From hence, take a short view of the middle part of England: Leicester, Northampton, and Warwick shires have a prodigious number of large sheep, which, as is said of Lincolnshire, are bred for the London markets; the wool, consequently, is of an exceeding long staple, and the fineness is known also to be extraordinary.

This wool is brought every week, Tuesday and Friday, to the market at Cirencester, on the edge of Gloucester and Wilts; the quantity is supposed to be at least five hundred packs of wool per week.

Here it is bought by the woolcombers and carders of Tedbury, Malmsbury, and the towns on all that side of Wilts and Gloucester, besides what the clothiers themselves buy; these carry it out far and near among the poor people of all the adjacent countries, for the spinning; and having made the yarn, they supply that manufacture as far as Froome, Warminster, and Taunton; and thus the west country is furnished.

The north requires another inspection; the rest of the Leicestershire wool merchants, who do not bring their wool southward, carry it forward to the north, to Wakefield, Leeds, and Halifax; here they mix it with, and use it among the northern wool, which is not esteemed so fine.

Not forgetting, notwithstanding, that they have a great deal of very fine wool, and of a good staple, from the wolds or downs in the East Hiding of Yorkshire, and from the bishoprick of Durham, more especially the banks of the Tees, where, for a long way, the grounds are rich, and the sheep thought to be the largest in England.

Hither all the finest wool of those countries is brought; and the coarser sort, and the Scots' wool, which comes into Halifax, Rochdale, Bury, and the manufacturing towns of Lancashire, Westmoreland, and Cumberland, are employed in the coarser manufactures of those countries, such as kerseys, half-thicks, yarn stockings, duffields, rugs, Turkey work, chairs, and many other useful things, which those countries abound in.

3. Defoe's Account of the Corn Trade [D. Defoe, The Complete English Tradesman, Ed. 1841, Vol. II, pp. 177-182], temp. George II.

As the corn trade is of such consequence to us, for the shipping off the overplus, so it is a very considerable business in itself; the principal people concerned in it, as a trade, are, though very numerous, yet but of four denominations;—

1. Cornfactors;3. Maltsters;
2. Mealmen;4. Carriers.

1. Cornfactors; these, as corn is now become a considerable article of trade, as well foreign as inland, are now exceeding numerous; and though we had them at first only in London, yet now they are also in all the great corn markets and ports where corn is exported through the whole island of Britain; and in all those ports they generally correspond with the corn factors in England.