privileges. Taking the matter
into consideration, the Council, on May 14, issued an order requiring
the companies to present their expedients and grievances, and appointed
a committee of two expert wool staplers, members of the Staplers
Company, to meet with the other companies and draft a certificate of
their proper and ancient rights. The Common Council, on the same day,
ordered its committee of trade, or any five of them, to attend the
Council of Trade and assist the "Company of Upholders," the committee
presenting the original complaint, in its attempt to obtain a redress
of grievances according to the plan already placed before the Common
Council. These efforts were not very successful, for the wool growers
refused to meet the committee of staplers appointed by the Council of
Trade, and the fellmongers and clothiers could not reach an agreement
with the staplers as to the latter's ancient privileges. Consequently,
the Council of Trade, on June 11, issued a second order requiring the
committee of trade of the Common Council to report on "the foundation
and nature of the Staple and the privileges pretended to by that
Society." This committee "heard certain of the principal staplers and
perused the acts and records produced by them in defence of the same,"
and reported to the Council of Trade on June 26 that, in its opinion,
the Company of Staplers had become an unnecessary and useless Society,
and were the principal cause for the dearness of wool, the badness of
cloth, and the general decay of the woolen trade.[4]

The trouble seems to have been that the fellmongers and staplers
were deemed useless middlemen between the growers and the clothiers,
and injurious to the clothing industry because of their abuses. The
controversy was carried before the Council of State and its committees,
and both fellmongers and staplers argued long and forcibly in defence
of their trade.[5] On November 3, 1652, the two societies presented an
answer to the particular order of the Council of Trade which declared
them unnecessary and disadvantageous, denied the charges, and prayed
that they might enjoy their trade as before. Even as late as April 16,
1653, the fellmongers petitioned for leave to produce wool-growers and
clothiers to certify the necessity of their trade.[6] But fellmongers
and staplers as factors in English trade and industry were beginning
to pass away by the middle of the seventeenth century.

The second important questi