Middlemen in English Business 287 



was focused at Batley and Dewsbury, and the ancestors of most of 

 the West Riding woolen manufacturers were there one time engaged 

 in "flokkyng of clothes."^ The vicinity of Bolton and Leigh produced 

 fustians and sold them "in the grey" at Bolton market to Manchester 

 merchants, who finished them at Manchester and despatched them 

 thence to other markets.^ Manchester specialized in "cotton" goods. 



The London trade was mostly overland. Early in the seventeenth 

 century the Nottingham carriers had established themselves in the 

 trade between these distant parts. Stage-wagons and trade carts are 

 mentioned in the local traffic.^ By 1 750 the Nottingham tradesmen 

 had become dependent upon London for their supplies and no longer 

 bought their stocks at Lenton Fair; and from this town alone nine 

 regular carriers left weekly for Manchester, Bristol, Birmingham, 

 London, and parts of the neighboring counties.' The same date 

 Pococke found that Kendall, a to,wn of 20,000 people, had "four 

 carriers, with several packhorses," which were "constantly going 

 between this town and London, two of which go l)y Lancashire, and 

 two by Yorkshire."^ He mentions other towns which despatched 

 their "woolen clothes . . . white to London. "'' 



The most distincti\-e feature of the north country organization of 

 the clothing industr}- was the dominance of the merchants, or their 

 agents, of the largest towns and cities, local, metropolitan, and for- 

 eign. It seems the poverty of the north-country- man in the early days 

 was the chief cause of this peculiarity. A deposition, dating 1638, by 

 a York man, described the clothworkers as "very poor people that 

 are sore oppressed . . . who making every week a coarse kersey 

 and being compelled to sell the same at the week end, and with the 

 money received for the same to provide bothe stuffe wherewith to 

 make another the week following, and also victualls to susteyne them- 

 selves and their famihes till another be made and sold, by which 

 means the said poor and distressed people making hard shifts with 

 continual labour and thereby such weekly returns to reserve them- 

 selves, their \\-ives and their children from begging."'^ It is to be 

 noticed that these clothworkers were not employees of the merchant 



IV. C. H., York, 11,411. 



- Aikin, Hist, of Manch., 158. 



2 Rastall, Hist, of Newark, 353-5; V. C. H., Nott., II, 284. 



* Deering, Vetus Nottinghamia, Sec. 5. 



^ Pococke, I, 43. 



^ For example, Bacup; Pococke, I, 205. 



'' E.xch. Dep. by Com. Mich., 14 Chas. I, No. 21, York; V. C. H., York, II, 415. 



