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Clay's customers
Finally, we turn to Clay's sales. Of the surviving documents, the majority are day books of sales, or records of customers' accounts. The day books are probably records of sales to credit account customers, and of major cash sales; there do not appear to be any notes of other sales, although some otherwise inexplicable notes may relate to small cash transactions. From these documents we can build up a fairly comprehensive picture of Clay's customers, and of the role of the stationer's shop in the life of a small town.
At Daventry, the most consistently valuable customer was Thomas Caldecott. For example, in October 1768 (Table I, column (a)), he spent £6.5s.7d., nearly one-third of the recorded takings for the month. Caldecott was a lawyer; he was Recorder of Daventry from 1743 until his death in 1774 (Baker, I, 323). His purchases included paper, vellum, printed forms, ink, and pens. Another lawyer, Harris, also spent a substantial sum. At Lutter-worth the principal customer was once again a lawyer, Mr. Worthington; his purchases were very similar to those of Caldecott and Harris. Clay was crucial to the lawyers, not merely as a supplier of paper, but also because he was a Stamp Distributor.[40] The ubiquity of the stamp duties,[41] and the fact that stationers sold the documents to which the stamps were affixed, made a distributorship, which was a local monopoly, both logical and desirable for the seller of paper and vellum. Indeed it was often said that distributors increased their profits by overcharging for the stamps,[42] but there is no evidence against Clay in this regard. In fact, Clay was typical of country stationers in building his business around the supply of law stationery.[43] Other customers bought a few quires of writing paper from time to time, but this was a much less significant part of Clay's trade. Most of the customers were either the gentry of the locality, or Clay's fellow tradesmen.
Among the book buyers, one group can be clearly distinguished from all the others: the tutors and students of Daventry Academy. It was, of course, they who bought the school textbooks and academic books which we noted at Daventry. Most of the other books sold were chapbooks and ballads,[44] some of them in bulk to pedlars and chapmen. Again, most of the customers were tradesmen, or minor gentry, many of whom also used Clay as a subscription agent for periodicals. Periodicals became an increasingly important part of Clay's trade, following the national trend of the great popularity of the monthly magazines in the middle of the century, following the success of the formula developed by Cave for The Gentleman's Magazine. From Daventry in 1770, for example, Clay was supplying The Gentleman's Magazine (to 23 customers), The London Magazine (34), The Universal Museum (4), The Critical Review (10), The Court Magazine (16), The Universal Magazine (12), The Royal Magazine (10), The Oxford Magazine (15), The Ladies Magazine (22), and two others, 'Review' (8), and 'The Gentleman's Museum' (49),[45] which cannot be identified.
There can be no doubt that Clay had a successful business career. That career illustrates a number of general points of importance. Firstly, it shows that even in a small market town remote from the new economic and industrial developments the pace and organisation of life was such that there was a growing need for documentation, and hence for the services of a stationer. A society which was becoming more complex, and subject to more taxation, had need of written and printed records on a far greater scale. Secondly, there were efficient mechanisms for the supply of the goods which the stationer sold, and the English paper industry was able to meet most of his demands. Thirdly, printed matter of all kinds was available even in small towns, although the demand was for a fairly limited range. Nevertheless, towards the end of his career, Clay was catering for a larger audience for books and magazines, a reflection of the growth in the popularity of the reading habit.
John Clay 'Booksellr a Burgess of this Corporatn', was buried at Holy Cross, Daventry, on 18 November 1775 (N.R.O. 96P/18, p. 122). He had outlived his second son, for William had died in his twenty-second year, shortly after becoming an ironmonger in Rugby. His body was brought back to Daventry, and he was buried there on 18 June 1772 (ibid., p. 118). The other two boys survived their father, although Thomas only for 6 years; he too was brought home for burial, on 26 July 1781 (N.R.O. 96P/19 Burials, p. 7). The whole enterprise which his father had established was now in the care of the eldest son, Samuel, who survived to the age of 56, and joined his parents and brothers in Holy Cross churchyard on 13 March 1800 (ibid., p. 50). He was the last of the Clays of Daventry, and the business apparently came to end with his life.
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