Early Trading Conditions 25 



Wholesale Men to carry back orders from their Dealers for 

 ten Thousand Pounds-worth of Goods a man, and some much 

 more. This especially respects those People, who deal in heavy 

 Goods, as Wholesale Grocers, Salters, Brasiers, Iron-Merchants, 

 Wine-Merchants and the like ; but does not exclude the 

 Dealers in Woollen Manufactures, and especially in Mercery 

 Goods of all sorts, the Dealers in which generally manage their 

 Business in this Manner : 



" Here are Clothiers from Halifax, Leeds, Wakefield and 

 Huddersfield in Yorkshire, and from Rochdale, Bury, &c. in 

 Lancashire, with vast Quantities of Yorkshire Cloths, Kerseys, 

 Pennistons, Cottons, &c., with all sorts of Manchester Ware, 

 Fustians and Things made of Cotton Wooll ; of which the 

 Quantity is so great, that they told me there were near a 

 Thousand Horse-packs of such Goods from that Side of the 

 Country. . . . 



" In the Duddery I saw one Ware-house or Booth, with six 

 Apartments in it, all belonging to a Dealer in Norwich Stuffs 

 alone, and who, they said, had there above Twenty Thousand 

 Pounds value in those Goods alone. 



" Western Goods had their Share here, also, and several 

 Booths were fill'd as full with Serges, Du-Roys, Druggets, 

 Shalloons, Cataloons, Devonshire Kersies, &c., from Exeter, 

 Taunton, Bristol, and other Parts West, and some from 

 London also. 



" But all this is still outdone, at least in Show, by two 

 Articles, which are the Peculiars of this Fair, and do not 

 begin till the other Part of the Fair, that is to say, for the 

 Woollen Manufacture, begins to draw to a Close : These are 

 the Wooll and the Hops : As for the Hops there is scarce any 

 price fix'd for Hops in England till they know how they fell 

 at Sturbridge Fair : the Quantity that appears in the Fair 

 is indeed prodigious. . . . They are brought directly from 

 Chelmsford in Essex, from Canterbury and Maidstone in Kent 

 and from Farnham in Surrey ; besides what are brought 

 from London, the Growth of those and other places." 



In the North of England, Defoe continues, few hops had 

 formerly been used, the favourite beverage there being a 

 " pale smooth ale " which required no hops. But for some 

 years hops had been used more than before in the brewing 

 of the great quantity of beer then being produced in the 



