What is a cormonger?

Answer 1

In old English and Latin 'Cor' is an old fashioned expression for heart or emotion e.g. "Cor Blimey... You scared me half to death" in a Mary Poppins type style ;-)

Mongers of various types; costermongers, fishmongers etc. were people who sold goods in the street from barrows and stalls before the formation of the market guilds.

This seems to suggest that a Cormonger would be one who sold offal from animals (liver, kidneys and particularly hearts) for food from a barrow or stall in the street. One would suppose that this was a very lowly station, compared to selling meat or fish etc. I would speculate that cormongers would be junior traders who got their stock from the disgards of other older traders.