[Sca-cooks] Mercer was Word usage

[Johnna Holloway]

Interesting question. You could investigate and visit your library
to see if they own the volume mentioned. If not you could have it ILLoaned
in and then read it. You could also just take the easy way out and 
Google Caxton
where one could read about his activities with the wool trade in the 
Lowlands.
[There are a number of biographies online.] Then you'd know.
Having studied "Willyam Caxton, mercer of the cyte of London", 
extensively, I already
 know what it was that Caxton did in the later part of the 15th century.
He was so successful at it that he could afford to become a printer of 
books and that
is the most important thing! In terms of cookery it was his press under 
the ownership
of his former apprentice de Worde that produced the 1508 Boke of 
Keruynge or Book of Carving.
That's how Caxton ties into early English cookery and cookbooks.

Johnnae

>But does it specifically state that they only sold fabric or that the
>Mercer's guild was = to a Merchant's Guild?
>Lyse
>
>-----Original Message-----
>Before he was a printer, Caxton was a mercer.
>On Caxton as a member of the Mercers' Company
>A. Sutton, ‘Caxton was a Mercer: His Social Milieu and Friends’, in
>England in the Fifteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1992 Harlaxton
>Symposium, edited by Nicholas Rogers (Stamford: Paul Watkins, 1994), pp.
>118-48. ISBN 1871615674
>
>Johnnae
>
>  
>