SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



Hertford,8^ St. Albans,^' Royston,»° Hemel Hempstead" and Ware.'^ The 

 markets were ruled by the justices. In April 1631 'we of St. Albans do 

 continually look that the market be served and that no corn be sold 

 privately in shops.' '' Although the market was very great, there were so 

 many buyers for the provision of London that the price rose daily till the 

 justices frightened the ' chiefest ' away, when the price fell to 4J-. a bushel. °* 

 In January 1633 the market was well supplied, but the price was 5 J. 6cl. a 

 bushel.'^ In 1631 the justices of Edwinstree and Odsey made a complaint 

 which seems to show that the London merchant was widening the area 

 within which he bought. ' Our great corn market at Royston is still stored 

 with corn out of Cambridgeshire insomuch that our own farmers are forced 

 to send their corn upward to Hertford market.' The harvest had been so 

 plentiful that the justices wisely said that the less they interfered the more 

 the prices would fall. New wheat was 5J. a bushel, old wheat 6^. a bushel, 

 in August.'* This was about the rate at Redbourn and Tyttenhanger in 

 1637" and in the district round Hertford and Ware in 1655."* Ten years 

 later at Standon the bushel was worth 4J.,'' and, indeed, the price remained 

 stable to the end of the century. ^'"' 



Besides the fixing of prices, the justices supervised sales through the 

 licensing of dealers. Unlicensed higglers were as plentiful in the 17th 

 century as they had been in the 1 6th. Sometimes these outside dealers were 

 men interested in other branches of the trade attracted by the profits of the 

 sale, as when a maltman and two mealmen of Watford and Elstree bought 

 up grain in Watford market for resale.^ Sometimes gentlemen or yeomen 

 bought and sold as badgers of grain.^ Nor was much capital necessary 

 for labourers engaged in the trade.' In very many parishes there was one 

 of these illicit traders, in some, such as Hatfield or King's Langley, three 

 or four.* Unlicensed merchants increased in numbers in spite of the work 

 of the sessions. 



Moreover, the justices could not prevent the increase of sales outside 

 the market. A yeoman with a little money would buy up the supply of his 

 village.^ The farmer was willing to sell at his barn doors contrary to the 

 statute.* Even a clerk would lie in wait on the roads leading to the great 

 markets and engross 100 quarters of wheat and 200 of barley.' Possibly 

 this was commoner in the south and west of the county than in the poorer 

 north-east, where the justices stated in 1631 that they had no engrossers of 

 corn.* In the last half of the 1 7th century buyers forestalled the crop before 

 it was cut.' 



The peculiarity of the trade was the struggle between the London and 

 the local markets, which raised prices in Hertfordshire. But after the time 

 of Elizabeth this difficulty seems to have been mitigated. In the i8th 

 century the country bakers kept the coarser kinds of grain almost entirely ; 



*8 Duchy of Lane. Dep. 6 Jas. I, no. 60. ^' S. P. Dom. Chas. I, clxxxviii, 43. 



'" Ibid, cxcviii, 39 ; Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. xiii, App. xi, 274.. 



" F.C.H. Herts, ii, 217-18. 92 ^ess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec), ii, 24. 



'' S. P. Dom. Chas. I, clxxxviii, 43. ^* Ibid. '' Ibid, ccxxxi, 19. 



98 Ibid, cxci, 39. 97 Cal. S. P. Dom. 1635-7, ?• 274- '* Sot. R. (Herts. Co. Rec), i, 109. 



99 Ibid. 166. If" Ibid. 237. 1 Ibid. 50. 2 Ibid. 278, 28 ; ii, 2. 



' Ibid, i, 329 ; ii, 28. * Ibid, i, 329. Hbid. 61. * Ibid. 315. 



^ Ibid. 109. 8 S. P. Dom. Chas. I, cxcviii, 39. 



' Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec), i, 140, 144 ; cf. 166 and I7i, 



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