146 History of Inland Transport 



other clothiers standing immediately alongside should not 

 hear what was said. The clothier agreed or disagreed, with- 

 out any attempt at " bargaining." If satisfied with the offer, 

 he would instantly pick up the cloth, and go off with it to 

 the merchant's house, where the transaction would be com- 

 pleted. Within less than half an hour the clothiers would be 

 seen thus leaving the market ; in an hour the business would 

 be over, and at half-past eight the bell would be rung again, 

 to announce that the market had closed and that there 

 must be no more sales. Any clothier who had not sold his 

 cloth would then take it back with him to his inn. 



" Thus," says Defoe, " you see Ten or Twenty thousand 

 Pounds value in cloth, and sometimes much more, bought 

 and sold in little more than an hour. . . . And that which 

 is most admirable is 'tis all managed with the most profound 

 Silence, and you cannot hear a word spoken in the whole 

 Market, I mean by the Persons buying and selling ; 'tis 

 all done in whisper. ... By nine a Clock the Boards are 

 taken down, and the street cleared, so that you see no market 

 or Goods any more than if there had been nothing to do ; 

 and this is done twice a week. By this quick Return the 

 Clothiers are constantly supplied with Money, their Work- 

 men are duly paid, and a prodigious Sum circulates thro' 

 the Country every week." 



It is no less interesting and, also, no less material to 

 the present inquiry as to the influence of transport conditions 

 on trade to learn how the cloth purchased in these particular 

 circumstances was disposed of in days when travel through 

 the country was still attended by so many difficulties. 



The supplies intended for home use were distributed in 

 this manner : Leeds was the head-quarters of a body of 

 merchants who were in the habit of going all over England 

 with droves of packhorses loaded up with the cloth which 

 had been bought in the open-air market, as already de- 

 scribed. These travelling merchants did not sell to house- 

 holders, since that would have constituted them pedlars. They 

 kept to the wholesale business, dealing only with shopkeepers 

 in the towns or with traders at the fairs ; but they operated 

 on such a scale that, Defoe says, " 'tis ordinary for one of 

 these men to carry a thousand pounds value of Cloth with 

 them at a time, and having sold it at the Fairs or Towns 



