The Great Reclothing of Rural England: Petty Chapmen and their Wares in the Seventeenth Century

Margaret Spufford has written as detailed an account of the lives and activities of the chapmen as there is likely to be, given the widely-spread and fragmented evidence. She shows where and when they were active, and in particular their rise in the seventeenth century, their ranks and their typical careers, the variety of the cloths and other wares they carried, and the attitude of authority towards them.