Such was the more private and domestic side of Thomas Betson’s life; but it tells us little (save in occasional references to the Fellowship of the Staple or the price of Cotswold wool) about that great company with which this chapter began; and since he stands here as a type as well as an individual, we must needs turn now to his public and business life, and try to find out from more indirect evidence how a Merchant of the Staple went about his business.  The stapler, who would make a good livelihood, must do two things, and give his best attention to both of them:  first, he must buy his wool from the English grower, then he must sell it to the foreign buyer.  Some of the best wool in England came from the Cotswolds, and when you are a Merchant of the Staple you enjoy bargaining for it, whether you want the proceeds of the great summer clip or of the fells after the autumn sheep-killing.  So Thomas Betson rides off to Gloucestershire in the soft spring weather, his good sorrel between his knees, and the scent of the hawthorn blowing round him as he goes.  Other wool merchants ride farther afield—­into the long dales of Yorkshire to bargain with Cistercian abbots for the wool from their huge flocks, but he and the Celys swear by Cotswold fells (he shipped 2,348 of them to London one July ’in the names of Sir William Stonor knight and Thomas Betson, in the Jesu of London, John Lolyngton master under God’).  May is the great month for purchases, and Northleach the great meeting-place of staplers and wool dealers.  It is no wonder that Northleach Church is so full of woolmen’s brasses, for often they knelt there, and often the village hummed with the buyers and sellers, exchanging orders and examining samples.  The Celys bought chiefly from two Northleach wool dealers, William Midwinter and John Busshe.  The relations between dealers and sellers were often enough close and pleasant:  Midwinter even occasionally tried to provide a customer with a bride as well as with a cargo, and marriageable young ladies were not unwilling to be examined over a gallon of wine and much good cheer at the inn.[32] It is true that Midwinter was apt to be restive when his bills remained for too long unpaid, but he may be forgiven for that.  Thomas Betson favoured the wool fells of Robert Turbot of Lamberton,[33] and dealt also with one John Tate, with Whyte of Broadway (another famous wool village),[34] and with John Elmes, a Henley merchant well known to the Stonors.  Midwinter, Busshe, and Elmes were all wool dealers, or ’broggers’—­middlemen, that is to say, between the farmers who grew and the staplers who bought wool, but often the staplers dealt directly with individual farmers, buying the small man’s clip as well as the great man’s, and warm friendships sprang from the annual visits, looked forward to in Yorkshire dale and Cotswold valley.  It strikes a pleasant note when Richard Russell, citizen and merchant of York, leaves in his will, ’for distribution among the farmers of Yorkes Walde, from whom I bought wool 20 l., and in the same way among the farmers of Lyndeshay 10 l.’ (1435).[35]