‘And cart-saddle the commissarie,
Oure cart shall he lede
And fecchen us vitailles.’
In North Yorkshire to this very day they do very little carting. They all but invariably ‘lead hay,’ ‘lead corn,’ etc. An old form of ‘lead’ was ‘lode.’ We still talk of a ‘lode-stone.’ This explains such an entry as ‘Emma le Lodere’ or ‘Agnes le Lodere.’ They were both doubtless ‘leaders’ or ‘carriers,’ that is, wandering hucksters.
[431]. ‘Item, that all wines, red and white, which shall come unto the said realm shall be well and lawfully gauged by the King’s Gaugers, or their deputies’ (‘bien et loialment gaugez par le gaujeour le Roi, ou son deputé.’). (Stat. of Realm, vol. i. p. 331.)
[432]. An epitaph in St. Anthony’s, London, dated 1400, says of the deceased that he was—
‘The King’s weigher more than yeres twentie,
Simon Street, callyd in my place.’
(Maitland, ii. 375.)
[433]. The local form is found in the case of ‘Jeffery Talbothe,’ a Norfolk Rector in 1371. (Blomefield). The ‘receipt of custom’ is with Wickliffe the ‘tolbothe.’