CREDIT IN THE PREINDUSTRIAL ENGLISH WOOLEN INDUSTRY

Credit in the English pre-industrial woollen industry. This article us es probate and literary sources to examine the place of credit (in all its forms) at different stages of woollen cloth production and sale. Illustrations are drawn from the sixteenth- and early seventeenth-cent ury Rent woollen industry to show how clothiers increased their liquid ity by 'borrowing' from both suppliers and outworkers. Clothiers finan ced their production mainly through local capital markers, and were no t dependent on London merchant capital. Rather, they extended credit t o London merchants who bought their cloth.