Definition of "higgler"

He was, besides, the best sacrifice the higgler could make, as he had supplied him with no game since; and by this means the witness had an opportunity of screening his better customers:

1749, Henry Fielding, chapter X, in The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volumes (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: A[ndrew] Millar, […], book III

[E]very poulterer in the neighbourhood had repeatedly refused her custom […] so that her only means of procuring poultry was of the higglers: their fowls, she found out, were either so ill fed, or of such an enormous age, that there was no gravy to follow the knife […] .

1828, JT Smith, Nollekens and His Times, Century Hutchinson, published 1986, page 64

'I don't quite like my children going away from home,' said the higgler.

1891, Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, volume 1, London: James R. Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., page 84