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.

On the Thames River to London were large ships with cargoes; small
boats rowed by tough boatmen offering passage for a penny; small
private barges of great men with carved wood, gay banners, and
oarsmen with velvet gowns; the banks covered with masts and
tackle; the nineteen arch London Bridge supporting a street of
shops and houses and a drawbridge in the middle; quays;
warehouses, and great cranes lifting bales from ship to wharf.
Merchant guilds which imported or exported each had their own
wharves and warehouses. Downstream, pirates hung on gallows at the
low-water mark to remain until three tides had overflowed their
bodies. A climate change of about 1 1/2 degree Celcius lower
caused the Thames to regularly freeze over in winter.

The large scale of London trade promoted the specialization of the
manufacturer versus the merchant versus the shipper. Merchants had