Our Legal Heritage, King AEthelbert, 596 to King George III, 1775Reilly, S. A.
History
Our Legal Heritage, King AEthelbert, 596 to King George III, 1775
Reilly, S. A.
Law -- England -- History
In London, shopkeepers appealed to passersby to buy their goods,
sometimes even seizing people by the sleeve. The drapers had
several roomy shops containing shelves piled with cloths of all
colors and grades, tapestries, pillows, blankets, bed draperies,
and 'bankers and dorsers' to soften hard wooden benches. A rear
storeroom held more cloth for import or export. Many shops of
skinners were on Fur Row. There were shops of leather sellers,
hosiers, gold and silver cups, and silks. At the Stocks Market
were fishmongers, butchers, and poulterers. London grocers
imported spices, canvas, ropery, potions, unguents, soap,
confections, garlic, cabbages, onions, apples, oranges, almonds,
figs, dates, raisins, dyestuffs, woad, madder (plant for medicine
and dye), scarlet grains, saffron, iron, and steel. They were
retailers as well as wholesalers and had shops selling honey,
licorice, salt, vinegar, rice, sugar loaves, syrups, spices,
garden seeds, dyes, alum, soap, brimstone, paper, varnish, canvas,
rope, musk, incense, treacle of Genoa, and mercury. The Grocers
did some money lending, usually at 12% interest. The guilds did
not restrict themselves to dealing in the goods for which they had
a right of inspection, and so many dealt in wine that it was a
medium of exchange. There was no sharp distinction between retail
and wholesale trading.
In London, grocers sold herbs for medicinal as well as eating
purposes. Breadcarts sold penny wheat loaves. Foreigners set up
stalls on certain days of the week to sell meat, canvas, linen,
cloth, ironmongery, and lead. There were great houses, churches,
monasteries, inns, guildhalls, warehouses, and the King's Beam for
weighing wool to be exported. In 1410, the Guildhall of London was
built through contributions, proceeds of fines, and lastly, to
finish it, special fees imposed on apprenticeships, deeds, wills,
and letters-patent. The Mercers and Goldsmiths were in the
prosperous part of town. The Goldsmiths' shops sold gold and
silver plate, jewels, rings, water pitchers, drinking goblets,
basins to hold water for the hands, and covered saltcellars. The
grain market was on Cornhill. Halfway up the street, there was a
supply of water which had been brought up in pipes. On the top of
the hill was a cage where riotous folk had been incarcerated by
the night watch and the stocks and pillory, where fraudulent
schemers were exposed to ridicule. No work was to be done on
Sundays, but some did work surreptitiously. The barbers kept their
shops open in defiance of the church. Outside the London city
walls were tenements, the Smithfield cattle market, Westminster
Hall, green fields of crops, and some marsh land.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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