Middlemen in English Business 341 



and unskilled to enter the retail business.' The slighter taxes (there 

 was no tax on stock-in-trade in shops, the taxes being levied on land)- 

 likewise inclined the people to the tradesman's life. All these general 

 and particular cases effected the rise of the shop and store in the city, 

 town, and country village. 



The store sprang from the shop and stall. In 1189 in Fitz-Alwyne's 

 Assize stalls are mentioned in London. They appear to have been 

 wooden frameworks projecting from the gables facing the street and 

 used as places for the exposure of various articles for sale. Civic 

 ordinance limited them to two and a half feet in depth, moveable 

 and flexible, and varying with the width of the street or lane.^ All 

 the articles sold were very likley made by the artisan displaying them 

 for sale. During the next two centuries shops of this kind must have 

 become usual : ordinances are extant which state the legal position of 

 women renting shops,"* and others excluding non-freemen from trad- 

 ing as retailers.^ Poles and signs of wine-taverns are mentioned.^ 

 But by far the most common method of sale was at market places in 

 certain portions of the streets. 



In Tudor times street criers became common: Besant quotes a 

 ditty which mentions hucksters of sand, brooms, oysters, cockels, 

 herrings, straw, kitchen "stuffe," pippins, and cherries, and "pouch- 

 rings, bootes, and buskings;" some of these were bartered for things, 

 such as old shoes.' The "shopae" at this date "were probably mere 

 open rooms on the ground floors, with wide windows, closed with 

 shutters . . . these rooms being enlarged, no doubt, in some 

 instances, by the extra space afforded by the projecting and move- 

 able stalls." . . . "Seldae, selds, or shealds, are occasionally 

 mentioned as places for the stowage or sale of goods;" they were 

 likely large sheds used as warehouses and belonging to the gilds or 

 richest citizens.^ These structures were built irregularly and with 

 little ahgnment to the street.^ 



' Schmoller, Grundriss, II, 37-38; "Trade of England revived," 28. 



2 Dowell, Taxation, III, 14-15, tells of an effort in 1759 to make shopkeepers 

 bear a part of the burden of taxation, and how the bill failed through offensive 

 details contained in it. A tax was laid in 1785: Macpherson, IV, 72. 



' Lib. Alb., I, XXXII. 



^Lib. Alb., I, 205(111,39). 



5 Time of 14 Edward II, Lib. Cus., 312. 



'• Lib. Alb., I, LXV. 



7 Besant, Tud. Lon. 198. 



« Lib. Alb., I, XXXVIII. 



^ Besant, Eighteenth Century London, 126-9. 



