ABSTRACT
In the last three chapters the focus has been on the shop itself and on the relationship between retailer and customer. It is now time to turn to the broader setting in which the retailer operated, and to the networks of family and fellow tradesmen which made for success in business. The chapter draws heavily on the experiences of three early modem tradesmen, whose autobiographical material spans over a century from the Restoration to the 1760s. Roger Lowe, of Ashton in Makerfield, Lancashire, wrote a Diary that covers the eleven years from 1663 to 1674, while William Stout's Autobiography covering his family background, his education and apprenticeship, and his career as a 'Wholesale and Retail Grocer and Ironmonger' in Lancaster effectively spanned 60 years from about 1670 to the early 1730s. The third, Thomas Turner of East Hoathly, Sussex, kept a diary from 1754 to 1765.2 When contextualized by other anecdotal evidence, these three extensive sources give a reasonably comprehensive picture of the way the provincial retail sector functioned in the second half of the seventeenth century and through the eighteenth. For the period before 1660 there are no comparable sources, so that in this chapter only fleeting and conjectural references can be made to that period.
