¹ West Yorkshire Archive Service (WYAS), Kirklees, DD/TO/12, Tolson letters, 27 January 1781.

² Dickson, P. G. M., The Financial Revolution in England: A Study in the Development of Public Credit, 1688–1765 (London, 1967)Google Scholar; Neal, Larry, The Rise of Financial Capitalism: International Capital Markets in the Age of Reason (Cambridge, 1990)Google Scholar.

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⁸ The political, family, and gender aspects of credit have received the most attention. See Muldrew, Craig, The Economy of Obligation: The Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England (Basingstoke, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, “Interpreting the Market: The Ethics of Credit and Community Relations in Early Modern England,” Social History 18 (1993): 163–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Credit and the Courts: Debt Litigation in a Seventeenth-Century Urban Community,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 46 (1993): 23–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smith, Jay, “No More Language Games: Words, Beliefs, and the Political Culture of Early Modern France,” American Historical Review 102 (1997): 1413–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brewer, John and Fontaine, Laurence, “Homo creditus et construction de la confiance au XVIIIeme siècle,” in La Construction sociale de la confiance, ed. Bernoux, Philippe and Servet, Jean-Michel (Paris, 1997), 161–76Google Scholar; Fontaine, Laurence, “Espaces, usages et dynamiques de la dette dans les hautes vallées dauphinoises (XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles),” Annales HSS, no. 6 (November–December 1994): 1375–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Antonio and Shylock: Credit and Trust in France, c. 1680–1780,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 54 (2001): 39–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹ Bourdieu, Pierre, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Giddens, Anthony, Central Problems of Social Theory (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sahlins, Marshall, Islands of History (Chicago, 1985)Google Scholar. For examples of applications of these insights, see Reddy, William, Money and Liberty in Modern Europe: A Critique of Historical Understanding (New York, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and The Invisible Code: Honor and Sentiment in Postrevolutionary France, 1814–1848 (Berkeley, 1997)Google Scholar.

¹⁰ An economic analysis of price, to be sure, does take some cognizance of risk, but only by making an assumption about the ultimate outcome of a “loan,” at least in a probabilistic sense. For example, economists quite rightly analyze interest charges as reflecting, in part, the risk of default on loans, but that cost can only be established with reference to the average outcome of a large number of loans.

¹¹ Strictly speaking, the term “merchant” referred only to those individuals engaged in overseas trade; see Defoe, Daniel, The Complete English Tradesman (1839; Gloucester, 1987), 7–8Google Scholar. The difference between merchants proper and those engaged in the domestic trade or manufacturing should not be minimized; see, e.g., Gauci, Perry, The Politics of Trade: The Overseas Merchant in State and Society: 1660–1720 (Oxford, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹² A more complex version of the bill involved a fourth party, for if the merchant needing to make the remittance could not draw bills in his own right, he was referred to as the drawee and would purchase a bill in local currency from the drawer with which to make his remittance. This bill would have been generated by a completely separate commercial exchange. Although not, technically speaking, bills of exchange, promissory notes drawn between two individuals could also be endorsed by the payee and thus come to circulate like a bill. See the chart and explanation of foreign bills in Neal, Larry, Rise of Financial Capitalism: International Capital Markets in the Age of Reason (New York, 1990), 6Google Scholar.

¹³ The complex history of the inland bill is traced in Kerridge, Eric, Trade and Banking in Early Modern England (Manchester, 1988)Google Scholar.

¹⁴ The fact that eighteenth-century Britain was chronically short of cash meant that even face-to-face transactions often involved recourse to credit in some form or another. In the eighteenth-century wool textile industry, cash exchanges were limited to the payment of wages and, in Yorkshire, some purchases in the local cloth markets. Forgery could, of course, undermine the security of the bill of exchange; for a discussion of its extent in the eighteenth century, see McGowen, Randall, “From Pillory to Gallows: The Punishment of Forgery in the Age of the Financial Revolution,” Past and Present, no. 165 (1999): 107–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁵ It was quite common for London cloth factors to make remittances to their West Country correspondents in the form of Spanish wool; see Somerset Record Office, DD/X/MSL/C/67, Elderton letter book, J. Walker, 6 October 1763. Remittances in the form of other kinds of goods, however, presented more problems. Philip Stannard of Norwich had no interest in taking either wine or iron in return for his cloth because he did not know the goods; Norwich RO, BR/211/12, Stannard and Taylor letter book, Carrer and Audenvert and Co. in Oporto, 20 June 1763; and Priestley, Ursula, ed., The Letters of Philip Stannard, Norwich Textile Manufacturer, 1751–63, Norfolk Record Society, vol. 57 for 1992, (Norwich, 1994), 94Google Scholar. We can only guess what a West Country clothier thought about receiving remittances from a North American adventure in the form of flax seed; see Public Record Office, C.110/120, Westley letter book, 22 June 1764.

¹⁶ This statement oversimplifies a complex set of changes that occurred in different industries at different rates over the course of the eighteenth century. In broad outline, however, the eighteenth century saw the decline in systems of marketing based on major entrepots or those that relied on close personal connections and trust between principals; see Ormrod, David, The Rise of Commercial Empires: England and the Netherlands in the Age of Mercantilism, 1650–1750 (Cambridge, 2003)Google Scholar; Zahedieh, Nuala, “London and the Colonial Consumer in the late Seventeenth Century,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 47 (1994): 239–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Credit, Risk, and Reputation in Late Seventeenth-Century Colonial Trade,” in Merchant Organization and Maritime Trade in the North Atlantic, 1660–1815, ed. Janzen, O. U. (St. John’s, 1998), 53–74Google Scholar. For general surveys, see Patrick O’Brien, “Inseparable Conditions: Trade, Economy, the Fiscal State, and the Expansion of Empire,” and Price, Jacob, “The Imperial Economy, 1700–1776,” both in The Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. 2, ed. Marshall, P. J. (Oxford, 1998), 53–77, 78–104Google Scholar.

¹⁷ The length of credit granted depended on both the specific bargain that had been struck and the customary terms for particular commodities in particular markets. Terms in excess of twelve months were possible, but uncommon, particularly in the inland trade.

¹⁸ Yorkshire Archaeological Society, DD80, Lees family papers, letters to John Edwards.

¹⁹ Anderson, B. L., “Provincial Aspects of the Financial Revolution of the Eighteenth Century,” Business History 11 (1969): 11–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar. There was a rudimentary money market, but the supply of funds was not predictable, and it was particularly susceptible to market downturns. Tolson, e.g., remarked to his son: “I assure you there is no such thing as borrowing a single hundred pound upon bond. Mr Bolland has tried some time for us, and Mr. Medhurst, [but because of] Mr Tottie and some others at Halifax breaking nobody will put out money without a mortgage”; WYAS, Kirklees, DD/TO/11, Tolson letters, 20 December 1780. One could apply to relatives, but, even here, success often required that the potential lender had faith in the business's potential. The Tolsons' aunt, e.g., refused them a loan in August of 1780, but she came through for £100 in October when she learned that they had “done so well in orders”; WYAS, Kirklees, DD/TO/11, Tolson letters, 19 August and 14 October 1780.

²⁰ WYAS, Kirklees, DD/TO/11, from Peter Tolson Jr., 19 August 1780. Tolson was choosing to keep some cash on hand in case it was needed, despite the fact that he could have saved money by paying for his wool before the balance was due.

²¹ WYAS, Calderdale, SH:7/FAW/29, from Fawcett, 18 August 1750.

²² Credit might well be denied to an individual with whom a firm had no history for this reason, though there was often an implicit promise that a couple of good remittances on ready money terms would open the door to subsequent exchanges with credit; Somerset RO, DD/S/WT/25, Edwards letter book, Robert Hayward, 6 October 1768.

²³ Somerset RO, DD/S/WT/25, Edwards letter book, Robert Hayward, 28 July 1768.

²⁴ They might, if they chose, pursue a matter in the equity courts. The small but invaluable sample published by Henry Horwitz and Charles Moreton suggests such actions were rare, not least because of the cost involved; see Samples of Chancery Pleadings and Suits: 1627, 1685, 1735, 1785, List and Index Society, vol. 257 (1995). For a detailed look at one merchant's use of the equity courts, see Churches, Christine, “Business at Law: Retrieving Commercial Disputes from Eighteenth-Century Chancery,” Historical Journal 43 (2000): 937–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁵ Zahedieh, “Credit, Risk, and Reputation.” Perhaps the most important exception to the statement that credit risks could not be insured was the practice among London factors of selling debt insurance to the clothiers they represented; see Somerset RO, DD/X/MSL/C/67, Elderton letter book, 1763–69, Read and Wilkins, 3 November 1763.

²⁶ Price, “The Imperial Economy”; Morgan, Kenneth, Slavery, Atlantic Trade, and the British Economy, 1660–1800 (Cambridge, 2000), 84–93Google Scholar, and “Business Networks in the British Export Trade to North America, 1750–1800,” in The Early Modern Atlantic Economy, ed. McCusker, John and Morgan, Kenneth (Cambridge, 2000), 36–64Google Scholar; Styles, John, “Product Innovation in Early Modern London,” Past and Present, no. 168 (2000): 124–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smail, John, Merchants, Markets, and Manufacture: The English Wool Textile Industry in the Eighteenth Century (Basingstoke, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁷ The notebook that Richard Tolson took with him when traveling in Holland and Germany while seeking orders contains a list of houses with notations next to each name concerning their creditworthiness; see WYAS, Kirklees, DD/TO/3, Richard Tolson account book, c. 1780.

²⁸ There can be no definitive proof of these arguments, for the evidence, by its very nature, cannot be comprehensive. It is clear, however, that a code of honor was widely shared within the mercantile community, not only because it is so common in the detailed evidence that survives about particular individuals but also because so much of that surviving correspondence is in the form of letters addressed to other merchants who seem to have been expected to understand the moral framework being projected.

²⁹ It is not clear from this mention whether the person accepting the bill would expect reimbursement from his compatriot in Amsterdam or Ghent, but it seems likely; see Leeds University Library, Special Collections, Lupton 1, Ibbetson and Koster letter book, to Battier and Zornlin, 25 April 1761.

³⁰ Priestley, Letters of Philip Stannard, 45.

³¹ Defoe's Complete English Tradesman justly deserves its reputation as an important example of this genre. Another example from later in the century is A Present for an Apprentice, or a sure guide to gain both esteem and estate with rules for his conduct to his master and in the world, 6th ed., (London, 1754)Google Scholar, available in Sheffield Archives, TC/402.

³² WYAS, Calderdale, FH/441, Samuel Hill letters, from Abel Fonnereau, 4 May 1749, FH/442, Henry Kops, 21 October 1749, Cornelius Van Der Weet, 26 August 1749, and Van Eck and Willink, 21 October 1749.

³³ Liverpool University Library, MS 10.53, Charles Hudson letter book, fol. 68v, to Mr. Edwards, 12 June 1798.

³⁴ Somerset RO, DD/X/MSL/C/67, Elderton letter book, to Ben Peach, 4 August 1763. This same sentiment is implicit in the statement that a clothier would lose his “credit” if he overstretched his cloth or the comment that a merchant could hurt his “good character” in a market if he overcharged for his cloth; see “Minutes of Evidence Taken Before the Committee to Whom the Bill Respecting the Laws Relating to the Woollen Trade Is Committed,” testimony of William Henry Awdry, in British Parliamentary Papers, 1802–3, 7:640.

³⁵ Priestley, Letters of Philip Stannard, 46.

³⁶ WYAS, Leeds, H3, Holroyd brothers letter book, to Messrs. Lees, 2 June 1789.

³⁷ Leeds University Library, Special Collections, Lupton 1, 28 September and 11, 20, and 22 October 1760.

³⁸ The partnership was intended to take advantage of Ostend's status as a neutral port after war broke out between Britain and Holland; see WYAS, Kirklees, DD/TO/12, Tolson Letters, latter half of 1781, esp. the letters from Merac of 16 November and 1 December 1781. Tolson first explored the legal steps he might take to end the partnership before turning to a subterfuge. Merac only discovered the plans because Tolson's mail had to be opened when he returned home to Leeds to convalesce after a severe bout of influenza.

³⁹ Priestley, Letters of Philip Stannard, letters to William Reynolds and Roger Preston, 87–91.

⁴⁰ Leeds University, Special Collections, Lupton 1, 28 September and 11, 20, and 22 October 1760.

⁴¹ Quin also suggested that Stannard might be willing to take the goods back onto his account, a proposal he also rejected on grounds of reason. The pieces, he wrote, “consist of different lengths and colours to our general orders and may keep them 7 years before we could dispose of them, if ever”; see Priestley, Letters of Philip Stannard, 103.

⁴² Priestley, Letters of Philip Stannard, 90; WYAS, Kirklees, DD/TO/13, 6 February 1782.

⁴³ Leeds University, Special Collections, Lupton 1, 28 September and 11, 20, and 22 October 1760.

⁴⁴ WYAS, Kirklees, DD/TO/11, Tolson letters, 4 October 1780.

⁴⁵ Reddy, Invisible Code, 7–8.

⁴⁶ Norwich RO, BR/211/12, Stannard and Taylor letter book, to J. and J. Ives, 26 July 1763; they wrote in similar terms to Edmund Gurney, an important Norwich banker and yarn merchant.

⁴⁷ WYAS, Kirklees, DD/TO/11, Tolson letters, 1 November 1780.

⁴⁸ Wiltshire RO, 314/4/3, George Wansey spiritual notebook, 15 March 1789, 18 June 1783, 10 October 1784.

⁴⁹ Historical Society of Pennsylvania, William Pollard letter book, to Thos. Simpson, 1 July 1772.

⁵⁰ WYAS, Kirklees, DD/TO/7, 28 August 1776.

⁵¹ Hoppit, Risk and Failure, 47–55.

⁵² Hitchcock, Tim and Cohen, Michele, introduction to English Masculinities, 1660–1800 (London, 1999), 13–15Google Scholar. These studies take as a starting point the research that has shown that personal and group honor was vigorously asserted and defended by both men and women of all levels of society in the early modern period. See Gowing, Laura, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words, and Sex in Early Modern London (Oxford, 1996), esp. chap. 4Google Scholar; Walker, G., “Expanding the Boundaries of Female Honour in Early Modern England,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 6 (1996): 235–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar; James, M. E., English Politics and the Concept of Honour, 1485–1642 (Oxford, 1978)Google Scholar; and Shepard, Alex, “Manhood, Credit, and Patriarchy in Early Modern England, c. 1580–1640,” Past and Present, no. 167 (2000): 75–106CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵³ Reddy, Invisible Code; see also Nye, Robert, Masculinity and Male Codes of Honor in Modern France (New York, 1993)Google Scholar. France and Britain are of course not directly comparable because the latter lacked the cataclysmic events of the revolution, but in the early modern era, the codes of honor in each side were relatively similar; see Nye, Masculinity, 26–27.

⁵⁴ Foyster, Elizabeth, “Boys Will Be Boys? Manhood and Aggression, 1660–1800,” in Hitchcock, and Cohen, , English Masculinities, 151–66Google Scholar; Dabhoiwala, Faramerz, “The Construction of Honour, Reputation and Status in Late Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-Century England,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 6 (1996): 201–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Stannard's assertion, in the letter to William Reynolds, that “I would pay no regard to such vile aspersions merely on my own account” is particularly telling; see Priestley, Letters of Philip Stannard, 87–88, letter to William Reynolds.

⁵⁵ Shoemaker, R., “Reforming Public Manners: Public Insult and the Decline of Violence in London, 1660–1740,” in Hitchcock, and Cohen, , English Masculinities 133–50Google Scholar, “The Decline of Public Insult in London, 1660–1800,” Past and Present, no. 169 (2000): 97–131Google Scholar, “Male Honour and the Decline of Public Violence in Eighteenth-Century London,” Social History 26 (2001): 190–208CrossRefGoogle Scholar, “The Taming of the Duel: Masculinity, Honour and Ritual Violence in London, 1660–1800,” Historical Journal 45 (2002): 525–45Google Scholar; Meldrum, Tim, “A Woman's Court in London: Defamation at the Bishop of London's Consistory Court, 1700–45,” London Journal 19 (1994): 1–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁶ Reddy, Invisible Code, 10.

⁵⁷ Andrew, Donna, “The Code of Honour and Its Critics: The Opposition to Duelling in England, 1700–1850,” Social History 5 (1980): 409–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; the classic general study of the duel in European society is Kiernan, Victor, The Duel in European History: Honour and the Reign of the Aristocracy (New York, 1988)Google Scholar. An entry in the Tolson letters conveys the same sentiments as those of Stannard; in confirming his son's reaction to the way he had been treated by the master at the first Dutch school he had attended, the father wrote: “his reading your letter publicly in the school was mean and base, as it was done to put you into confusion, but he is a scoundrel. I am much pleased with your taking no notice of his behavior—he is below contempt”; WYAS, Kirklees, DD/TO/7, 3 July 1776.

⁵⁸ Ditz, “Shipwrecked.” To give but one example, consider Merac's reference to “honest men” quoted above.

⁵⁹ Deutsch, Phyllis, “Moral Trespass in Georgian London: Gaming, Gender, and Electoral Politics in the Age of George III,” Historical Journal 39 (1996): 637–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Russell, Gillian, “‘Faro's Daughters’: Female Gamesters, Politics, and the Discourse of Finance in 1790s Britain,” Eighteenth Century Studies 33 (2000): 481–504CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kavanagh, Thomas, “Gambling, Chance, and the Discourse of Power in Ancien Regime France,” Renaissance and Modern Studies 37 (1994): 31–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Walker, Jonathan, “Gambling and Venetian Noblemen, c. 1500–1700,” Past and Present, no. 162 (1999): 28–69CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. As both Deutsch and Russell make clear, aristocratic women also gambled, so honor in this instance was less exclusively masculine.

⁶⁰ Clark, Geoffrey, Betting on Lives: The Culture of Life Insurance in England, 1695–1775 (Manchester, 1999)Google Scholar.

⁶¹ WYAS, Kirklees, DD/TO/12, 1 December 1781.

⁶² Wiltshire RO, 314/4/2, Draft letter book of George Wansey, to Richard Laurence, December 1778.

⁶³ Wiltshire RO, 314/4/2, Draft letter book of George Wansey, to S. F., n.d.

⁶⁴ Wiltshire RO, 314/4/2, Draft letter book of George Wansey, to S. F., July 1778.

⁶⁵ WYAS, Kirklees, DD/TO/11, 30 December 1780.