Our Legal Heritage: King AEthelbert - King George III, 600 A.D. - 1776: June 2011 (Sixth) EditionReilly, S. A.
History
Our Legal Heritage: King AEthelbert - King George III, 600 A.D. - 1776: June 2011 (Sixth) Edition
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 a primitive 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.
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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