It is a commonplace that in eighteenth-century England all businessmen made frequent use of credit. The financial underpinning of economic activity at the time has increasingly been seen in terms of its widespread use. It was business historians, such as Professor Ashton, who first stressed its significance. The rather atomized picture of credit generated by business histories gradually became more organized, partly to qualify the insistence of both Lewis and Rostow that a rapid expansion of fixed capital formation was a central feature of the growth process. As Crouzet pointed out, ‘This new view of the capital structure of eighteenth-century business leads us to reconsider the problem of financing industry, this time emphasizing the importance of trade credit (or book debt).’ Such borrowing and lending often took place within well-established lines, so that by 1800 something approaching a system of credit can be said to have existed. Recent work has confirmed that many firms had more of their assets tied up in credit than in capital and that, particularly in the second half of the century, in many areas there existed a developed network for working capital. So successfully has credit been championed that historians looking at other aspects of eighteenth-century England have also stressed its significance. Professor Pocock, for example, has partly described the early eighteenth-century debate between Court and Country ideologies in terms of their discussion of it. And Professor Brewer has taken it further, from the history of political ideas to the history of politics itself, arguingthat the politicization of shopkeepers and tradesmen in mid-century was helped by their struggles with credit.