, owning on 

 an average about £5 worth of merchandise but they too were engaged 

 in agriculture and sheep farming. In other parts the same conditions 

 prevailed. Tax returns indicate that only about a fifth of the popu- 

 lation in 1327-8 had property \'alued above IO5.'' In Colchester, 

 Essex, the woolmen and clothmen appear to have had some shops 

 during the fourteenth century.^ During this century also shops and 

 solars arose in Gloucester for a regulation in 1346 prescribed that 

 weavers' looms should stand neither in solars nor in cellars, but onh' 

 in halls and shops next the road, in sight of the people.^ 



1 See Besant, Eighteenth Centurj' London, 240-45. 



2 Nash, Worces., II, 43. 

 'V. C.H., Hants, V, 417." 

 ^V.C.H., Lincoln, II, 386. 



^ R de Hoveden, Rerum Angl. Scriptores post Bedam, 290. 



6 "Final Concords," 245, 259; V. C. H., Line, II, 386. 



^ V. C. H., Nott. II, 272-3. 



« V. C. H., Essex, II, 383. 



9 V. C. H., Gloucester, II, 152. 



