Fishing, Freedom, and the Market in Early Modern London

Abstract

In 1699, London’s Billingsgate fish market was confirmed as a ‘free market’ by parliament. This statute marked the culmination of a commercial conflict between London’s Fishmongers’ Company and their arriviste rivals, the Company of Free Fishermen. This article uses the conflict to examine shifting ideas and practices governing the food markets of early modern London. Tensions between the popular values of the moral economy and the novel commercial and military priorities of central government placed strain on traditional understandings of economic ‘freedom’, as authorities increasingly came to accept the role of market competition in the allocation of basic foodstuffs.