[Sca-cooks] Word usage

[Laura C. Minnick]

At 08:49 PM 6/5/2006, you wrote:
>Is mercer British specific? And what I find is that it is a post SCA period
>name, mercer - after the process of mercerizing (1791).
>Actually, what I have found is that it is used in reference to a fabric
>merchant post SCA and that prior to that it is a trader/merchant of a
>variety of wares, not just fabric.
>So I would, when you feel better, like your info.
>Thank you,
>Lyse

Well, according to Eileen Power in her article 'The Wool Trade in the 
Fifteenth Century' in E. Power and M.M. Postan (eds.), _Studies in English 
Trade in the Fifteenth Century_ (London, 1933) pg. 53 one Hugh Calcote of 
Glouchestershire in 1459 was called 'chapman, alias merchant, alias mercer, 
alias yeoman. (Apparently he traded in a number of different things- just 
what, we don't really know.). Not entirely sure about the status of the 
mercer's guild in England, but the mercer's guild in Florence was pretty 
powerful. I remember reading the marriage agreements when a couple of their 
families settled on a 'merger'. (Those Italians, so romantic...)

Now that I think of it however, a better term for a cloth-merchant would be 
'draper'.

'Lainie
___________________________________________________________________________
Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something 
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