The English Woollen Industry, C.1200-c.1560 9780429602818, 9780429597299, 9780367179748, 9780429058776

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The English Woollen Industry, c.1200–c.1560

This is the first book to describe the early English woollen industry and its dominance of the trade in quality cloth across Europe by the­ mid-sixteenth century, as English trade was transformed from dependence on wool to value-added woollen cloth. It compares English and continental draperies, weighs the advantages of urban and rural production, and examines both quality and coarse cloths. Rural clothiers who made broadcloth to a consistent high quality at relatively low cost, Merchant Adventurers who enjoyed a trade monopoly with the Low Countries, and Antwerp’s artisans who finished cloth to customers’ needs all eventually combined to make English woollens unbeatable on the continent. John Oldland is Professor Emeritus at Bishop’s University, Sherbrooke, Quebec.

Routledge Research in Early Modern History

Piracy and Captivity in the Mediterranean 1550–1810 Edited by Mario Klarer The Reformation of England’s Past John Foxe and the Revision of History in the Late Sixteenth Century Matthew Phillpott Science in an Enchanted World Philosophy and Witchcraft in the Work of Joseph Glanvill Julie Davies The English Chartered Trading Companies, 1688–1763 Guns, Money and Lawyers Michael Wagner Enlightenment in Scotland and France Studies in Political Thought Mark Hulliung The School of Salamanca in the Affairs of the Indies Barbarism and the Political Order Natsuko Matsumori Criminal Justice During the Long Eighteenth Century Theatre, Representation and Emotion Edited by David Lemmings and Allyson N. May The English Woollen Industry, c.1200–c.1560 John Oldland For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Research-in-Early-Modern-History/book-series/RREMH

The English Woollen Industry, c.1200–c.1560 John Oldland

First published 2019 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Taylor & Francis The right of John Oldland to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Oldland, John, author. Title: The English woollen industry, c.1200–c.1560 / by John Oldland. Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2019. | Series: Routledge research in early modern history | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2018051251 (print) | LCCN 2018053101 (ebook) | ISBN 9780429058776 () | ISBN 9780367179748 (hbk) Subjects: LCSH: Wool industry—England—History—To 1500. | Wool industry—England—History—16th century. Classification: LCC HD9901.7.E54 (ebook) | LCC HD9901.7.E54 O43 2019 (print) | DDC 338.4/76773109420902—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018051251 ISBN: 978-0-367-17974-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-05877-6 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

To Alice, wife and partner for fifty years

Contents

List of Tablesix List of Abbreviationsxi Prefacexv 1 Introduction to English Woollens

1

2 Woollens Production and the Growing English Advantage20 3 Dress, the Wool Supply and Industry Regulation

51

4 The Thirteenth Century: A False Start?

74

5 Coarse Woollens in the Early-Fourteenth Century

98

6 The Fourteenth-Century Urban Revival

113

7 Revival of Exports, and an Assessment of Clothmaking at the End of the Fourteenth Century

131

8 Working Conditions in Towns

165

9 The Turbulent Fifteenth Century

192

10 The Clothiers’ Century, 1450–1550

215

11 The March of the Clothiers

237

12 The London-Antwerp Ascendency and the Merchant Adventurers Company

251

viii  Contents

13 Export Expansion, 1470–1555

267

14 Location of the Sixteenth-Century Woollens Industry

285

15 Crossroads

309

Bibliography325 Index351

Tables

1.1 Cloth production and sheep numbers, 1311–1590 5 2.1 Hours to produce broadcloth and number of clothworkers in 1541–5 31 2.2 Cloth dimensions and weights in 1552 (changes in 1557–8)37 3.1 The allocation of Great Wardrobe funds among drapery, furs and mercery, in per cent 55 4.1 Great wardrobe cloth purchases, 1300–4 78 4.2 Estimated annual overseas trade in cloth, 1304–9, in pounds 86 7.1 Comparison of cloth exports, 1355–60 and 1406–11 133 7.2 Average prices for cloths paying poundage, 1378–1403, in shillings and pence 136 7.3 Cloths paying the alnage subsidy, 1354–8 and 1394–1401, from the enrolled accounts 140 7.4 Number of cloths exported by denizens from London, 1348–1410 (per cent with known trade designation) 152 9.1 Average annual double-worsted exports from Yarmouth and London, 1430–1547, in cloths 209 10.1 Wealth comparison between trades in the Babergh Hundred, Suffolk, in 1522 230 11.1 Clothworking employment in the woollen industry: Suffolk Babergh Hundred in 1522, Gloucestershire in 1608 and Cranbrook in 1653–61 246 12.1 Value of denizen trade before customs duties, 1446–8 and 1479–82, in pounds 252 12.2 London denizen merchants exporting more than forty cloths, 1507–8 to 1547–8 257 12.3 Companies exporting cloth in 1534–5 259 12.4 London’s trade, 1420–1539, in pounds 261 13.1 English cloth exports, in annual equivalent broadcloths, 1461–1554, nationally, by major ports, and by denizen, Hanse and other aliens (year ending Michaelmas) 275

x  Tables 14.1 Number of cloths presented to the alnager for a selected year between 1468–9 and 1472–3, and summary of alnaged cloths, 1394–1401 14.2 Persons fined in London under the 1549, 1552 and 1557–8 cloth acts, by region, 1555–85 15.1 Types of infractions from the 1549, 1552 and 1557–8 cloth acts in London, 1550–2 and 1554–85

288 289 319

Abbreviations

AHEW AHR APC Baldwin, Sumptuary Barron, London Beveridge, Prices Bickley, Bristol BL Bridbury, Clothmaking Britnell, Colchester Broadberry et al., Economic growth Cal. LB (A-L) Cal. P&M Carus-Wilson, Venturers Carus-Wilson and Coleman, Export

E. Miller, ed., Agricultural history of England and Wales, Vol. III, 1348–1500 (Cambridge, 1991) Agricultural History Review J.R. Dasent, ed., Acts of the Privy Council (London, 1890–1964) F.E. Baldwin, Sumptuary legislation and personal regulation in England (Baltimore, 1926) C. Barron, London in the later Middle Ages: government and people 1200–1500 (Oxford, 2004) W. Beveridge, Prices and wages in England from the twelfth to the nineteenth century (London, 1939) F.B. Bickley, ed., The little red book of Bristol, volume 2 (London, 1900) British Library A.R. Bridbury Medieval English clothmaking (London, 1982) R.H. Britnell, Growth and decline in Colchester 1200–1525 (Cambridge, 1986) S. Broadberry, B.M.S. Campbell, A. Klein, M. Overton and B. van Leeuwen, British economic growth 1270–1870 (Cambridge, 2015) Calendar of the Letter Books of the city of London, ed. R.R. Sharpe (London, 1903–12) A.H. Thomas and P.E. Jones, eds., Calendar of plea and memoranda Rolls, 6 vols. 1323– 1482 (Cambridge, 1924–61) E.M. Carus-Wilson, Medieval merchant venturers (London, 1954) E.M. Carus-Wilson and O. Colman, England’s export trade 1275–1547 (Oxford, 1965)

xii  Abbreviations CChR

Calendar of the Charter Rolls (London 1916, onwards) CCR Calendar of the Close Rolls, 1275–1485 (London, 1916 onwards) CHWT D. Jenkins, ed., The Cambridge history of western textiles, vol. 1 (Cambridge, 2003) Cl. Accounts Clothworkers’ Hall, quarter and renter wardens account books, 1528–1558 Cl. Courts Clothworkers’ Hall, Orders of Courts, 1536– 1558 CLR Calendar of Liberate Rolls (London, 1937 onwards) Consitt, Weavers F. Consitt, The London Weavers’ Company (London, 1933) CPR Calendar of the Patent Rolls, 1232–1509 (London, 1891–1916) Crowfoot, Textiles E. Crowfooot, F. Pritchard and K. Staniland, Textiles and clothing c.1150–c.1450 (London, 1992) CSP Dom R. Lemon, ed., Calendar of state papers, domestic series, of the reigns of Edward VI, Mary, Elizabeth, 1547–1580 (London, 1856); C.S. Knighton, ed., Calendar of state papers of the reign of Edward VI, domestic series 1547–1553, (London, 1992); and of Mary I, 1553–1558 (London, 1998) CUL Cambridge University Library EcHR Economic History Review EHR English History Review EMDT G. Owen-Crocker, E. Coatsworth and M. Hayward, eds., Encyclopedia of medieval dress and textiles of the British Isles c. 450–1450 (Leiden, 2012) GL Guildhall Library Heaton, Yorkshire H. Heaton, The Yorkshire woollen and worsted industries (Oxford, 2nd ed., 1965) Hudson and Tingay, W. Hudson and C.J. Tingay, eds., The records of Norwich the city of Norwich, vol. 2 (Norwich, 1906–10) JEEH Journal of European Economic History Jenks, Customs S. Jenks, The enrolled customs accounts (TNA, E356, E272, E364) 1279-80-1508/09 (1523/24), Parts 1–12, List & Index society, (2004–14) Journal Journals of the Common Council of the city of London Keene, Winchester D. Keene, Survey of medieval Winchester (Oxford, 1985)

Abbreviations xiii Kerridge, Manufactures L&P Liber custumarum Lloyd, Prices LMA LRS Munro, ‘Struggles’

Munro, ‘Technology’

NDB Oldland, ‘Clothmaking’ Oldland, ‘Economic impact’

Oldland, ‘London overseas trade’ Oldland, ‘Variety and quality’ Oldland, ‘Wool and cloth’ P&P Parl. Rolls

E. Kerridge, Textile manufactures in early modern England (Manchester, 1985) Letters and papers . . . from the time of Henry VIII, eds., J.S. Brewer, J. Gairdner and R.H. Brodie (London, 1862–1932) H.T. Riley, ed. and trans., Munimenta Gildehalle Londoniensis: Liber Custumarum, 2 vols. (London, 1860) T.H. Lloyd, The movement of wool prices in medieval England, Ec.HR Supplements, 6 (Cambridge, 1973) London Metropolitan Archives London Record Society J. Munro, ‘Medieval woollens: the western European woollen industries and their struggles for international markets, c.1000–1500’, in D. Jenkins, ed., The Cambridge history of western textiles, vol. 1 (Cambridge, 2003) J. Munro, ‘Medieval woollens: textiles, textile technology and industrial organisation, c.800– 1500’, in D. Jenkins, ed., The Cambridge history of western textiles (Cambridge, 2003) National Dictionary of Biography J.R. Oldland, ‘London clothmaking, c.1270– c.1550’ (Unpub. Ph.D. Thesis, University of London, 2003) J. Oldland, ‘The economic impact of clothmaking on rural society, 1300–1550’, in M. Allen and M. Davies, eds., Medieval merchants and money: essays in honour of James L. Bolton (London, 2016) J. Oldland, ‘The expansion of London’s overseas trade from 1475 to 1520’, in C. Barron and A. Sutton, eds., The medieval merchant (Donington, 2014) J. Oldland, ‘The variety and quality of English woollen cloth exported in the late Middle Ages’, JEEH, 39 (2010) J. Oldland, ‘Wool and cloth production in late medieval and early Tudor England’, EcHR, 67 (2014) Past and Present E. Horrox, ed., The Parliamentary Rolls of Medieval England 1275–1504 (London, 2005)

xiv  Abbreviations PCC Prob Reps Riley’s Memorials Rot. Parl. Statutes Sutton, Mercery TED TH Thorold-Rogers, Prices

TNA TRHS VCH Zell, Industry

Prerogative Court of Canterbury Probate records at The National Archives Repertories of the court of the mayor and aldermen of the city of London H.T. Riley, ed., Memorials of London and London life in the XIIIth, XIVth, and XVth centuries (London, 1868) Rotuli Parliamentorum, 6 vols. (London, 1832) Statutes of the realm, 11 vols. (London, 1810–28) A.F. Sutton, The Mercery of London: trade, goods and people, 1130–1578 (Aldershot, 2005) R.H. Tawney and E. Power, eds., Tudor economic documents, 3 vols. (London, 1924) Textile History J.E. Thorold-Rogers, A history of agriculture and prices in England from the year after the Oxford parliament (1259) to the commencement of the continental war (1793), 7 vols. (Oxford, 1866–1902) The Public Record Office at The National Archives, Kew Transactions of the Royal Historical Society Victoria County History M. Zell, Industry in the countryside: Wealden society in the sixteenth century (Cambridge, 1994)

Preface

Academically my career has progressed backwards, starting with a business career, followed by university teaching, and then pursuing doctoral studies on early retirement. My wife and I had started a clothing business in the 1980s, in a sense putting my business teaching into practice. So when I wanted to study English business history, and started to investigate from medieval times forward, I quickly discovered that the largest English industry of the later Middle Ages was cloth and that the country’s exports turned from wool to cloth and that this was to influence future economic development. I also realised that there was no recent survey of the industry. I looked no further and could not believe my good fortune. I would study the industry with which I was familiar 500 years later, and in my dreams expected one day to write the history of woollen cloth. My second stroke of good luck was to find Professor Caroline Barron and convince her that she should add me to her large stable of doctoral students. She was already supervising a dissertation on the London drapery trade, so it was determined that I should take on the subject of the production of cloth in London. So I set about finding out about woollen cloth, how it was made and how it changed. Twenty years later I have come to the end of my journey. As I set about writing this survey so many years ago, I soon discovered that there were subjects that remained un-researched, particularly for the critical period of 1450 to 1550, and so I would investigate and write an article or two to fill in the blank spots. The more I learned the less I thought I knew. Several years passed before I felt sufficiently knowledgeable and confident to offer my own interpretation rather than just distilling the work of others. I also realised that my experience was perhaps similar to the historical giants that had come before me; finding the industry fascinating and complex, with plenty to investigate, so that a generalised survey was delayed. Eleanora Carus-Wilson spent much of her long career researching the medieval cloth industry and died before she could finish her defining history. John Munro wrote articles on cloth over a fifty-year career and then passed in 2013 as he was in the early stages of writing a two-volume history of the late-medieval European cloth industry. The same fate almost

xvi  Preface overtook me as I have had four major surgeries while writing this book. Again I  was very lucky to finish this work. Fortunately, they both left summaries of their understanding of the industry’s development; CarusWilson in her long chapter in the Cambridge economic history of Europe, and Munro in his two chapters for the history of Western textiles. They have left me an incomparable body of research as well as their informed perspectives, so I think of myself as just finishing their work. As a businessman I have always felt that the most important factor is the product and how important it is to keep changing with the market so that it remains relevant to customers. It took almost 300 years for the English woollens industry to meet the needs of all customers in England and many on the continent. It would have been satisfying to feel the cloths, but the only English cloth that has survived is faded scraps from archaeological digs, a small sample from a merchant in early-fifteenth century Toulouse, and a number of woad-dyed samples given to Secretary Burleigh in Elizabeth I’s reign. Not much to go on. The medieval records are mostly about either trade or regulation. The nature of the product is usually assumed and details of its construction or production rarely mentioned, especially in England. If I have brought any contribution to how the industry developed it is to try and come to grips with how the various cloths differed from one another, how they changed over time, and the impact of the cost of production processes. Only then can we truly assess the success of marketing of the cloth. The literature keeps expanding as many regional and urban histories have been written, and so many touch on cloth. Economic history has been out of vogue for a generation while economics departments at many universities divested themselves of their historians, but I sense a renewed interest as a new generation of scholars appreciate the economic underpinnings of English political development. And recently new scholars have been attracted to investigate this industry, realising that in the laterfifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries the cloth trade had a major impact on the whole economy. Starting late in life and living in Canada I have been beavering away with minimal contact with the mainstream of my profession. Nevertheless I  consider myself fortunate to have been taught and guided by Caroline Barron; to have spent many evenings with her other doctoral students; to have been able to seek advice and listen from time to time to John Munro, who knew more about the industry than anyone else ever will; and to have my research scrutinised by the likes of Richard Britnell, Jim Bolton and Christopher Dyer. John Oldland Toronto September 2018

1 Introduction to English Woollens

From the time when the cloth trade ousted that of wool as the chief export trade of England down to the time when it was in its turn ousted by iron and cotton, it was the foundation of England’s greatness.1 —Eileen Power

In 1200 greased woollens were very expensive cloths that were worn by an aristocratic minority across the continent, but England made few of them. By 1550 almost everyone in northern Europe wore woollens and English cloth dominated the quality market. Before 1200 most people wore worsted which was made by combing and then tightly spinning longer wools that were often woven with a pattern and required little or no further finishing. Woollens were made using shorter, finer wools that needed to be washed and then greased so that the delicate fibres could be protected as the yarn was combed and spun. The weft thread (across the width) was spun to be very soft but weak, while the warp thread (across the length) was more tightly spun to be stretched from beam to beam on the loom. After weaving, the cloth was cleaned and de-greased, compressed (fulled) to give the cloth strength by trampling the cloth in warm water, the cloth then reshaped on a tenter, and finally the nap raised and sheared over a shearboard before it was truly finished and ready for sale. Worsteds were therefore simpler to produce and used cheaper wools. There was an intermediate cloth, serge, with a worsted warp and a woollen weft that was widely worn during the thirteenth century. In the second half of the twelfth century, Flemish clothmakers had perfected this fine, coloured, broad woollen woven to be two yards wide and more than twenty yards long; and in 1196 the English government introduced regulations with the expectation that English clothmakers might compete since these cloths were exclusively made from the best short English wools. These fine woollens were traded internationally and became fashionable across the courts of Europe, and traded at the Champagne fairs in central France for distribution to Mediterranean markets. A downturn in trade at the end of the thirteenth century, an increase in

2  Introduction to English Woollens distribution costs as trade routes were interrupted by war, the decline of the Champagne fairs, rising import duties in southern markets and the introduction of coarser woollens forced cheaper worsteds and serges out of international trade.2 In the fourteenth century, woollens steadily replaced worsteds and serges as carding and wheel-spinning weft thread, made from medium-length wools, allowed cheaper woollens to be woven. Worsteds continued to be used for bed linens and for some clothing until the sixteenth century when worsteds revived, as demand rose for cheaper, lighter cloths, often presented as inexpensive alternatives to silk.3 From 1300 to 1550, heavy greased woollens therefore dominated the market for woollen cloth; and then for the next two and a half centuries heavy woollens and light worsteds, old draperies and new draperies competed for this market. The growth of the English woollen industry had a lasting impact on the English economy from the fifteenth century onwards once the value of English cloth exports exceeded those of wool. Woollen cloth, worsteds and woollens, remained England’s dominant export until the turn of the nineteenth century when cotton replaced it. Within a single year, 1769– 70, James Hargreaves’ spinning jenny and Richard Arkwright’s water frame made the spinning wheel almost instantly obsolete for the spinning of regular-weight cotton thread. They were complementary machines. The jenny was a home machine that made the softer weft while the water frame was a factory machine that spun the stronger warp threads. Samuel Crompton’s mule, invented ten years later, was a more complex, but ‘perfect’ machine, combining both the principles and capabilities of its predecessors, and so was aptly named the mule. It could be either a home or a factory machine, it spun both warp and weft threads, and it could spin very fine threads that neither the jenny nor the water frame could produce. These machines not only dramatically improved the productivity of spinning but also raised the quality of the yarn as machines could be calibrated to produce an exact thickness of thread and maintain its consistency which even the most skilled spinster at her wheel found extremely difficult to accomplish over long periods of time. By 1775 Arkwright had transformed himself from a lowly wigmaker to an extremely rich master of cotton spinning mills. Twelve years later Edmund Cartwright, a Leicestershire country parson, took out a patent for a cotton weaving machine. Even though cotton exports had surpassed woollens in international trade around 1800, woollen textiles remained the second most valuable export until the end of the nineteenth century, when iron and steel, and then machinery, passed it.4 And it was not until after the Second World War that England’s leading export was not textiles. Unsurprisingly there was a continuous, if tenuous, thread that connected the woollens industry in Lancashire during this period and the cotton revolution so many years later. Woollen ‘cottons’ (cottons at that time was a cheap narrow woollen that owed its name to the finishing, or

Introduction to English Woollens 3 ‘cottoning’ process) evolved in the early-sixteenth century in Lancashire to compete with Welsh cottons. They were woven in many parts of the county and then finished in Manchester and Bolton. With the decline of these cheap woollens Lancashire weavers turned to making true cottons and fustians (cotton/linen mix) by the eighteenth century.

Wool and Cloth Production The long-term importance of woollen cloth to the English economy is well known, but what has been less apparent was the contribution it made to the economy after the Black Death, and particularly in the first half of the sixteenth century. Recently, historians have been sceptical that the economy grew during this period as they claimed that gains in standards of living from rising wages and lower prices had been exaggerated, that peasants were spending any extra money largely on food and drink, and that there was little increase in demand from population growth until the second quarter of the sixteenth century.5 Many economic historians have believed that domestic cloth consumption must have declined as they thought it inconceivable that it could have more than doubled per capita if population more than halved. Any increase in cloth exports was offset by reductions in wool exports.6 Cloth production and sheep numbers therefore must have fallen, and as a result the economic impact from clothmaking was minimal.7 This thinking has persisted in the most recent analyses of economic growth from the mid-fifteenth to mid-­sixteenth centuries. Nick Mayhew’s revised charting of the English economy has per capita GNP without inflation falling from 1470 to 1526, rising until 1546 and then falling for the rest of the century as the rate of population growth exceeded that of the economy.8 The latest re-construction of the English economy by Stephen Broadberry and others assumes that wool output declined from 20.89 m lbs in the 1300s to 15.13 m. lbs in the 1400s and to 14.08  m. lbs in the 1550s.9 Sheep numbers fell from 15.26 million in in the 1350s to 9.55 million in 1550.10 Even outputs in the textile and leather industries were estimated to have declined dramatically from 1450 to 1550.11 Richard Britnell has concluded that ‘it requires a strong prior commitment to academic convention to find any unprecedented development of commerce in the period 1450–1550’.12 Adding to the problem has been that historians have been working in the dark as agricultural statistics between 1400 and 1600 become few and far between. Tenants took over the farming of demesne land, depriving historians of measurements from agricultural output that demesne farming had provided, so there is little continuous evidence that might measure changes in the late-medieval and Tudor economy. Errors that originated from faulty estimates for sheep numbers made in the 1950s, and poor guesses of the size of the domestic cloth market conjured out of thin air have become accepted wisdom.

4  Introduction to English Woollens This book presents an alternative interpretation: that the widespread prosperity that came from pastoral farming and the cloth and clothing industries, together with rapidly growing international trade from 1470 to 1550, grew the economy from 1450 to 1550 at a faster rate than has been projected. It is necessary to review what we know about sheep farming and cloth production to come up with revised estimates for the numbers of sheep and cloths produced and then consider what impact that might have had on the economy. Over the century after the Black Death population shrunk by more than a half, yet the increase in demand for cloth meant that clothmakers were able to absorb all the extra wool produced as excess arable land was turned over to pasture. The productivity of many tenant farmers increased dramatically as did  per capita income in many parts of the country. English trade flourished as addedvalue cloth replaced the raw material, wool; cloth exports expanded and exports financed a whole range of imported luxuries. London, southern England and Midlands’ graziers were clearly growing wealthy from the cloth industry and its economic rippling effect, and this is confirmed by the changes in the geographic distribution of wealth between 1334 and 1515 which show that clothmaking counties and London grew more rapidly.13 The admittedly small agricultural evidence that does exist, commonsense estimates of domestic consumption, and the impact from the rising value of English trade from 1450 and 1550 all suggest that sheep numbers were far greater than previously estimated, and that the cloth industry had an important effect on the national economy. Table 1.1 provides revised projections for consumption, production and sheep numbers from 1300 to 1600. It shows that woollen cloth production was far greater than has been formerly believed, and that sheep numbers in fact grew rather than declined. Cloth production did fall after the Black Death but not by much, as the decline in domestic consumption was offset by a rise in exports. From 1400 to 1450 sheep numbers continued to fall because greater domestic cloth usage did not offset plummeting wool exports. But again the decline was modest. Rising incomes, and perhaps more importantly, a broadening wish to dress fashionably encouraged many to buy better, commercially made cloth. Wearing hose, for example, created a second woollen cloth, kersey, that had greater stretching qualities than other woollens. Consumers had a broader range of cloths to buy as London became the distributive centre for cloth so that all types of cloth, fine and coarse, broad and narrow, could expect to achieve wide national distribution. The mid-century depression can only have further eroded both sheep and cloth production. However, from 1470 onwards all stars were positively aligned, exports exploded, domestic consumption expanded, and the decline in wool exports slowed. The result of this expansion was that there may have been three million more sheep in the mid-sixteenth century than there had been a century before.

6.74 17,804 5,864 18,514 42,182 1.35 270 13.4

120,000 39,500 159,500 41 6,539 2.08 3.14 236

1391–5

6.07 23,064 9,766 8,029 40,859 1.25 291 11.9

140,000 56,500 196,500 46 9,039 1.95 4.64 348

1441–5

4.33 43,879 29,893 4,576 78,348 1.90 192 15.0

190,000 118,100 308,100 64 19,719 2.83 6.97 524

1541–5

4.60 68,391 26,608 1,00019 95,999 2.20 165 15.8

314,600 122,400 437,000 6015   26,22016 3.90 6.72 505

1590

Source: Oldland, ‘Wool and cloth’, 29, 38–42; Oldland, ‘Economic impact’, 235; C. Muldrew, ‘ “Th’ancient distaff” and “whirling spindle”: measuring the contribution of spinning to household earnings and the national economy in England, 1550–1770’, EcHR, 65 (2012), 515–19; Broadberry et al, Economic growth, 20.

7.28 21,978 533 35,328 56,465 1.50 243 13.7

160,000 3,900 163,900 38 6,228 4.69 1.33 100

Number of equivalent broadcloths produced Domestic Export14 Total Cloth weight, lbs Pounds of finished cloth produced (000) Population, millions17 Pounds of cloth per capita Index to 1311–5

Sheep numbers Numbers of cloths per sack18 Domestic market in sacks Cloth exports in sacks Wool exports in sacks Total sacks produced Fleece weight Fleeces per sack Adult sheep, millions

1311–5

Cloth production

Table 1.1 Cloth production and sheep numbers, 1311–1590

6  Introduction to English Woollens Production and sheep numbers continued to grow in the second half of the sixteenth century, but at a slower rate as real wages declined and cloth exports stabilised. Growth from both exports and domestic consumption, in a period when population had declined, raised cloth production per capita an estimated fivefold from 1300 to 1600. Some of these figures are subjective, and may be deemed controversial, but seem to correlate much more closely with other evidence that shows that the pastoral economy was remarkably strong from 1400 to 1550. The validity of the estimates is reinforced by looking at this sector of the economy from two points of view, the number of cloths produced or the numbers of sheep raised, and seeing if they appear to balance each other. And there are two sets of figures that we know are reasonably accurate, wool and cloth exports. However, the probable size of the domestic market, the average weight of cloth, the changing weight of each fleece and the population are all open to some question. The size of the domestic market is taken from estimates by those who have considered average household cloth consumption, and these figures are far higher than earlier estimates. Edward Miller thought that home demand in the early-fourteenth century might have been equal to 150,000 to 200,000 broadcloths.20 Christopher Dyer suggested that, if in 1500, 1,250,000 million adults were buying three yards of cloth annually, this would amount to 160,000 cloths, double cloth exports.21 Looking at the number of weavers and their likely production in the Babergh Hundred of Suffolk in 1522, where the county’s clothmaking was concentrated, and then projecting this nationally, he felt that cloth production cannot have been any less than 200,000 cloths.22 It seems most likely that domestic consumption was always greater than exports.23 Estimates for domestic consumption in the table above could be conservative as small changes in household cloth consumption result in huge differences across the total population: and if Craig Muldrew’s estimates for 1590 are correct, domestic consumption in earlier periods appear low.24 One mistake that historians have consistently made is to treat cloth weight as a constant, using mid-sixteenth century evidence and then assuming that it was the same in 1350. In fact, all the evidence suggests that weight rose as people turned from worsteds to woollens in the fourteenth century and that weight further rose as wool prices fell and people wished to dress more warmly, and English overseas merchants pushed up cloth weights as they enjoyed a competitive advantage in the price of wool.25 The average peasant in 1500 was more comfortably and stylishly dressed than he had been in 1300; the cloth he wore was more durable and colourful, and there was more variety in the cloth he or she could buy. The validity of these new estimates is generally supported by the agricultural evidence. There was a pronounced shift from arable to pasture, as arable acreage perhaps fell by a third from the Black Death to the midfifteenth century.26 One estimate has grassland equal to arable acreage in

Introduction to English Woollens 7 1300, but shifting to two-thirds grassland by 1500, and research seems to confirm this trend on both seigniorial and peasant land from 1370 to 1450.27 Perhaps as much as half a million acres was converted to pasture, and this was mainly used to raise sheep.28 If peasants and tenant farmers mostly used this pasture productively to raise as much livestock as they could with minimal labour inputs, how could sheep numbers have dramatically declined, and if they did not decline then where did all the wool go if it did not go into making cloth or wool exports? Fleece yields did decline as farmers adopted more cost-efficient management practices, but then they started to rise again as more sheep were raised on pasture which produced longer and coarser wool than those raised mostly on fallow land.29 Livestock prices held up much better than crops.30 There is some evidence that even on demesne land sheep flocks did not decline in the early-fifteenth century, and it is inescapable from late-fifteenth century accounts that landlords were increasing the size of their flocks and making good money doing so.31 Enclosures and overstocking of sheep on common land all point to a more intensive use of the land from raising sheep.32 When Sir Thomas More complained that sheep were devourers of men, and Tyndale ‘that God gave the earth to men to inhabit, and not unto sheep and wild deer’, they knew what they were talking about. By the middle of the sixteenth century there was a torrent of criticism that there was too much pasture and that there was an overstocking of sheep on common land. This led the government to look at taxing sheep, raising the value of the currency and cloth customs to slow cloth exports, and to place restrictions on clothiers’ activities.

Economic Impact The rapid growth in textile production between 1470 and 1550 must have affected the total economy, as wool and cloth production combined probably accounted for close to a third of total national output.33 This increase was significant in light of a low-growth, pre-industrial economy where the per capita increase in growth from the 1340s to the 1470s, a period when rising wages, falling prices and improvements in productivity from a more efficient use of agricultural resources suggest reasonably strong economic performance, still only resulted in an annual increase of 0.20 per cent annually, and it was only 0.04 per cent from the 1470s to the 1650s.34 Given this low level of economic growth any explosive growth in a sector that accounted for a third of the economy was bound to have wide economic repercussions. Cloth exports were not only important for their impact on agricultural output and industrial production but also for the country’s balance of payments, merchants’ wealth and the contribution that imports made to the standard of living since it was cloth exports that paid for the imports of consumer luxuries and the commodities the country required.

8  Introduction to English Woollens Textiles were the leading manufactured product category in international commerce of the late Middle Ages, and woollens the most traded cloth. Raw materials for the industry were just as widely exchanged: wools from England, Scotland and Spain, woad from Picardy and the Languedoc, madder from Holland, other dyes from the Mediterranean, oils from Spain, alum from Asia Minor and the Papal States, and ashes from northern Europe. Textiles were particularly important for northern European economies because it was the primary product that wealthier Italy was prepared to exchange for all the luxury goods and raw materials that northern Europe wanted from the Mediterranean basin. The impact of cloth is clearly seen in London’s trade in the fifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries.35 The value of total trade, imports and exports combined, steadily declined in the first half of the fifteenth century as wool exports fell and cloth exports were stable, but from 1470 onwards cloth exports rocketed upwards while wool exports stabilised. The rising quality of cloth exported meant that the increased value of trade was far greater than the number of cloths would suggest: the value of exported cloth from London in the depressed 1460s was an estimated £33,400 annually, in the 1530s £314,700, almost a tenfold increase (for decennial estimates from the 1420s to 1530s see Table 12.4).36 Wool and cloth dominated England’s exports, representing more than 85 per cent of their value in 1559.37 It has been estimated that the value of English cloth exports to Antwerp c.1560 was around a million pounds at wholesale prices, and significantly higher based on Antwerp prices. Therefore, it was a significant contributor to the country’s economy, with an estimated national income of perhaps only £13.5 million in 1561.38 The balance of trade is estimated to have been unfavourable from the 1420s to 1440s but was then positive through the 1540s except for the 1510s. London’s trade tripled from the 1460s to the 1530s as import growth matched that of exports. There were many beneficiaries; London’s overseas and distributive merchants became wealthier as did the many counties that made quality cloth for export. This growing wealth is clearly visible from the estimates of London citizens’ wealth in the 1520s and 1530s, with merchant wealth affecting many other trades.39 It also stimulated population growth and this lifted the economies of surrounding counties that supplied London.40 Standards of living were improved by imports. Linen imports probably grew as fast as woollen exports so that linen underwear was available to all who could afford to buy the cheapest cloth, and a wide range of cheap imported clothing accessories and household utensils were now accessible to the middling class.41 Sheep and cloth had a considerable effect on employment and productivity. Farmers raising sheep used far fewer labour inputs than arable, one shepherd looking after 400 sheep could produce enough wool to make ten broadcloths, and he was usually paid on annual contract, avoiding the high wages paid to labourers to bring in the harvest. Productivity

Introduction to English Woollens 9 improvements were probably in line with falling wool prices that in the 1490s were 29 per cent below pre-Black Death prices: wheat prices had risen 6 per cent, and wether (gelded male sheep) prices had risen 36 per cent as mutton became a larger part of the medieval diet.42 Tenant farmers faced with rents, tithes and falling prices were forced to become more efficient. They were able to make economies in sheep farming by increasing the number of sheep that the shepherd watched, using commons intensively, reducing feed, and breeding replacement sheep rather than buying on the open market.43 More sheep resulted in better manuring of fallow land, raising arable yields. This increased productivity helped to raise fifteenth and early-sixteenth century farmers’ profits once wool and cloth prices started to rise. Woollens production was labour intensive. As has already been mentioned, it required much more work than making worsteds, in wool preparation because the wools had to be sorted and greased, cloth used more wool as it became heavier, and in fulling and finishing. Perhaps as many as a quarter of a million adults, as much as 18 per cent of the adult population, was involved in clothmaking in the mid-sixteenth century.44 Sixty per cent of the hours to make quality broadcloth was mostly by women who sorted the wools and prepared the yarn. This provided valuable and often reliable secondary employment that made households more productive. It may have been low paid but not so low when compared with off-season agricultural work or unemployment.45 If each broadcloth cost £1 in labour, then the 100,000 extra cloths produced from 1450 to 1550 added substantial income to the economy, assuming that the extra production was in commercially made cloth. The trend to buy rather than make homespun was also positive for the economy as work became more specialised. We cannot even begin to estimate how much cloth was homespun, and therefore mostly outside the money economy, but it seems reasonable to argue that many turned to commercial cloth, as the price of coarse cloth fell, clothing became more fashionable, rising income allowed many households to afford some quality cloth, and woollens were more difficult to make. In summary, the dramatic rise in sheep numbers and cloth production had considerable impact in what was a very slow-growth, pre-industrial economy. It did so because it affected both agriculture and industry that in combination accounted for approximately a third of the economy. Tenant farmers were able to withstand low prices by using their land more efficiently, converting arable to pasture and finding a market for the extra wool produced as cloth demand increased. Many rural households also earned additional income as rural cloth production rose. People were able to dress more warmly, afford more and better clothing, and dress more colourfully and fashionably. The transition in exports from a raw material to a value-added goods trade raised the value of overseas trade dramatically. This had immediate benefits for London’s merchant

10  Introduction to English Woollens class, caused a rapid expansion in the capital’s population and wealth, and financed the import of luxury manufactured goods, from linens to clothing accessories and utensils that improved living standards. Woollen cloth therefore can be said to have been instrumental in changing the character of the English economy as well as giving it a kick-start at the end of the fifteenth century. The purpose of this survey is to explain this remarkable ascent in the importance of cloth to the English economy from uncertain beginnings in the thirteenth century to the pinnacle of success in the mid-sixteenth century.

Pathway to Success The chronological survey of the English textile industry in the following chapters seeks to provide the detailed answer to two questions: why was there such limited success from 1200 to 1450, and then within twenty to thirty years English broadcloth and kersey launched an attack at the Brabant fairs that led English cloth to dominate European markets, or as one commentator affirmed, it became an unstoppable wave (inundacio maris).46 What held the industry back for so long, and what were the underlying conditions and immediate events that turned it around so quickly, and how was the advantage sustained? This is a brief synopsis. In the thirteenth century, greased broadcloth was an expensive, profitable but minor part of the woollens industry dominated by large continental urban draperies in Flanders and northern France that also made serges and worsteds that were sold to southern markets through the Champagne fairs. Quality woollens were woven from English wools that carried no duties until 1275, and only low duties until the beginning of the Hundred Years’ War. Flemish draperies controlled the English market for fine woollens. English urban draperies were small and uncompetitive, lacking economies of scale especially in dyeing and finishing; and its merchants had little direct access to continental markets. Exported cloths were, in the main, probably mid-priced serges. Most English urban draperies were in serious decline at the end of the century. The weakness of the urban industry, in contrast to that on the continent, had the effect of strengthening rural clothmaking. At the turn of the fourteenth century, carding and wheel-spinning weft thread produced a true coarse woollen and this was to transform greased woollens from a niche to a mass market. Woollens steadily replaced worsted and serge as the fourteenth century progressed, except for bed coverings. Coincidentally the north-south trade in cheap serges diminished which reduced the size of most large northern continental draperies and forced many to concentrate production on those fine woollens that depended on the best English wools. Urban industry revived in the second quarter of the fourteenth century as English cloth reclaimed the domestic market for quality broadcloth,

Introduction to English Woollens 11 with imports in decline by mid-century. Exports grew in the later-­ fourteenth century, but because English cloth was banned from Flanders, it was largely restricted to trade with Gascony, Iberia and the Baltic, and to cheaper cloths bought by Hanse merchants. There was some improvement in the early-fifteenth century as the Hanse and Italians came to account for half of the export cloth trade, but English cloth declined in the Baltic and made little headway in the southern Netherlands. Until the mid-fifteenth century draperies in the Low Countries continued to enjoy a high reputation for quality, and their superior marketing channels based on Bruges excluded English cloth. The character of the cloth market was changing as silks competed for the aristocratic market and woollens became more accessible to the peasantry, and were therefore of less perceived value to the upper classes. Exported cloth was coloured and peasant dress was becoming more fashionable and coloured. All through the fourteenth century some rural woollens found urban markets for their cloth, merchants buying unfinished cloth to be dyed and finished in towns. By the end of the century Somerset and Surrey broadcloths were sold at London in increasing numbers. The Black Death and guilds changed urban cloth manufacture. Weaving, dyeing, fulling and shearing became well organised in towns, but urban weavers had difficulty finding women to card and spin the wool at low cost. Rural clothmaking was strengthened by a growing market for coarse woollens and the availability of female labour to prepare the wools, complementing their household and agricultural work. The Black Death had a deep effect on rural society. Loosening bonds of serfdom, peasant migration, opportunities from the leasing of demesne land and from grazing livestock, and the growth of domestic clothmaking all expanded entrepreneurship. Rapid expansion of rural clothmaking was therefore just one aspect of a changing rural society. Rural clothmaking strengthened while urban clothmaking declined in the fifteenth century. Costs were lower in the countryside as a result of low labour cost, and there was more effective organisation of clothworkers and the widespread use of fulling mills. Free internal trade and the growing dominance of London created a national cloth market, with regions developing specialised cloths that capitalised on their strengths. Continental draperies suffered because high wool duties forced up prices and made it uneconomic to buy any but the finest English wools. They were more resistant to change because the industry continued to be dominated either by the highly regulated traditional draperies or new draperies that were similarly structured. The conflict between England and Burgundy, as both struggled to hoard bullion in the face of a shortage of currency in circulation, made it more difficult for continental draperies to buy English wools and depressed wool and cloth exports in markets under Burgundian control.

12  Introduction to English Woollens Clothiers restructured rural industry to make quality broadcloth and later fine kersey. They clustered together and competed in villages and small towns to make specific cloths more efficiently. Leading clothiers were able to find rural capital to invest in both production and marketing of their cloth. The collaboration of clothiers, the Merchant Adventurers Company that enjoyed a trade monopoly in the southern Netherlands, and Antwerp’s artisans, who dyed and finished English cloth, made English woollens a formidable competitor at the Brabant fairs. English clothmaking came to be low cost relative to both continental and English urban draperies while also producing high-quality unfinished and finished broadcloth and kersey. Commercially made coarse cloth became more competitive with homespun, as prices remained low and there was greater choice and availability, all of which helped to expand the domestic market. During the fifteenth century the quality of English exported cloth rose and increased in weight, capitalising on the English wool advantage. London came to dominate both the export and domestic trade, its merchants re-distributing cloth to provincial drapers, chapmen and at fairs. Clothiers were able to by-pass provincial towns, either dealing directly with London merchants or selling cloth at Blackwell Hall. Specialisation gave merchants a broad range of cloths to sell. Government was supportive with little regulation, low cloth but high wool export duties, by resolving long-standing trade disputes and opening up markets through commercial treaties, and by supporting the Merchant Adventurers’ monopoly of Low Countries’ trade. Antwerp cemented its dominance of north-European trade from 1470 to 1550, so that the Merchant Adventurers were able to carry on an almost un-interrupted trade. English access to continental markets improved dramatically in the second half of the fifteenth century at the same time as the European economy revived after the mid-century depression. Antwerp had become the principal entry point for English cloth to northern Europe by 1420 which was critical because English cloth was banned from Flanders. London merchants in particular benefited from exchanging unfinished woollen cloth for linen. In the 1470s bullion laws were withdrawn, resolving some of the problems with Burgundy, and the Treaty of Utrecht ended decades of conflict with some Hanse towns. Additional treaties improved trade relations with several other countries and export duties were lowered for a time for non-Hanseatic merchants. Currency depreciation in 1464, 1526 and the 1540s made English cloth more price competitive. From the initial success with unfinished standard broadcloth, merchants expanded the range of exported cloths to include coloured cloth mainly for southern European markets, kersey, cheap cottons, broad dozens from Yorkshire, narrow Devon dozens, and by the mid-sixteenth century blue Suffolk broadcloth sold at Antwerp.

Introduction to English Woollens 13 This chronological survey ends around the mid-sixteenth century although information from the second half of the century is drawn on if it helps to explain the early Tudor industry. The 1550s were a turning point as export growth stalled and the government began to exercise greater control over the industry with the passage of three cloth acts that set the weight and dimensions of all cloths and regulated their finishing; and other legislation that enforced rural apprenticeship and limited the number of looms that clothiers and weavers might have in their homes. In 1558 cloth exports began to be taxed at a far higher rate. Exports faltered as political strife began to disrupt, and soon sever, the critical commercial link between London and Antwerp that had been so crucial to the English triumph. Continental demand for lighter worsted cloth, which broadcloth had displaced in the fourteenth century, revived. Worsted imports began to compete with woollens in the 1540s, forcing the English industry to diversify and weave these ‘new draperies’, and the rise of the stock-knitting industry in the later Elizabethan years began to undermine woollen kersey for making hose. Growth and innovation shifted from woollens to worsteds. This is perhaps a more complete, nuanced and complex explanation than other historians have offered, interweaving political and economic factors that created the broad framework for industry development with the numerous changes in product, marketing and organisation that made English cloth so competitive. There has been a tendency to over-emphasise trade problems and successes, urban clothmaking and exports, because that is where the records are strongest; and to downplay the importance of the various cloths, changes in product and production process, the domestic market and the progress of rural manufacturing; information that has to be tickled from the records. This is a business history in which the product and market is always in flux, and therefore is quite different from commodities such as tin, wool or fur or even processed goods like wine where the product, if it changes at all, changes only slowly. And the business entity is the individual artisan, grazier, clothier and merchant, which means that it is a study of individual entrepreneurship.47 Unfortunately, we can rarely flesh out any biography because there are only a few merchant business records and none for clothiers. And yet we can readily appreciate that individual merchants grasped opportunities. Successive governors of the Merchant Adventurers obtained privileges for the English community at Antwerp, merchants such as William Mucklowe from Worcester, the London draper Thomas Howell and mercers Thomas Kytson and Thomas Gresham all developed the market for specific cloths. It was possibly clothiers like the Prysshtons of Pensford Somerset, Paycockes of Coggeshall Essex, Springs of Lavenham Suffolk and the second John Winchcombe that established the quality of specific cloths, and this then attracted others to imitate and consolidate their achievements.

14  Introduction to English Woollens Several themes continuously frame the industry and give context to the developing story. The first was the importance of the product as the quality and value of English woollens was eventually decisive. Woollen cloth came in many forms and was continually changing; in its characteristics, usage, manufacturing process, perception and economics. It is so easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the product was a constant and that competition was simply about trade, a function of international relations and access to markets. The reality was that, in medieval cloth as in most consumer markets today, the product that offered the best functional and perceived value was eventually to emerge victorious. The market was constantly in flux. One of the best examples was the steady increase in the weight of broadcloth which favoured the English industry because of its superior and lower-cost wools. Historians have missed this development because clothmakers had to meet legal dimensions for many cloths, but were never judged on their weight until the 1550s, and accordingly references to cloth weight are few and far between. There was still product and process innovation in the sixteenth century, more than 300 years after broad woollens were introduced: new products, like penistone, a cheap broadcloth made in Yorkshire; a widening choice of kersey; new processes as warp thread came to be carded and wheel spun; and competition from a plethora of lighter new-fangled worsteds. The following chapter reviews all these cloths, changes in production processes, and the important economic drivers that at first impeded, but later encouraged, English success. The English industry was not isolated, but an integral part of a continentwide struggle for markets. Throughout, English clothmakers and merchants were competing with those from the Low Countries. It was the export market that was the catalyst for change. The competitive advantages held by continental towns were overwhelming when greased woollens were a luxury, but came to be eroded as woollens found a mass market and England’s access to wools, efficient rural production and improved access to markets routed European urban draperies that were relatively resistant to change. In the chronological chapters that follow, it is important, therefore, to compare what was happening in both England and the Low Countries; to chart the course of the struggle as Flemish draperies tried to protect their industry and English merchants to gain wider access to markets. This analysis has been made easier because the history of the Merchant Adventurers Company is particularly well researched, and fortunately for English historians, the late John Munro spent much of his academic life of more than fifty years studying the late-medieval continental cloth industry (and occasionally the English industry) and recording his findings in English. This book could not have been written without his advice, knowledge and research. English success from the fifteenth century onwards was dependant on rural clothmaking, as merchants and clothiers tapped into its skills and

Introduction to English Woollens 15 efficiencies. The chapters that follow map the changes in peasant cloth and rural clothmaking and the impact of coarser, cheaper, cloths on the growth of English clothmaking. Narrow cloth was mostly made in small towns and villages. Peasant cloth was always, by volume, the larger part of the market, and was served almost exclusively by rural clothmakers. Urban merchants always sourced rural cloth, perhaps to a greater extent than urban cloth ever found markets in rural areas. Over the period, commercially made woollens were to make inroads on homespun, as fashion, improved employment prospects and rising peasant incomes enlarged the market for coarse woollen cloth. Rural clothmakers were quick to adopt process improvements such as fulling mills, carding and wheel-spinning, and the broadloom when the opportunity presented itself. They were the innovators of narrow cloths, as they developed kersey, cottons and Devonshire dozens. They became great imitators, able in the sixteenth century to make the finest cloths that towns could make, even matching the dyeing and finishing skills of London and larger provincial towns if that was required. Lastly. there are three factors—dress, the wool supply and government regulation—that, because of their importance throughout, are given a separate chapter. Some appreciation of their impact is necessary to understand the chronological story. Attitudes to woollen clothing evolved. Over three centuries, greased woollens changed from the latest luxury cloth to everyday wear for the vast majority of the population. Silks replaced woollens for aristocratic dress. At the same time woollens replaced worsteds for peasant clothing. Peasants dressed more fashionably and colourfully, and they were able to buy more commercial cloth rather than making it themselves. Continental draperies were always dependant on English wools to make their finest cloths. England’s wool advantage became an instrument of government policy as wool export duties were raised, and early-­ fifteenth century bullion laws reduced continental buyers’ access to credit. This made it unprofitable for continental draperies to buy any but the finest wools used to make superior broadcloths, a declining segment of the market. They were forced to blend English wools with Spanish wools, but these usually produced cloths of lower quality. English clothmakers always had access to the quality of wools they required, and they declined in price after 1380 while duties, which were fixed by sack, forced up the price of fine wools needed by the leading continental draperies. By 1550 the best Spanish wools matched good English wools, but by then English cloth had secured an advantage in many markets. English clothmaking was more lightly regulated than were many continental draperies that relied on strict cloth ordinances and protection for urban draperies to sustain their cloth reputations. There were few restrictions on the internal cloth trade which allowed a national cloth market to develop with regions concentrating on specific types of cloth best suited

16  Introduction to English Woollens to their skills, resources and economic environment. Freedom of trade allowed rural clothmakers to compete in the national market. Governments generally encouraged trade until the crisis on the Antwerp market in 1550 and population growth brought into question any further conversion of arable to pasture. Free trade kept English cloth competitive for the next 300 years, long after English wools ceased to become a critical advantage. What had become embedded in the system was a willingness to continually change, adapt to markets and keep production costs low.

Notes 1. E. Power, Medieval people (London, 1924), 146. 2. J. Munro, ‘Medieval woollens: The western European woollen industries and their struggles for international markets, c.1000–1500’, in D. Jenkins, ed., The Cambridge history of western textiles, vol.  1 (Cambridge, 2003), 234–40; P. Chorley, ‘The cloth exports of Flanders and northern France during the thirteenth century’, EcHR, 2nd series, 40 (1987), 368–9. 3. J. Munro, ‘The origins of the English “new draperies”: The resurrection of an old Flemish industry, 1270–1570’, in N. Harte and D. Coleman, eds., The new draperies (Oxford, 1997), 35–127. 4. B.R. Mitchell, Abstract of British historical statistics (Cambridge, 1971), 304–5. 5. R. Britnell, ‘The English economy and the government, 1450–1550’, in J.L. Watts, ed., The end of the Middle Ages? England in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (Stroud, 1998), 115; J. Hatcher, ‘Unreal wages: Long-run living standards and the “golden age” of the fifteenth century’, in B. Dodds and C.D. Liddy, eds., Commercial activity, markets and entrepreneurs in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2011), 20–1. 6. E. Power, The wool trade in English medieval history (Oxford, 1940), 36–7; R. Britnell, Britain and Ireland 1050–1530: Economy and society (Oxford, 2004), 416–18. 7. R. Trow-Smith, A history of British livestock husbandry to 1700 (London, 1957), 140; P. Bowden, The wool trade in Tudor and Stuart England (London, 1962), 38. 8. N.J. Mayhew, ‘Prices in England, 1170–1750’, P&P, 219 (2013), 37. 9. S. Broadberry, B.M.S. Campbell, A. Klein, M. Overton and B. van Leeuwen, British economic growth 1270–1870 (Cambridge, 2015), 112. 10. Ibid, 106. 11. Ibid, 181. 12. Britnell, ‘English economy’, 115. 13. J. Oldland, ‘The economic impact of clothmaking on rural society, 1300– 1550’, in M. Allen and M. Davies, eds., Medieval merchants and money: Essays in honour of James L. Bolton (London, 2016), 250. 14. Exports are above those in the customs figures in order to include cottons and frieze that were not subject to petty custom, and to reflect the increasing length of broadcloth. Duty was set on a standard broadcloth, rather than its length or value so there was a marked tendency to increase cloth length; see J. Oldland, ‘Wool and cloth production in late medieval and early Tudor England’, EcHR, 67 (2014), 29, 43. 15. This weight reduction is an estimate based on several factors: the reduction in the weight of West Country whites to 61lb in 1557–8, some further

Introduction to English Woollens 17 reduction in width and weights legislated towards the end of the century, an increase in use of lighter worsteds, and falling incomes that suggest that fewer could afford heavier cloth. 16. This is less than Craig Muldrew’s estimate of 25.2 m lbs for just the domestic market, see C. Muldrew, ‘Th’ancient distaff and “whirling spindle”: Measuring the contribution of spinning to household earnings and the national economy in England, 1550–1770’, EcHR, 65 (2012), 518. 17. Broadberry, Campbell, Klein, Overton and van Leeuwen, Economic growth, 20. These estimates are controversial, as they are lower than others have projected for the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries which have the effect of depressing  per capita domestic consumption. Gregory Clark for instance estimated 5.98m for the 1510s, 2.40 for the 1440s, and 2.99 for the 1440s; see G. Clark, ‘The long march of history: Farm wages, population, and economic growth, England 1209–1869’, EcHR, 60 (2007), 120. The demographic literature is extensive with much of it summarised and analysed in J. Hatcher, Plague, population and the English economy, 1348–1530 (Cambridge, 1977). 18. A sack was 364lbs. 19. Bowden, Wool trade, 185. This is an estimate. Stone does not mention wool exports in his discussion of Elizabethan overseas trade and Bowden considered exports to be negligible as domestic demand absorbed all the wool. Wool exports were banned in 1614. 20. E. Miller and J. Hatcher, Medieval England: Towns, commerce and crafts 1086–1348 (London, 1995), 126. 21. C. Dyer, Age of transition (Oxford, 2005), 159. 22. Ibid, 148–9. 23. Oldland, ‘Wool and cloth’, 29, 39. 24. Muldrew, ‘Th’ancient distaff’, 518. 25. Oldland, ‘Wool and cloth’, 30–8; J. Oldland, ‘The variety and quality of English woollen cloth exported in the late Middle Ages’, JEEH, 39 (2010), 222–9. 26. Broadberry, Campbell, Klein, Overton and van Leeuwen, Economic Growth, 74–7. 27. B. Campbell, ‘The land’, in R. Horrox and W.M. Ormrod, eds., A social history of England, 1200–1500 (Cambridge, 2006), 187; B. Dodds, ‘Demesne and tithe: Peasant agriculture in the late Middle Ages’, AHR, 56 (2008), 123–39; B. Dodds, ‘Patterns of decline: Arable production in England, France and Castile, 1370–1450’, in B. Dodds and R. Britnell, eds., Agriculture and rural society after the Black Death: Common themes and regional variations (Hatfield, 2008), 79–87; J. Hare, ‘Lord, tenant and the market: Some tithe evidence from the Wessex region’, in B. Dodds and R. Britnell, eds., Agriculture, 140–3. 28. Broadberry, Campbell, Klein, Overton and van Leeuwen, Economic Growth, 60. 29. D. Stone, ‘The productivity and management of sheep in late medieval England’, AHR, 51 (2003), 1–22. 30. Broadberry, Campbell, Klein, Overton and van Leeuwen, Economic Growth, 61. 31. K.J. Allison, ‘Flock management in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’, EcHR, 2nd series, 11 (1958), 100; I. Blanchard, The Duchy of Lancaster’s estates in Derbyshire, 1485–1540, Derbyshire Archaeological Society (1971), 446; C. Dyer, Lords and peasants in a changing society: The estates of the bishopric of Worcester, 680–1540 (Cambridge, 1980), 150; C. Dyer, ‘Were there any capitalists in fifteenth-century England?’ in J. Kermode, ed., Enterprise and individuals in fifteenth-century England (Stroud, 1991),

18  Introduction to English Woollens 10–14; F.C. Taylor, ‘The Catesby estate: Production for the market as an “opportunity” or an “imperative” in mid-fifteenth century England’, Midland History, 32 (2007), 25–6. 32. I. Blanchard, ‘Population change, enclosure, and the early Tudor economy’, EcHR, 2nd series, 23 (1970), 434; I.S. Leadam, ed., The Domesday of enclosures, 1517–18, vol.  1 (New York, 1971), 40; M. Beresford and J. Hurst, The lost villages of England (London, 1971), 166–7; H.S.A. Fox, ‘The chronology of enclosure and economic development in medieval Devon’, EcHR, 2nd series, 28 (1975), 181–202; E.B. Fryde, ‘Peasant rebellion and peasant discontents’, in AHEW, 810–13; M. Mate, ‘Pastoral farming in south-east England in the fifteenth century’, EcHR, 2nd series, 40 (1987), 533; R. Britnell, ‘Postan’s fifteenth century’, in R. Goddard, J. Langdon and M. Müller, eds., Survival and discord in medieval society: Essays in honour of Christopher Dyer (Turnhout, 2010), 54–5. 33. Broadberry, Campbell, Klein, Overton and van Leeuwen, Economic growth, 117, 132, 194. This estimate is based on assuming the agricultural sector to have accounted in 1381 for 45.5 per cent of output, industry 28.8 per cent and services 25.7 per cent. Mutton and wool in 1350 accounted for 30.9 per cent of agricultural output, or 15.8 per cent of the economy. Textiles were 40 per cent of industry in 1700. Using this figure, textiles would have been 11.6 per cent of the economy. Distribution and transport is estimated to have been 15 per cent of the service economy, or 4 per cent of the total economy. Raising sheep and making, distribution and sale of textiles therefore account for 31.8 per cent of the economy. Given the rapid expansion of the earlysixteenth century it may well have risen to more than a third of the economy. 34. Ibid, 404. 35. J. Oldland, ‘The expansion of London’s overseas trade from 1475 to 1520’, in C. Barron and A. Sutton, eds., The medieval merchant (Donington, 2014), 55–92. 36. Ibid, 87. 37. In 1559 cloth accounted for 78.0 per cent, and wool 6.3 per cent of exports by value, see L. Stone, ‘Elizabethan overseas trade’, EcHR, 2nd series, 2 (1949), 37. 38. G.D. Ramsay, The city of London in international politics at the accession of Elizabeth Tudor (Manchester, 1975), 26–7; N.J. Mayhew, ‘Population, money supply, and the velocity of circulation in England, 1300–1700’, EcHR, 48 (1995), 244. 39. J. Oldland, ‘The wealth of the trades in early Tudor London’, London Journal, 31 (2006), 127–56: J. Oldland, ‘The wealth of early Tudor craftsmen in London based on the lay subsidies’, in M. Davies and A. Prescott, eds., London and the kingdom: Essays in honour of Caroline M. Barron (Donington, 2008), 195–211. 40. D. Keene, ‘Changes in London’s economic hinterland as indicated by debt cases in the Court of Common Pleas’, in J.A. Galloway, ed., Trade, urban hinterlands and market integration c.1300–1600 (London, 2000), 59–82. 41. Most linen could be purchased for less than 10d an ell, in the same price range as cheap, narrow cottons and frieze. Linen imports have been estimated to have increased tenfold between 1425 and 1530; see W. Prevenier and W. Blockmans, The Burgundian Netherlands (Cambridge, 1986), 99–100; J. Oldland, ‘London’s trade in the time of Richard III’, Ricardian, 23 (2014), 25–6. 42. D. Farmer, ‘Prices and wages, 1350–1500’, in AHEW, 502–16. The accuracy of wool prices is questionable as the only price series available for the latter

Introduction to English Woollens 19 part of the fifteenth century were biased towards cheaper northern wools; see T.H. Lloyd, The movement of wool prices in medieval England, Ec.HR Supplements, vol. 6 (Cambridge, 1973), 4, 43. 43. D. Stone, ‘Productivity and management’, 1–22. 44. Oldland, ‘Economic impact’, 235–40. Craig Muldrew estimated that there was potentially employment for 225,083 spinners earning £744,462 in 1590, compared with my estimates of 203,043 for those preparing the wool in 1541–5, see C. Muldrew, ‘Th’ancient distaff’, 518–9. 45. Odland, ‘Economic impact’, 243. 46. J. Munro, ‘Anglo-Flemish competition in the international cloth trade, 1340–1520’, Publication du Centre Européen d’études Bourguignonnes (XIVe-XVIe s.) (1995), 42. 47. This seems to fit with the view that English society was particularly individualistic; see A. Macfarlane, The origins of English individualism: The family, property and social transition (Oxford, 1978), 163.

2 Woollens Production and the Growing English Advantage

England developed its product advantage by rapidly adapting to market opportunities, making its manufacturing processes less costly, organising production more efficiently, and offering excellent value across a broad spectrum of woollens. English clothmakers were able to reduce production cost by improving the productivity of yarn preparation, fulling cloth at the mill, becoming competent rural dyers, and by the greater use of rural labour. In contrast, continental draperies’ strategy was to emphasise their strengths—quality consistency, reputation and superior marketing networks—and they were prepared to reject cost reductions, or at least delay acceptance of new processes, if they thought quality might be impaired.1 They were also more protectionist as large draperies made it difficult for smaller draperies to compete: and the prohibition of English cloth from Flanders from the mid-fourteenth century onwards enabled them to maintain their dominance of local and some international markets until well into the fifteenth century. As the market for greased woollens matured, it favoured value over superior quality: and once English merchants found ways to reduce continental draperies’ marketing advantage, this superior value became decisive. The broadloom became firmly entrenched in towns from 1196 when Richard I’s government dictated that woollen cloth should be 2  yards wide. Narrow looms predominated in rural areas for a further two centuries, and in some regions for far longer.2 The method of producing greased woollens was well established by 1200 and changed little during the period.3 The horizontal loom had been introduced in the eleventh century to produce narrow woollens, and the broadloom probably by the mid-thirteenth century.4 Skills for all processes were widely known and learned through apprenticeship. Dyers tried to keep their recipes secret, and the English double worsted and kersey seems not to have been easily re-produced on the continent, but these were exceptions. Making quality broadcloth required a broad range of specialised skills that sometimes took years to perfect. An attempt to re-produce a standard broadcloth in 2008 based on information obtained from existing records met with indifferent results as subtle skills had been lost.5

Woollens Production, English Advantage 21 Clothmakers had to adapt to the change from worsteds to woollens and to increased specialisation. Cloths for sale in 1200 were predominantly worsteds and serges (cloths with a worsted warp and woollen weft).6 During the thirteenth century, serges steadily gained in popularity at the expense of worsteds. At around the turn of the fourteenth century, the introduction of carding and then wheel-spinning gradually replaced combing and rock-spinning for weft thread and this made it possible to produce woollens with medium-length wools, and therefore cheaper woollens to be made. Throughout the fourteenth century, greased woollens steadily replaced worsteds/serges, leaving greased woollens to dominate international trade. Production of cloth made from wool, the woollens industry, was divided into two types, worsteds and woollens, and they were often referred to as the ‘greased’ and ‘dry’ draperies. Worsteds were far easier and less costly to produce than greased woollens. They used longer, cheaper wools that were often dyed-in-the wool and then combed and rock-spun (spun with a distaff and spindle). They were frequently woven and the wools dyed to produce a patterned effect because the thread was visible. Serges were lightly fulled, but otherwise there was usually little finishing. Greased woollens, draperie ointe, was a far more complex and costly process: a fifteenth-century Florentine treatise identified twenty-five separate steps to produce luxury woollen broadcloth.7 Short, curly, high-priced wools were scoured and then greased with butter or oil before combing/carding and spinning. Woven cloth needed to be degreased and then fulled to give it strength. The cloth was usually dyed-in-the-piece to produce its bright colour and then extensively finished to give it a fine, silky texture. Most of the following analysis is concerned with this greased drapery.

Yarn Preparation and Weaving Wools had to be cleansed and then greased with butter or olive oil to protect the fibres while they were combed, carded, spun and woven.8 The industry therefore became dependant on oil imports. In 1528 during an interruption in trade the Duke of Norfolk reported on his meeting with clothiers that ‘the scarcity of oil alone, they say, will compel them to give up making cloth, unless some come from Spain’.9 The greatest productivity improvements came in yarn production, as combing wool combined with spinning with a rock and drop spindle gave way to carding the wool and spinning it on the wheel, initially for the weft, but ultimately for the warp as well. The distaff and spindle (rockspinning) could produce a strong, thin yarn. A Z-twist (clockwise) was used for warps and S-twist (counter-clockwise) was used for the wefts. The introduction of carding and spinning weft on the Great Wheel at the turn of the fourteenth century offered a 50 per cent productivity improvement.10 But its chief advantage was that it allowed greased woollens to be

22  Woollens Production, English Advantage made from longer wools, and this transformed the woollen from an aristocratic to a commonplace cloth. The warp thread needed to be stronger and more tightly spun, whereas the weft was lightly spun so that the fibres would intertwine, and felt when fulled. Unfortunately, we cannot date these changes precisely, although it is likely that England was an early adopter because, unlike the continent, there was little urban resistance to cost-saving innovations.11 Rural clothmakers seem to have moved quickly to replace serge with coarse woollens in the early-fourteenth century, and West Country clothiers may well have appreciated the efficiencies of an all-carded (when warp thread was also carded and wheel spun) woollen in the late-fifteenth century. The best we can judge is that carding and wheel-spinning were broadly diffused for weft yarn in the fourteenth century. The introduction of wheel-spun warps is more difficult to determine because references to the change are sparse.12 Patrick Chorley has suggested that carded warps can be traced back to coarse cloths early in the fifteenth century, and John Munro thought that high-priced Mechelen cloth was probably all-carded from 1435, and that 1467 ordinances from both Leuven and Brussels permitted carded warps for making fine cloth.13 Munro felt that the adoption of wheel-spun warps for quality cloth on the continent was earlier than the sixteenth century suggested by Chorley. The adoption of the all-carded woollen is important because its introduction may have coincided with the surge in the English industry in the later-fifteenth century. The 1464 cloth act refers to carders but not combers, so it is possible that an all-carded woollen was already in widespread use by that time.14 Chorley has suggested that the relatively low warp counts of English broadcloth at the turn of the sixteenth century is an indication that they were all-carded and wheel spun.15 He points out that around 1500 it was claimed that all English cloth going to Castile was of the all-carded type.16 Given the opportunity to improve productivity it is reasonable to suppose that it proceeded more quickly for less expensive cloths, probably in the second half of the fifteenth century and maybe earlier, but it was delayed for many higher-quality cloths until the first half of the sixteenth century. It seems that the highly successful Armentières drapery had developed an all-carded-wheel spun, high-­ quality cloth in the sixteenth century, and it seems probable that the English industry would have adopted carded/wheel-spun warps at least as early as any continental drapery.17 The Saxony wheel, introduced at the end of the fifteenth century, produced yarn of superior strength and consistent quality, in addition to further reducing spinning costs, but we have no definitive evidence that it was the Saxony rather than the Great Wheel that was initially used to spin carded warp thread.18 The first direct reference we have to an all-carded English woollen is at Norwich in 1502, where woollen weavers’ ordinances declared that low-thread-count narrow cloths (350 warp

Woollens Production, English Advantage 23 threads  per  yard) were all wheel spun.19 It seems that very few cloths were still woven from combed, rock-spun wools by the mid-sixteenth century. In 1557 only handywarps made in northern Essex and western Suffolk, Coggeshalls and Glainsfords, as well as fine Worcesters, had to be made from rock-spun warps.20 It is therefore possible that West Country clothiers were able to make and obtain efficiencies from an all-carded woollen, and that this was a contributory factor to the success of standard Tudor broadcloth, but it is unlikely that we will ever know for sure. The typical ratio between the weight of warp and weft yarns for cloths using combed, rock-spun warps and carded, wheel-spun wefts was 1:2.21 The fine Armentières cloth at the end of the sixteenth century contained 40  per cent warp and 60  per cent weft wool, and it was the same for cloths made at the manor of Laleham in 1294–5 and Beaulieu in 1269– 70.22 Rock-spinning high-quality warp thread was very skilled work, so spinning warp thread was usually more expensive than weft. For the finest cloths combing and hand-spinning warps continued to ensure consistency of quality. Weaving cost depended on the cloth and its thread count: the higher the warp-thread count, the greater the quality and cost. At Norwich in 1502 the price of weaving cloth with a 1,000 thread count or more had to be negotiated whereas there was a fixed price for weaving cloth with lower thread counts.23 A set of weaving price lists based on warp-thread counts for mid-fifteenth century London suggests that there were five accepted quality ranges for broadcloths and three for narrow cloths, kerseys, osettes (straits, 12–13  yards long), and frieze.24 Osettes and frieze were usually coarser cloths with lower thread counts. At Coventry in 1518 weavers were paid different rates for cloths from 800 warps to 1,100 warps.25 Wiltshire short broadcloths ranged from 700 warp threads to 1,000 warp threads, and superfines from 1,200 warps to 1,400 warps per yard at the turn of the seventeenth century.26 Weaving was far less important in making woollens than in worsteds, because only the simple tabby weave was used, and the warp-thread counts were far lower, requiring less skill. The tabby replaced twill weaves for woollens because any pattern was redundant once the product was extensively finished, rendering the weave invisible. In England, London cloth excavations show that this transition to the tabby weave was essentially completed by 1350.27 Broadcloth tabby-weaving, except for the finest cloths, quickly became only moderately skilled work that was highly regulated. Urban prices became fixed, and most weavers were generally poorly paid artisans, especially if they had to compete with rural weavers. Perhaps the most important change was the diffusion of the broadloom from towns to the countryside which made rural clothmaking truly competitive: in full swing by the late-fourteenth century in the West Country and around London, and complete in many clothmaking areas by the end of the fifteenth century.

24  Woollens Production, English Advantage

Fulling, Shearing and Associated Processes Fullers washed the cloth with fuller’s earth, sometimes with urine added, to remove grease. The cloth was then fulled, either by trampling on the cloth in a tub of warm water, or mechanically at a fulling mill, forcing the curly fibres to intertwine, and the cloth to shrink and thicken. Highquality Flemish cloth shrunk 54 to 56 per cent in total area, reducing the length by as much as 31 per cent and width by 37 per cent.28 A coarse Norfolk broadcloth in 1502 with 700 warps  per  yard, was woven to be thirteen yards in length and 2¾ yards wide on the loom. If it was to shrink to 1¾ yards in width after fulling to meet the assize requirements, this would have been a thirty-six per cent width contraction.29 At York in 1505, weavers’ and walkers’ regulations specified that its fine cloth made from Lincolnshire wools, which was woven to 32  yards on the loom, shrunk to 25 feet long after fulling, a 22 per cent reduction. Either before or after fulling the cloth was placed over a perch so that the fuller could remove any knots, dirt and other impurities in the cloth, a process known as burling. The wet cloth was then re-stretched on a tenter frame with tenterhooks, to produce a cloth of equal width along its length. The permitted re-stretching of length was governed by cloth acts in the sixteenth century.30 A preliminary raising of the nap with teasles (thistles attached to a frame) and shearing was carried out while the cloth was on the tenter. Fulling was the chief production difference between English and continental processes. Mechanical fulling was abandoned by the major continental drapery towns in the fourteenth century, and only revived in the sixteenth, because most draperies were concerned that the oaken hammers would wreck fine cloth, a risk not worth taking since the savings from mechanical fulling were minimal compared with the high price for the finest cloths.31 In the early-fourteenth century, woollens were far lighter than they were in the sixteenth century, and serges and even says were lightly fulled, so the risk associated with mechanical fulling was higher than it was to be two centuries later.32 Even in the late-fifteenth century, London fullers required that all cloths be checked so that they were thick enough to be sent to the mills.33 In England the finest cloths woven in towns were foot-fulled in the fourteenth century while cheaper cloths were sent to the mill. However, in the later-fifteenth century, standard broadcloth was mill-fulled, and by 1550 very few cloths were still foot-fulled in England. Technology undoubtedly improved to reduce the risk that cloth might be damaged by the giant hammers, perhaps by ensuring that the cloth was continually shifted, and by modifying the angle that the hammers struck the cloth.34 There were two types of fulling mills, the less costly undershot mill that depended on the power of the passing water to move the wheel, and the more capital-intensive overshot mill, which needed a millpond and

Woollens Production, English Advantage 25 mill-race to create a continuous flow of water that fell into the buckets whose weight drove the wheel. Somewhat surprisingly we have to rely mostly on continental evidence to evaluate the cost advantage of mechanical fulling over foot-fulling. Foot-fulling required, at a minimum, a master and two journeymen or apprentices, to stomp broadcloth for three to five days.35 In contrast, the same cloth could be fulled mechanically by a single fuller and his attendant in twenty-four hours.36 It has been estimated that mill-fulling might reduce fulling costs by as much as 70–75 per cent, reducing cost from 20 to 5 per cent of pre-finishing, manufacturing expenses.37 Endrei estimated that it took 150  hours for foot-fullers to clean and full the cloth, three days for fulling (ninety hours) and two days for washing and burling, compared with thirty hours for the mill to full broadcloth.38 The progression of fulling-mill construction can be broadly traced, and in some areas of the country, we can determine the number of mills in considerable detail.39 From the earliest records of a fulling mill in 1173, there appears to have been steady growth in the number of fulling mills until 1350, mostly in hilly rural areas, although there was a notable expansion in the Eastern lowlands in the early-fourteenth century. As far as we can determine, rural clothmakers, wherever inexpensive undershot mills could be constructed, relied on mills for fulling, while urban draperies before the Black Death used foot-fulling for most of their quality broadcloths, sending only cheaper cloths to the mills. After the Black Death there was faster growth as many urban grain mills were converted to fulling mills. From 1400 to 1480 growth and decline was in line with market fluctuations, and there must have been some consolidation in rural areas where fulling mills were dependant on the success of individual fullers or clothiers. From 1480 onwards surging export demand forced much new tenant mill construction.40 In the West Country tenant construction in the late-fourteenth century can be traced along the Frome in Somerset and the Wylye in western Wiltshire. For example, in the single Glastonbury Abbey manor of Longbridge Deverill on the Wylye, there were no fulling mills in 1390, but there were four by 1450, with at least three built by tenants.41 There were thirty-one mills in northern Essex in predominantly rural communities before 1500, twenty-five in Suffolk before 1460, and at least 202 fulling mills in Wales and the Marches before 1547.42 John Langdon has estimated that the number of fulling mills might have risen from 600 in 1300 to at least 1,300, and possibly 2,000 or more by 1540.43 The efficiency of the fulling mill depended on its water throughput, the type of mill, demand, cost of leases and construction cost. The undershot mill was cheaper to construct, but used only 15–30 per cent of the water’s power. Since it was the speed, not the quantity of water, which was important, it was cost efficient on fast-moving streams usually located in rural areas. The overshot wheel, while efficiently using 50–70 per cent

26  Woollens Production, English Advantage of the water’s power, was expensive because it required the construction of weirs, millponds, mill-races and aqueducts, and required subsequent large maintenance costs.44 The slower and less reliable the flow of water throughout the year, the greater was the advantage of the overshot mill. Along many West Country watercourses many mills were built close together, presumably mainly of the undershot variety, resulting in industry clusters as clothiers competed along the banks of streams and rivers. For example, from 1447 to 1459, sixteen water leases for Stroudwater mills were granted according to the Bisley manor account rolls.45 Overshot mills were probably more viable in those areas in which a large number of cloths could be gathered from the surrounding area. In the Kentish Weald it has been estimated that there were only between ten and fifteen mills to full as many as 13–14,000 cloths in the mid-sixteenth century.46 Fullers were unevenly distributed in Suffolk in 1522, suggesting that cloths were taken to places like Bures and Long Melford for fulling.47 Most historians have concluded that overshot mills, although certainly existing in England by the 1330s, because one is illustrated in the Luttrell Psalter, were not widely distributed until the early-sixteenth century.48 John Langdon is less sure, feeling that they were constructed according to the needs of the site and financial considerations.49 The cost of a mill varied dramatically. Land required for a mill could be as little as 30 feet long and 18 feet wide.50 A fulling mill and tenters built at Taunton by the bishop of Winchester in 1218–9 cost £16 4s 5½d, was initially rented for £3 13s 4d, and for as much as £8 13s 4d by 1226– 7, but then fell back to the £2–4 range as other fulling mills in the area forced down rents.51 There was a precise costing for the rebuilding of a fulling mill at one of the Christchurch Canterbury manors at Chartham, Kent, in 1437.52 The building already existed and the abbey was to provide the timber and the ironware, and prepare the earthworks to bring water to the mill. The exact specifications for the millworks were given so that three half broadcloths, in total 36 yards in length, could be fulled at one time. The price was £14 13s 4d for the carpentry work, paid in three instalments with a penalty if not completed as specified and on time. The cost of a 1237 royal mill near Marlborough was £4 17s 4d, another by the Bishop of Winchester cost £9 4s 4d, while one built by the abbot of Westerham in Kent cost only 38s, and leased for a paltry 8s.53 This compared with the outfitting of a tenter for 34s 5½d in 1309–10.54 The cost of converting a grain mill to a fulling mill in Orpington, Kent, in 1350–1 was only 32s 5d. Fulling mechanisms seem to have cost 40s in the fifteenth century.55 Mills seem to have increased in cost and complexity, presumably as technology improved and demand increased. There are examples of far more expensive mills. A long-standing fulling mill at Birdbrook Essex was refurbished at a cost of £38 8s 3d in 1384–5. Thomas Hendley, a gentleman whose overshot, enclosed fulling mill and barn near Maidstone cost him £80, was able to rent it for £13 6s 8d in 1545.56

Woollens Production, English Advantage 27 It seems that owners expected around a five-year payback from leasing a successful mill. Usually the lease cost was a function of usage and capital cost. The mill at Birdbrook, which was leased for 46s in 1346, fell to 24s in 1350 in the wake of the Black Death, and had not rebounded by 1355. Successful mill rentals were typically in the range of £2–6 a year, suggesting a probable capital cost of £20–40.57 It took as much as £10 to rebuild a mill every twenty-five years or so.58 The turning point in the economic significance of fulling mills was the late-fourteenth century. The rise of an export market and the need for English clothmakers to compete in the continental market for middlingquality cloths made mill savings attractive. Management of the fulling mill passed from the landlord to the tenant fuller. Groups of fullers took over disused urban grain mills, and mill-fulling tended to move from large to small towns.59 Entrepreneurship of tenant fullers, together with laissez-faire competition between fullers or clothiers, would have probably led to better mill technology and improved efficiency. By the sixteenth century the spurt in mill-building was led by clothiers who were renting land mostly from lay landlords, building their own mills, and hiring fullers to run them.60 Historians have questioned both the profitability and competitive advantage of fulling mills over foot-fulling before 1350. The growing number of mills shows that there must have been some money in the business, but the high cost of capital and the low cost of labour suggests that fulling mills tended to be restricted to those western areas of the country where fast-flowing streams made them efficient. The growth of mills seems to reflect the transition from worsted to fulled fabrics in the thirteenth century, rather than any particular move from urban to rural manufacture as Eleanora Carus-Wilson argued.61 As most of the mills were demesne owned, any profits were likely to have fallen to landlords who forced their tenants to use the mill. Fulling mills were always secondary to grain mills, and were less profitable.62 There is little correlation between the siting of mills and known centres of the industry in the thirteenth century. The fulling mill had significant influence over the development of the industry in some towns from the late-fourteenth century onwards. York, Coventry and Norwich may have found the absence of suitable fulling sites a factor in their declining competitiveness. In Colchester and Winchester, where there were fulling mills either within the city walls or just outside, the mill-fuller became a far wealthier artisan than the traditional master foot fuller had ever been. In some places he took over responsibility for all finishing processes.63 Rising leases reflected the profitability of mill-fulling in periods of industry expansion. A Warminster fulling mill leased in 1420–1 for 33s 4d was fetching 53s 4d in 1464–5.64 The farm of the fulling mills at Leeds, for example, rose from 37s 4d in 1356–7 to 83s in 1546–7.65 By the sixteenth century fulling mills seem to have been

28  Woollens Production, English Advantage profitable investments. A Stroudwater fulling mill that was rented for 15s 4½d, was then sublet in the 1450s for 66s 8d.66 A few clothiers looked to gig mills to mechanise the final napping and shearing process, as the machinery could be attached to an existing fulling mill. Teasles were set onto mechanical rollers and attached to a powerdriven wheel, the cylinder revolving across the cloth as it moved along a leather belt. One of Sir John Fastolf’s tenants at Castle Combe, William Heynes owned a gig mill on his death in 1436.67 Gig mills had been in use for at least twenty-five years before their prohibition by an act of parliament in 1463–4, and they were banned again in 1551, on the basis that the cloth might be ruined, although the real reason may well have been that shearmen and drapers were concerned about unemployment.68 Cloth was taken from the tenter to the shearmen who draped and hooked the dry cloth over a padded bench with habicks, oiled the cloth and then carefully raised the nap and sheared the cloth with large shears, one or more times, sometimes on one side of the cloth and sometimes on both sides, depending on the type of cloth.69 The cloth might be sheared more than once for every time the nap was raised. If there were any faults in the cloth then it had to be drawn, mending the fabric by ‘drawing’ the threads together. In the sixteenth century this had often become a separate function, with shearmen sending cloth out to the drawer. The cloth was then pressed, folded and packed for shipment. It might take a shearman five days to shear, press and fold a fine broadcloth.70 Shearing of fine cloth for retail was a highly skilled process, but exported cloth would have been sheared to lower standards, if at all, as it was re-finished overseas.71 London regulations in 1350, 1408 and 1452 give the prices for shearing different cloths, and specify if one or both sides should be sheared and how many shearings there should be.72 For a few fullers and shearmen, close association with merchants was a stepping stone to entry into the merchant class, as was the case with two London shearmen, William Heriot and William Bayley, who both translated to the Drapers’ guild once they became aldermen, and both eventually became London mayors.73 Cloth finishers and dyers often remained in towns, and especially ports, while those engaged in yarn preparation, weaving, or fulling moved to the countryside.

Dyeing Dyeing could occur in-the-wool, in-the-yarn, in-the-piece or even a finished garment like a hat or a cap. Most greased woollens were dyed in-the-piece in towns both in England and on the continent until the late-fifteenth century, although it was typical to woad-dye wools and then produce a broad range of colours by re-dyeing in-the-piece. English dyeing was a negative factor in English clothmaking in the thirteenth century, probably neutral by the fifteenth century, and in the sixteenth

Woollens Production, English Advantage 29 century it became an advantage even though the quality of urban dyeing may well have declined.74 Woad was the chief dye to produce blues, followed by madder that gave reds. Dyeing with woad to produce various shades of blue could be done in-the-wool as it did not require a fixative, as wood ashes or potash were only added to make the woad soluble in water: dyeing with madder (red), kermes (scarlet) and most other dyes required a mordant to fix the dye and was usually dyed in-the-piece to the buyers’ specification. If wool was dyed with a mordant it usually made spinning, weaving and fulling more difficult. A woaded cloth was frequently re-dyed in-the-piece to produce greys, purples, green, browns and blacks. The cost of dyeing depended on the price for dyes and firewood, the complexity of the dyeing process, and the amount of dye required to produce a specific colour. Only a large dyer could afford the dyes and equipment, and develop the dyeing skills and the working capital to become a mordant dyer and hope to benefit from economies of scale. Almost all the leading clothiers, whose probate inventories from the Prerogative Court of Canterbury have survived from 1480 to 1550, owned dyehouses. Small dyers often became woad dyers. There was a wide cost variation by colour. Wool dyeing at Laleham in 1294–5 with woad was 1½d for 8 pounds of the light watchet blue, but the dark blue perse was 3d: blood red cost 2d while ruby red was 3d, dyeing on average accounting for 31 per cent of total costs.75 The London draper Thomas Howell’s ledger for the 1520s includes three bills from the dyer Thomas Hucks. Popinjay green or blue cost 3.3d a yard; black, gold, yellow or ass was 4d; violet, pewke or tawny was 4.5d; red was 5d and blood red was 6d, with dyeing, on average, 13 per cent of the cost of broadcloth production cost.76 When prices were standardised for the poundage subsidy at the end of the fifteenth century, the value of unfinished cloth was set at 40s and for finished, dyed cloth 60s, an increase of 50 per cent, but it may have been that the quality of dyed cloths was generally superior to the average unfinished cloth sent to Antwerp. Dyes and mordants were mostly imported by alien merchants. As trade expanded it became easier to import dyes and mordants and this made English dyeing more competitive. Raw materials for the cloth industry accounted for a quarter of all alien imports into Southampton and London in 1438–9: alum valued at £406, ashes at £341, woad at £3,104, madder at £853, grain at £2,531 and oil at £632.77 In 1559–60, raw materials for the industry had declined to 14 per cent of total imports through London: alum (£7,151), ashes (£4,665), woad (£33,431), madder (£11,135), gall (£3,611) and oil (£38,021).78 Thirteenth-century dyers must have found it difficult to compete with large continental draperies that enjoyed economies of scale, and easy access to woad from Picardy, and madder from Holland and Zeeland. The Champagne fairs provided them with the opportunity to trade cloth

30  Woollens Production, English Advantage for alum, kermes and other dyes. Further, dyers were secretive because their recipes were a competitive advantage, so it cannot have been easy for English dyers to achieve the quality and range of colours that experience had taught Flemish dyers. Although local dyes were available in small quantities, dyers were always dependant on imports. As the thirteenth century progressed we can roughly trace how Picardy merchants took over the woad market, and blue became the most popular colour. Red must have been rare since there are few references to madder. Dyers’ skills must have rapidly improved in the fourteenth century as the domestic market for coloured cloth expanded and immigrant Flemings brought their dyeing skills with them. Later in the century, trade in dyes expanded and almost all cloth exports were coloured.79 By the midfifteenth century, English dyeing, at least in London and Bristol, seems to have been competitive in the Spanish market.80 Italians were now bringing in huge quantities of woad and the mordant alum, and there was continuous trade in madder from Zeeland.81 Late-fifteenth century London dyers’ wills suggest that the larger dyers were successful and wealthy.82 Yet the market for dyeing was depressed by the export of unfinished cloth which meant that London dyers became less competitive with dyers at Antwerp. Broadcloth clothiers in Suffolk and Kent, and Newbury kersey clothiers, were able to sell their coloured cloth on the continent from the early-sixteenth century. Suffolk was dyeing broadcloth and vesses for the Spanish market, and after this market declined with the Reformation, clothiers sold mostly blue cloth to Antwerp. It was cheaper to have cloth woad-dyed in-the-wool in Suffolk than to have the cloth dyed blue in-thepiece in Antwerp, and this advantage sustained the Suffolk industry for the remainder of the sixteenth century. Kent specialised in fine-coloured cloth, the wool woaded and then dyed in-the-piece to the new colour palette; russet, sad new, grey, iron-grey, turkey, rats, sheeps, horseflesh, blue, blue-brown and black.83 The 1565 Clothworkers act required that all Kent and Suffolk cloths be exported dyed and finished, and a tenth of all other cloths.84 At mid-century Newbury kerseys were mostly blue with some reds.85 Rural dyeing skills were now as developed as those in towns, and those in Kent perhaps superior: even cheaper kerseys from both southern counties and Yorkshire, as well as Yorkshire dozens and Manchester frieze were all dyed either in small towns or the countryside.86 The quality of urban dyeing may have declined. London’s early-­ sixteenth century dyers were less wealthy than they had been a generation before.87 This may have been because skills were not passed on from father to son; but also the export of mostly undyed broadcloth and competition from clothiers undermined their business. Some continental buyers were prepared to pay less for dyed than unfinished cloth.88 The London grocer, William Cholmeley in 1553 hired an Antwerp dyer to set up shop in Southwark, and recommended that many more were required

Woollens Production, English Advantage 31 to solve the country’s dyeing problem.89 Cholmeley was not alone. In 1564, the Earl of Leicester’s factor, John Shea, claimed that merchants were unable to have their cloths dyed in England ‘as well and good cheap as in any other place’.90

Labour Cost Labour costs were critical for all but the finest cloths because making cloth was incredibly labour intensive. It was claimed that a Suffolk clothier, who made twenty blue broadcloths a week in 1618, would employ in one way or another 500 people.91 Around sixty people were required to make a Leeds dozen or a Halifax kersey in 1588. It has been estimated that labour accounted for a quarter of the retail price of broadcloth in the 1540s.92 It is probable that a quarter million clothworkers, or about 15–16 per cent of the adult workforce, were employed to make an estimated 308,000 equivalent broadcloths at that time.93 To reach this conclusion it is necessary to estimate how many hours each process took and how many hours, on average, a clothworker worked during the year. Quality, mechanically fulled, late-sixteenth century broadcloth is estimated to have taken 978 hours to produce (Table 2.1).94 Sixty per cent of the hours required to make finished broadcloth was in yarn preparation. Forty-two persons were needed to sort, card and spin the Leeds dozen out of a total sixty people involved in its production in 1588, and forty-six out of sixty-two employed in these tasks to prepare Halifax kersey yarn.95 Before the Black Death any lower costs from rural labour may have been offset by urban skills and close relationships with Table 2.1 Hours to produce broadcloth and number of clothworkers in 1541–5 Processes

Number of hours

Hours to produce 308,000 cloths in 1541–5 (millions)96

Annual hours making cloth

Number of clothworkers

Yarn preparation Weaving Mechanical fulling Cleansing and tentering Finishing Dyeing Assistants, final pressing and packing

622 130 30 60 120 8 8

186.8 39.0 7.2 18.0 36.0 2.4 2.4

920 1,200 2,300 2,300 2,300 2,300 2,300

203,043 32,500 3,130 7,826 15,652 1,043 1,043

Total

978

291.6

264,137

Source: W. Endrei, ‘Manufacturing a piece of woollen cloth in medieval Flanders: how many work hours?’ in E. Aerts and J. Munro, eds., Textiles of the Low Countries in European economic history (Leuven, 1990), 14–33; Oldland, ‘Economic impact’, 232–40.

32  Woollens Production, English Advantage merchants. But after 1350 there was a shortage of urban spinsters as women found more gainful employment, including weaving, while rural carders and spinners could easily meld this work with household and agricultural duties. At Exeter in the late-fourteenth century most women in trade were in food retailing or brewing, but women still participated in cloth manufacture more than any other industry.97 Unfortunately, we cannot make a cost comparison of urban and rural production. It stands to reason that country wage costs were lower as rural families used women and children to prepare the yarn, sit beside men at the broadloom, and help clean the cloth. Firewood was cheaper, an important cost since combs needed heating, and hot water was required to cleanse the cloth and to heat the dye vats. The estimated daily rural cost in the 1540s for wool sorting was 1.5d, yarn preparation 2d, weaving 3.9d, fulling and tentering 3d, burling/wet shearing 3d, finishing 4.2d, dyeing 6.5d and packing 4d, which all averaged out at 2.64 a day.98 As a comparison, one estimate for the agricultural harvest daily wage at the same period was 4.66d; another for a combination of agricultural wages and piece-rates was 3.63d; and average day wages for southern craftsmen was 6–7d.99 Coarse cloth was much cheaper to make, with savings at every stage of the production process. A comparison of the labour costs for coarse and fine cloth in Suffolk in the late-sixteenth century concluded that it took eleven shillings in wages to make a coarse cloth, and twenty-nine and a half shillings to make a fine blue cloth.100 For example, burling a coarse cloth cost 12d, a fine cloth 48d; finishing a coarse cloth 60d, a fine cloth 144d. It should be noted that considerable work has been conducted on historical spinning costs and women’s wages in general. The spinning wage series which begins in 1580 has wages at 2.5d/day at that time from a single source, and the casual wage rates for women, excluding spinners, from 1480 to 1550 at 2.14d/day, with contract labour far lower.101 Given all the variables involved in a spinner’s daily wage, from the quality of yarn to the agreement that the spinner had with the clothier, the estimate of two pence a day still seems reasonable for the early-sixteenth century.

Organisation and Distribution Of course, the price of labour was just one factor in assessing productivity: as important was the quality of the work and the efficiency of organising work flow. Successful continental cloth towns produced a far larger number of cloths than in English towns and therefore enjoyed some economies of scale, especially in the thirteenth century. Their guild ordinances carefully specified the wools used and the processes employed in order to establish a consistent reputation for their principal cloths geared to the export market. On the continent, weaver-drapers organised production and merchant-drapers the sale of cloth.102 Weaver-drapers bought

Woollens Production, English Advantage 33 wool from the merchant-drapers, organised yarn preparation, wove the cloths themselves or put it out to be woven, dyed and finished. Margins were low and there was often conflict between the two production guilds, fullers and weaver-drapers, as there was between weaver-drapers and ­merchant-drapers. Production was large scale and disciplined, and their best cloths were of consistent high quality. After 1350 much of the production moved from large towns, drie steden, to smaller towns, nouvelles draperies, but the latter continued to organise and regulate themselves as the large towns had done, principally competing by using cheaper wools and production processes. In English towns cloth merchants acquired cloth either from clothmakers and provincial merchants around the country, or from weavers or fullers in the town which they then had dyed and finished. Urban clothmakers were always in competition with rural clothworkers for the coarser cloth. Consequently, the urban weaver was rarely an entrepreneur organising the production of large quantities of cloth, but an artisan who organised some yarn production, produced a small number of cloths which he sold to the fuller, who after 1350, often took the cloth to the alnager to pay the subsidy, and then sold cloth to the merchant. As a generalisation the best cloths were made in towns, the cheaper cloths in the countryside. In the fifteenth century the quality of rural cloth improved and became a serious competitive threat. Weavers often left towns while fullers, dyers and shearmen increasingly finished rural cloth. In a few towns an integrated system survived through specialisation; for example, late-fourteenth century Salisbury with its rays and Colchester with its greys, Norwich’s fifteenth-century double worsteds, and Worcester’s sixteenth-century fine whites. Rural cloth’s growing access to national and international markets is reflected in the establishment of cloth halls, many of which were set up at the end of the fourteenth century. London’s establishment of a covered market in 1396, Blackwell Hall, permitted closer supervision of provincial cloth, but it also made it easier for rural clothmakers to market their cloth, and for alien and other merchants to buy it.103 This geographic separation between rural cloth production and its finishing in towns, especially between 1350 and 1500, was a significant structural difference between England and the continent. The English merchant had greater difficulty in controlling the quality of urban cloth because he did not finance its production, and its quality was infrequently regulated by the guilds. He had little control over rural cloth, and because the cloth was mill-fulled, its quality might be variable. Merchants could buy rural cloth off-the-loom, but it usually made sense for it to be millfulled, tentered and alnaged in the countryside. Cloth was to be alnaged only after it was fulled and tentered, and the particulars for the 1390s show that large quantities of cloth were alnaged in the West Country and the Home Counties.

34  Woollens Production, English Advantage Historians have not discussed the problems this geographic dislocation may have caused. It was probably easier to obtain an evenly fulled cloth by foot-fulling than by mechanical fulling. Further, the position of the burling process was changed. Traditionally the greased cloth was first cleansed of oils, then the fuller burled it by placing the cloth over a perch to remove any impurities and knots in the cloth, before it was placed in the tub for foot-fulling. Mill-fulling cleansed the cloth and fulled it, but did not burl it. So the cloth was burled after it was fulled and then stretched on the tenter. This may not have made any difference, but it could have further increased the variation in cloth quality. If the rural fuller had done his job to the highest standards, then there would have been no need for an urban fuller, who would then have been faced with a disappearing business as local weavers left town. But this is not what happened, since there were plenty of fullers in fifteenth-century cloth towns. It is my suspicion that they were checking for quality problems and fixing them, to ensure that it had been evenly fulled, impurities and knots removed, and that it had been properly tentered and wet sheared. The fuller took the cloth to the waterside, placed it over the perch, if necessary beat and burled it and then re-hung it on the tenter. This was necessary work that added cost but was presumably less than the savings obtained from buying rural cloth. Small-town and rural clothiers solved all the inefficiencies that had crept into urban production as the cloth was passed from one artisan to another: and rectified any inconsistency in quality by controlling the total production process specialising in a single type of cloth. The clothier could therefore set the standard and determine the most efficient way to achieve it. This always required operating a woolhouse to sort, clean, oil and sometimes dye the wool. He may have woven some of the cloth in his own premises while at the same time outsourcing to independent weavers; he often leased a fulling mill, and finished the cloth himself. We can trace the relationship between clothiers and merchants and their overseas activities from surviving account books: those of the Worcester merchant William Mucklowe, who traded the town’s cloth at Antwerp in 1511; the London draper, Thomas Howell, who bought mostly coloured broadcloth from East Anglia, had some of it dyed and finished in London, and then sent it to Spain in the 1520s; the London mercer, Sir Thomas Kytson, who bought mostly unfinished broadcloth from Somerset and Wiltshire to sell at the Brabant fairs, over a long career from 1509 to 1540; and the London mercer, Sir Thomas Gresham, who in 1548 bought fine kerseys from Newbury, short and long broadcloth from Worcester and northern kerseys. All four merchants were among the leading merchants of their day, handling large amounts of cloth, Kytson himself accounting for as much as 3  per cent of exports in any given year.104 Mucklowe appears to have sold much of Worcester’s cloth destined for Antwerp, Thomas Howell had assembled 458

Woollens Production, English Advantage 35 cloths in February 1527, and 508 cloths in June 1528; Thomas Kytson in many years regularly bought as many as 1,500 cloths from Wiltshire and Somerset in the 1530s; and Thomas Gresham bought 5,672 kerseys in 1549.105 Howell and Kytson, or their employees and factors, toured cloth districts buying cloths from a large number of clothiers, while Gresham bought large quantities of kerseys from a few clothiers or middleman who had accumulated many cloths on his behalf. Some clothiers must have dealt directly with alien merchants either directly as did John Winchcombe of Newbury, or through London factors as did William Stumpe of Malmesbury.106 The leading cloth merchants would have spent some of their apprenticeship in the markets they eventually served.107 Kytson and Gresham operated their businesses from London, using apprentices or journeymen to manage sales and payments in Antwerp.108 Howell, on the other hand, spent most of the year in Seville over a twenty-seven year period, relying on another draper, Robert Lesse to manage the London end.109 Many used factors to sell their goods on the continent. John Tollous, master of the Clothworkers, and alderman in 1538, is totally absent from the London records from 1513, when he was given permission to go to Calais, until 1535 when he re-surfaces as a member of the company’s first livery. In the intervening years it is likely he was trading in Spain where he continued to do business until his death in 1548.110 Much of northern European trade converged on Antwerp, a city of close of 100,000, in the sixteenth century. It proved to be a surprisingly stable trading centre for over a century. A large and sophisticated finishing and dyeing industry customised cloth to merchants’ requirements.111 Finishing was at least as good as at London, and Antwerp dyeing was probably superior during the first half of the sixteenth century.112 In 1516, Antwerp’s textile artisans, mostly cloth finishers, composed the third most numerous guild after the mercers and boatmen.113 In 1537 there were 1,348 cloth dressers, excluding apprentices.114 In financial matters, English merchants were dependant on continental bankers, at least until the 1520s, to finance their trade.115 They mostly sold to continental merchants who then depended on a well-organised transportation network spreading out from Antwerp across Europe.116 The transit of cloth to Antwerp was handled by the Merchant Adventurers Company who arranged the convoys, distributed cloth among vessels to minimise risk, and enjoyed preferential trading privileges at Antwerp.117 Unsurprisingly, a majority of London aldermen were cloth merchants in the earlysixteenth century, most of them members of the Merchant Adventurers, so the trade was well protected.118

The Range of English Cloths and Their Dimensions This analysis of changing production processes and organisation has naturally centred on broadcloth which was by far the most important,

36  Woollens Production, English Advantage internationally traded woollen after 1300; and by the mid-sixteenth century probably accounted for approximately 70 per cent of the total value of English exports. Yet by the mid-fifteenth century English clothmakers produced a wide range of woollens, other than the standard broadcloth, which were exported in smaller quantities, and sold well domestically. In the customs accounts full-length broadcloth was the standard, other cloths converted into broadcloth equivalents, four straits and three kerseys to a broadcloth, so it is impossible, except in the few remaining particular accounts that record non-Hanseatic alien shipments, to distinguish the relative importance of the various cloths. Cottons and frieze did not have to pay customs duties. It was only with the 1552 cloth act, slightly modified in 1557–8, that we have a clear description of all cloths, with their dimensions and weights, that show the diversity of woollens manufactured, and their regional differences (Table 2.2).119 Dimensions were always given either in ells or yards. Fortunately an English ell was a yard so they can be used interchangeably. The Composito uinarum et perticarum, written between 1266 and 1303, stipulated that all linear measures were to be based on the ‘iron ulna’, ‘1 yard’ or 36 inches.120 Broadcloth was subject to an assize for width, and sometimes length, from 1196 onwards.121 Width was always specified, and it ranged between 6 and 7 quarters after 1271: standard broadcloth length from 1328 onwards seems to have been 28 yards unfulled, 24 yards fulled. In 1464–5 standard broadcloth was set to be 24 yards by 7 quarters wide once finished.122 Broadcloth weight remained mostly unregulated until the mid-sixteenth century. Broadcloth came in a wide quality and price range; routinely classified by merchants and clothiers as fine, medium (or simply cloth, pannus) or coarse. As a rough classification, coarse cloth had fewer than ten warp and weft threads  per 10mm, medium between ten and eighteen warp threads and fine more than eighteen threads.123 Twenty pence a  yard might be considered the ceiling for coarse coloured broadcloth (1 yard and 3 quarters wide) and therefore, on an equivalent basis, eleven pence for straits and kerseys (one foot wide), and 8–9d for cottons and frieze (¾ yard wide).124 Broad russet cloth was worth 16d/yd. in the second half of the thirteenth century, and blanket 14–16d/yd. in the first half of the fourteenth century.125 The 1363 sumptuary act set a quality limit of forty shillings a cloth, or 20d/yd. for cloth worn by yeoman and handicraftsmen, while agricultural labourers could only wear russet or blanket cloth worth 12d/yd.126 In 1463 agricultural labourers and servants might now wear cloth worth up to 24d/yd., and hose (made from narrow cloth) up to 14d/yd.127 The price of wool had fallen by around a quarter over the intervening century, so mid-fifteenth century cloth worn by the labouring class would have been of higher quality than these prices suggest.128 Fine cloth can be seen in the early-fourteenth century Great Wardrobe accounts, imported from Flanders and Brabant. It was woven to a longer

24.666

23–25

24.666 27.749 27.749

26.722

30.833 29.805 30.833 29.805

Average length in yards

25–27

29–31 28–30 29–31 28–30

Worcester shorts 23–25 Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Somerset whites 26–28 Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Somerset reds 26–28

Standard

Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and Somerset plunkets, azures, blues and other coloureds Short-coloured Suffolk, Norfolk, Essex and Kent

Luxury

Long Worcester and Coventry Kent, Sussex and Reading Worcester and Coventry coloureds Long-coloured Suffolk, Norfolk and Essex Handywarps, Coggeshall whites, Glainsfords

Fine

Broadcloths

Length (yds. plus an inch)

Table 2.2 Cloth dimensions and weights in 1552 (changes in 1557–8)

1.75 1.75 1.75

1.75

1.75

1.75 1.75 1.75 1.75 1.75

Width (yds.)

43.166 48.560 48.560

43.166

46.763

53.958 52.159 53.958 52.159

Area (sq. yd.)

60 64 (61) 64

64

88

84 (75) 90 (86) 80 80 3lb per yard129

Weight (lb.)

112

142

118 (105) 131 (125) 112 116

Weight index to Wiltshire whites

(Continued)

1.39 108 1.32 (1.26) 100 1.32 100

1.48

1.88

1.56 (1.39) 1.73 (1.65) 1.48 1.53 1.71

Lb. per sq. yd.

23.695

17.986 17.986 (16.958) 17.986

24.666 12.847 12.847 12.847

Average length in yards

Source: Statutes, 5&6 Edward VI, c. 6; 4&5 Philip & Mary, c. 5.w.

Welsh frieze and Manchester frieze and rugs 36 37 Welsh cottons130 48 (32 goads)131 48 Manchester, Lancashire, Cheshire cottons 33 (22 goads) 33 Welsh linings (1557–8 only)

Frieze and cottons

Taunton, Bridgewater narrows

23–25

17–18

Check kerseys or straits

Straits

17–18 17–18 (16–17)

23–25 12–13 12–13 12–13

Length (yds. plus an inch)

Sorting kerseys Ordinary kerseys

Kerseys

Narrow cloths

Suffolk, Norfolk, Essex coarse cloth, and Kent worth less than £6 Northern cloth Tauntons, Bridgewaters (dozens) Devonshire (dozens) Penistones

Other

Table 2.2 (Continued)

.75 .75 .75 (.75)

1

1

1 1

1.75 1.75 1 1.625

(1.625)

Width (yds.)

27.75 36 24.75

24.666

17.986 17.986 (16.958) 17.986

43.166 22.483 12.847 20.876

Area (sq. yd.)

116 114  83 102

Weight index to Wiltshire whites

1.38

1.33

133  97  92

105

101

1.28 (1.22)   97 (92) 1.11 (1.12)   84 (85)

1.53 1.51 1.09 1.34

Lb. per sq. yd.

48 1.76 46 1.28 30 1.21 (1.125lb per yard)

34

24

23 (22) 20 (19)

66 34 14 (1lb per yard) 28

Weight (lb.)

Woollens Production, English Advantage 39 length, taxed at a higher rate than standard broadcloth in the fourteenthcentury production subsidies (alnage), and was considered a separate category in sixteenth-century customs particulars.132 In the sixteenth century fine whites were made at Worcester (and a few from Coventry) and western Suffolk/Essex, and fine coloureds at Reading and the Kentish Weald. In 1576 a Worcester clothier boasted that he had given Queen Elizabeth the ‘finest cloth in all the world’, and he was probably right.133 The most expensive woollens were scarlets and half-grain cloths, made with the finest wools and dyed in kermes, often called grain, or partlyin-grain.134 Their great expense, the dye accounting for 30–50 per cent of total cost on the continent in the fifteenth century, led to their high status and to restrictions on who could wear them.135 In 1402 only bannerets or above were allowed to wear crimson cloth.136 When customs’ cloth prices became standardised in the late-fifteenth century, scarlets were priced at 240s for a 30-yard cloth, and half-grain cloths were priced at 160s.137 This seems to have been close to the market price as, for instance, the Mercers’ Company paid 12s a yard for scarlet and violet-in-grain cloth in 1449–50 and 1458–9, and 9s a yard for murrey-in-grain in 1461–2.138 A late fifteenth-century act set a maximum price for scarlets at 16s/yd. while other coloured broadcloth was to be 11s or less a yard.139A scarlet therefore might be five times the price of standard high-quality broadcloth and twice as expensive as the finest coloured, long, superfine cloths. Ray was a striped cloth whose width was set at 5 quarters in 1373, narrower than standard broadcloth. The assize was changed in 1405 to widen ray from 5 to 6 quarters and its length was 28 yards before fulling, the same as broadcloth. This was much to the consternation of raymakers who were eventually able to have the width reduced, and this was confirmed in 1483–4.140 Ray was carefully finished on only one side; the cost of finishing ray in 1350 in London was the same as for a long cloth.141 Winchester ray prices relative to broadcloth declined in the fifteenth century, as it became primarily a livery cloth for servants and retainers, its colours reflecting the lord’s affiliation. In 1487 rays were included among cheaper cloths under two pounds that could be exported even though they had not been fully finished.142 Ray became unfashionable in the early sixteenth century.143 As the market for quality broadcloth rose in the fifteenth century and leading draperies concentrated on its production, coarser cloth remained dominant only in the far western counties, Wales and the north where there were lower labour costs and plentiful, cheap wools. Narrow cloth was country cloth, and except for fine kersey, narrows were coarser, cheaper cloth with low warp-thread counts.144 Narrow cloth came in two widths, 1 yard (kersey/straits/Devonshire dozens) and ¾ yard (cottons/ linings/frieze). At Norwich, in 1518 broadcloths were woven with warpthread counts of 700–1,200 a yard, while narrow cloths were 350–600 threads. Production was far greater than the records suggest because it

40  Woollens Production, English Advantage was primarily cloth for domestic consumption that escaped regulation and tax. Narrows were typically shorter in length: straits were 12 or 13  yards long, kersey was the same length in the fourteenth century, but became standardised at 18  yards in 1464.145 However, some narrow cloths, particularly those for export, were long; western straits were 23–25 yards in the sixteenth century, frieze was 36 yards, Welsh cottons as long as 48 yards and Manchester cottons 33 yards. Narrows became less important as broadcloth exports grew, but enjoyed a resurgence in the sixteenth century as kersey exports exploded, cottons were purchased by Italians, and Devonshire dozens were exported through Exeter and other Devon ports. Most English innovation was in narrower cloth: kersey and cottons. Frieze and cottons were not coarse imitations of urban quality cloth, but distinctive cloths differentiated by their finishing. Frieze was used primarily for outerwear; cottons for packing cloths and lining material, but also in general use for cheap clothing, such as children’s coats and petticoats. Edmund Spenser wrote that ‘winter cloathed all in frize’.146 The cloth’s surface was scrubbed with a metal rubber, but the actions of the cottoner and friser were different. Cottons ‘had a soft, fluffy nap raised on it by half or dry-frizzing on a cottoning board by means of a metal rubber or rowing card. The nap was then shorn just enough to leave it uniform and even’.147 The friser made the fibres curl and bead so that the texture was rough and hard.148 It was finished by ‘high frizzing . . . (which) involved the raising, on one side of the cloth only, of a high, irregular, tufty, curly nap, by scrubbing the surface of the wet fabric with iron rubbers and with a circular motion, so that the upper fibres formed into small curls or beads. The fibres were laid down like skin to produce a hard, rough feel’.149 Frieze was frizzed when the cloth was wet, and then shorn to give a uniform appearance. Frieze was a standardised cloth, produced widely in the late-fourteenth century, and was in the sixteenth century a third heavier than standard broadcloth. In the fifteenth century a roll of frieze was 26–32 yards, but by the mid-sixteenth century it had been extended to 46 yards long by 1¼  yards wide off-the-loom and weighed 54lb: finished it had shrunk 20 per cent in length and 40 cent in width and lost 6lb so that it was now 37  yards long, ¾  yard wide and weighed 48lb.150 Welsh cottons were sold by the goad, 1½ yards and a handful, and usually of indiscriminate length; and were made of varying weights to suit the end purpose.151 Cottons and frieze were finished in towns close to where they were woven, and then distributed by drapers. Welsh cottons and frieze were finished in the March towns, particularly Shrewsbury and Oswestry; and Lancashire and Cheshire cottons and frieze at Manchester, Bolton and Chester in the early-sixteenth century.152 England’s most important contribution to woollens’ development was the kersey. It was woven as a twill to give it elasticity, the warp largely

Woollens Production, English Advantage 41 hidden and the weft very thickly spun: it was ideal ‘for tailored stockings and other garments that needed to be warm, comfortable, easy to slip on, and in some degree self-supporting’.153 Kersey yarn was more expensive to card and spin than broadcloth yarn, and woven with twice as many weft as warp threads. The wool was spun with a Z-twist (clockwise). It had existed from at least the fourteenth century and its name came from the Suffolk village. It was transformed from a cheap cloth, 12 yards long in the late-fourteenth century, to a higher quality, 18-yard cloth by the late-fifteenth century. By the mid-sixteenth century it may have accounted for as much as a third of exported cloth, therefore accounting for much of the growth in sixteenth-century exports.154 Cloth dimensions were always regulated, but weight was left to the discretion of the weaver. In fact, most historians had drawn the conclusion that, when cloth weights were regulated in 1552, they were confirming long-existing practice. This may have been true for fine Flemish cloth because the weight of the ultra-luxury Ghent dickedinnen cloth remained unchanged from 1456, and probably well before that date.155 However, a close look at the evidence strongly suggests that English woollen textiles had been gradually becoming heavier since 1200, as worsteds had been overtaken by serge, serge by standard greased woollens, and then woollens had become gradually heavier. Heavier cloth was warmer and more durable; and rising standards of living and lower wool prices allowed better, heavier cloth to be purchased. English merchants probably realised that they increased their competitive advantage if they increased the weight of cloth as continental draperies could not easily match this advance as they had to pay high duties on English wools.156 The first recorded weight for broadcloth was a high-quality Douai cloth at 40lb in 1394, fifteenth-century quality cloth from the Low Countries was 51–63lb and mid-sixteenth West Country unfinished whites were 64lb.157 In the thirteenth century woollens were probably no more than 50 per cent heavier than worsted-serge; in the later-sixteenth century they were more than 130 per cent heavier than new worsted cloths.158 It seems that, by 1500, most cloths had reached weights close to those set in the 1552 cloth act. Woollens had become uniformly heavy. Only ordinary kerseys (1.11lb  per sq.  yard), Devonshire dozens (1.09lb  per sq.  yard) and cottons (1.21–1.28lb  per sq.  yard) were lighter than the standard West Country short broadcloth (1.32lb  per sq.  yard). Frieze (1.73lb  per sq.  yard) and longer superfine woollens (1.53–1.88lb  per sq. yard) were much heavier. Many Low Countries’ draperies were forced to increase the weight of their cloth to match English broadcloth, now increasingly using Spanish merino wools which were becoming almost as good as English wools.159 It was unsurprising that the thickening of broadcloth created demand for alternative light cloths, destined initially for southern European markets, as most English broadcloth was now far heavier than today’s heavy woollen overcoat. By the mid-eighteenth

42  Woollens Production, English Advantage century broadcloth had become much lighter, using only 50 pounds of wool.160 The revival of says was led by Hondschoote in western Flanders, where production had risen from around 4,500 cloths early in the fifteenth century to 15,300 in 1473; and 50,000 says were exported by the mid-sixteenth century.161 By the end of the fifteenth century many draperies in northern France had revived their sayetteries, and these lighter cloths were imported into England in large quantities in the 1540s.162 In summary, there were several product and production trends which made English woollens more competitive over time: continuous innovation in product and process, the transition from urban to rural production, increased specialisation, lower costs resulting from carding and wheel-spinning wool, from lower-priced wools and fulling mills, and proliferation of cloths from coarse to fine, unfinished to finished, narrow to broad that found export markets.

English Worsteds Woollens came to dominate international trade but worsteds retained a small but important slice of the domestic market, and were an important export for Norwich clothmakers. Worsted exports fell from around 25,000 single cloths in the mid-fourteenth century (equivalent in value to perhaps 2,000 cloths of assize) to 10,000 cloths by the end of the century, and were, only in the occasional year, to exceed 6,000 over the next century and a half.163 The price for average-quality worsted was approximately 40  per cent of a typical broadcloth for an equivalent area of cloth. Customs considered single worsted, 6 by 1¼ yards to be worth one fourteenth of broadcloth, 26 yards by 1½ yards, making a square yard of single worsted worth only 37 per cent the value of a square yard of broadcloth.164 Worsted was the cloth used for bedding which might consist of three curtains, a selur to cover the top, a coverlet for the bed itself and a tester to hang at the head. Coverlets usually came in three sizes. They were woven on an upright loom by a separate craft, chaloners or tapicers. Ordinances for coverlets exist for Winchester in the 1270s, London in 1300, Norfolk in 1467 and York in 1472, each town with its own sizing.165 Norfolk wove two cloths for the religious market, monks’ cloth, 12 yards by 5 quarters, and canons’ cloth in two sizes, 6 yards by 2 yards and 5  yards by 7 quarters. These cloths were usually black or grey.166 Many must have continued to wear worsted fabrics in summer. Fine worsted cloth was used for vestments, and was even considered sufficiently high quality to have a gown furred.167 Worsteds were used for linings, tents, flags and banners. In 1335–6 forty-nine tunics with hoods for the king’s games together with tents, pavilions, standard and streamers were all made from worsted.168 In 1340–1, 368 pieces of worsted were used to make the great sail for the king’s ship, ‘the George’.169 Henry VIII’s

Woollens Production, English Advantage 43 household mainly purchased small quantities of worsted for bedding, but there was also one worsted kirtle.170 Wills record that worsted doublets, kirtles, tunics and gowns were bequeathed.171 Worsteds were critical to the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Norwich economy, and the cloth that made it famous was the double worsted, or ten-yard worsted as it came to be called, that by the mid-fifteenth century had come to be perceived as a new cloth that was similar in feel to silk and probably superior to just about any worsted on the continent. Both Langland and Chaucer saw it as a cloth worn by prosperous friars in the later-fourteenth century. Langland’s avaricious friar wore ‘his cope that biclypped him, wel clene was it folden. Of double worsede y-dyght doun to the hele’ while Chaucer saw his friar preening himself with double worsted.172 For there he was not lyk a cloisterer, With a thredbare cope, as is a povre scoler, But he was lyk a maister or a pope, Of the best double worstede was his semi cope, That rounded as a belle out of the presse.173 The Norwich double worsted declined in the early-sixteenth century in the face of intense competition from continental sayetteries at St Omer, Lille, Valenciennes and Tournai that introduced a range of new products: ostades, camlets and a number of cloths that imitated silks, produced on a narrow loom. They were lighter than the traditional say, and some were far lower priced.174

Notes 1. P. Chorley, ‘The evolution of the woollen, 1300–1700’, in N. Harte, ed., The new draperies in the Low Countries and England, 1300–1800 (Oxford, 1997), 12–14. 2. A.R. Bridbury, Medieval English clothmaking (London, 1982), 106–7. 3. For the best introduction to cloth production, in English, see Munro, ‘Textiles’, 190–217. Also valuable are: J. De La Mann, The cloth industry in the west of England from 1640 to 1880 (Oxford, 1971), 280–307, J.H. Munro, ‘Textile technology’, in J.R. Straefer et al. eds., The dictionary of the Middle Ages, vol. 11 (New York, 1988), 693–711; P. Walton, ‘Textiles’, in J. Blair and N. Ramsay, eds., English medieval industries (London, 1991), 323–32; D. Keene, ‘Textile terms and occupations in medieval Winchester’, Ler Historia, 30 (1996), 135–47. 4. Munro, ‘Technology’, 194–6. 5. A. Reurink and K.V. Pedersen, ‘Reconstructing 15th century laken’, in K.V. Pedersen and M.B. Nosch, eds., The medieval broadcloth: Changing trends in fashions, manufacturing and consumption (Oakville, 2009), 152–9. 6. J. Munro, ‘Medieval woollens: The western European woollen industries and their struggles for international markets, c.1000–1500’, in D. Jenkins, ed., The Cambridge history of western textiles, vol. 1 (Cambridge, 2003), 228.

44  Woollens Production, English Advantage 7. F. Edler, Glossary of medieval terms of business: Italian series 1200–1600 (Cambridge, MA, 1970), 324–9. 8. For a mid-seventeenth century description of wool preparation, see C. Muldew, ‘An early industrial workforce: Spinning in the countryside, c.1500–50’, in R. Jones and C. Dyer, eds., Farmers, consumers, innovators: The world of Joan Thirsk (Hatfield, 2016), 82–3. 9. L&P, vol. 4, part 2, #4,239. 10. Chorley, ‘Evolution’, 10; H. Lemon, ‘The development of hand spinning wheels’, TH, 1 (1968), 88. 11. Chorley, ‘Evolution’, 8, 22–3. 12. For the problems associated with a carded/wheel-spun warp, see Chorley, ‘Evolution’, 9–10. 13. Chorley, ‘Evolution’, 18. J. Munro, ‘Woollens, worsteds, and (hybrid) serges’, presentation to the international medieval congress, University of Leeds (2013). 14. Statutes, 4 Edward IV, c. 1. ‘That every man and woman being clothmakers, shall pay to the carders (cardours, cardouresses), spinsters (fileresses) and all such other labourers, lawful money’. 15. Chorley, ‘Evolution’, 20, 23. Chorley concludes that, on the continent, ‘that well into the sixteenth century only a comparatively small part of the woollen cloth produced in the southern Netherlands was of the modern (all-carded) type and that part largely confined to coarser goods’. 16. Ibid, 22. 17. Ibid, 20. 18. Lemon, ‘Spinning wheels’, 88–9. 19. Hudson and Tingay, Norwich, 105–6. 20. Statutes, 4&5 Ph. & Mary, c. 5. 21. Chorley, ‘Evolution’, 9. 22. W. Endrei, ‘Manufacturing a piece of woollen cloth in medieval Flanders: How many work hours?’ in E. Aerts and J. Munro, eds., Textiles of the low countries in European economic history (Leuven, 1990), 17; T.H. Lloyd, ‘Some costs of cloth manufacturing in thirteenth-century England’, TH, 1 (1968–70), 335. 23. Hudson and Tingay, Norwich, 105–6. 24. Consitt, Weavers, 204–5. 25. M. Dormer-Harris, Coventry leet book, Early English Text Society (1907– 1913), 660. 26. A.E. Bland, P.A. Brown and R.H. Tawney, eds., English economic history select documents (London, 1914), 341–2. 27. Crowfoot, Textiles, 43–52. 28. Munro, ‘Technology’, 205. 29. Hudson and Tingay, Norwich, 105–6. Cloth woven with a 1,000 warp thread count had the same dimensions, but the very fine 1,200 warp cloth was fourteen by 3¼ yards on the loom. 30. Statutes, 3 Henry VIII, c. 6; 6 Henry VIII, c. 9; 27 Henry VIII, c. 12; 3&4 Edward VI, c. 2. 31. J. Muendel, ‘The orientation of strikers in medieval fulling mills: The role of the “French” Gualchiera’, in R. Netherton and G.R. Owen-Crocker, eds., Medieval clothing and textiles, vol. 1 (Woodbridge, 2005), 76. Fulling mills continued to be used in south-west Flanders for coarser cloths, see R. van Uytven, ‘The fulling mill: Dynamic of the revolution in industrial attitudes’, Acta Historiae Neelandica, 5 (1971), 5. 32. P. Chorley, ‘The cloth exports of Flanders and northern France during the thirteenth century: A luxury trade?’ EcHR, 2nd series, 40 (1987), 372–7.

Woollens Production, English Advantage 45 33. Cal. LBL, 262; LMA, Journal 9, f. 179. 34. Muendel, ‘Orientation of strikers’, 76–7. 35. Munro, ‘Struggles’, 205–6 36. J. Munro, ‘Industrial entrepreneurship in the late-medieval Low Countries: Urban draperies, fullers, and the art of survival’, in P. Klep and E.V. Cauwenberghe, eds., Entrepreneurship and the transformation of the economy (10th–20th) (Leuven, 1994), 380–81. One day may be too optimistic as, in 1839, it took twenty-four hours to full a white cloth, and thirty-six for coloured cloth; see J. de la Mann, West of England, 296. 37. De la Mann, West of England, 318; J. Munro, ‘The symbiosis of towns and textiles: Urban institutions and the changing fortunes of cloth manufacturing in the Low Countries and England’, Journal of Early Modern History, 3 (1999), 19; Munro, ‘Struggles’, 205–6. At Leuven and Leiden in the 1420s, foot fulling accounted for 20 per cent of pre-finishing manufacturing expense, which therefore excluded the cost of wools, dyeing and shearing. In the midsixteenth century Medici drapery mechanical fulling and all the other work done by the fuller only accounted for 5 per cent of the total manufacturing cost. In late-seventeenth century England, fulling and burling was estimated to be 14 per cent of the pre-finishing labour cost, and 5 per cent of the total manufacturing cost. 38. Endrei, ‘Manufacturing’, 19. 39. E.M. Carus-Wilson, ‘An industrial revolution of the thirteenth century’, in E.M. Carus-Wilson, Venturers, 183–210; R.V. Lennard, ‘Early English fulling mills: Additional examples’, EcHR, 17 (1947), 342–3; R.H. Hilton, A medieval society: The west Midlands at the end of the thirteenth century (London, 1966), 207–12; R. Holt, The mills of medieval England (Oxford, 1988), 154; L. Poos, Rural society after the Black Death: Essex 1350–1525 (Cambridge, 1991), 60; M. Bailey, ‘Technology and the growth of textile manufacture in medieval Suffolk’, Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History, 42 (2009), 13–20. 40. J. Langdon, Mills in the medieval economy: England 1300–1540 (Oxford, 2004), 41. 41. Ibid, 45. 42. Poos, Rural society, 60–2; M. Bailey, ‘Technology’, 15; R.I. Jack, ‘The cloth industry in medieval Wales’, Welsh History Review, 10 (1981), 447. 43. Langdon, Mills, 46. 44. Munro, ‘Struggles’, 206. 45. E.M. Carus-Wilson, ‘Evidences of industrial growth on some fifteenth century manors’, EcHR, 2nd series, 12 (1959–60), 194. 46. Zell, Industry, 158. 47. J. Pound, ed., The military survey of 1522 for Babergh Hundred, Suffolk Record Society, 28 (Woodbridge, 1986). The only clothworkers in Bures were seven fullers and a shearman. At Long Melford there were more fullers than weavers. 48. A.P. Usher, A history of mechanical inventions (Cambridge, MA, 1954), 169–70; T.S. Reynolds, Stronger than a hundred men: A history of the vertical water wheel (Baltimore, 1983), 10–14, 25–6, 36–46, 97–102; L. Syson, British water-mills (London, 1965), 76–82. 49. Langdon, Mills, 88. 50. Ibid, 103. 51. T.J. Hunt, ‘Some notes on the cloth trade in Taunton in the thirteenth century’, Proceedings of the Somerset Archaeological Society, 101–2 (1956–7), 89–99. 52. L.F. Salzman, Building in England down to 1540 (Oxford, 1952), 509–10.

46  Woollens Production, English Advantage 3. Carus-Wilson, ‘Evidences’, 192, 198–9; Langdon, Mills, 27. 5 54. Langdon, Mills, 102. 55. Ibid, 102. 56. Zell, Industry, 80. 57. In the Kentish Weald the cost of a mill was estimated to be £50 and the rental more than £6 per annum, see Zell, Industry, 181. 58. Langdon, Mills, 180. 59. Ibid, 203–13. 60. Ibid, 47, 203, 224. 61. Carus-Wilson, ‘Industrial revolution’, 203–9. 62. Holt, Mills, 156–8. 63. Britnell, Colchester, 76–7; Keene, ‘Textile terms’, 141–3. 64. E.M. Carus-Wilson, ‘The woolen industry before 1550’, in E. Crittall and R.D. Pugh, eds., VCH, Wiltshire, vol. 4 (London, 1959), 129. 65. Langdon, Mills, 61. 66. Carus-Wilson, ‘Evidences’, 194. 67. Ibid, 201. 68. Rot. Parl. vol. 5, 502–3; Statutes, 5&6 Edward VI, c.22; J. Munro, ‘Industrial energy from water-mills in the European economy, 5th to 18th centuries: The limitations of power’, in S. Cavaciocchi, ed., Economia e energia secc. XIII–XVIII (Prato, 2002), 262–3. 69. G. Egan, ‘A shearman’s hook from London’, London and Middlesex Archaeological Society (LMAS), 30 (1979), 190–2. 70. J. Oldland, ‘The economic impact of clothmaking on rural society, 1300– 1550’, in M. Allen and M. Davies, eds., Medieval merchants and money: Essays in honour of James L. Bolton (London, 2016), 112. 71. J. Munro, ‘The medieval scarlet and the economics of sartorial splendour’, in N.B. Harte and K.G. Ponting, eds., Cloth and clothing in medieval Europe (London, 1983), 33–51. 72. H.T. Riley’s Memorials of London and London life in the XIIIth, XIVth, and XVth centuries (London, 1868), 256; LMA, Letter Book I, ff. 176–7; H.C. Coote, ‘The ordinances of some secular guilds in London 1354–1496’, LMAS, 4 (1871), 42. 73. For similar rise in fullers’ status at Winchester, see Keene, Winchester, 305. 74. J. Oldland, ‘Dyeing English woollens from the thirteenth through the sixteenth centuries’, TH, forthcoming. 75. Lloyd, ‘Costs’, 336. 76. London, Drapers Hall, Thomas Howell Ledger, ff. 18*, 24, 273. 77. J.L. Bolton, ‘Alien merchants in England in the reign of Henry VI, 1422–61’ (Unpub. B.Litt. thesis, University of Oxford, 1971), 113. 78. B. Dietz, ed., The port and trade of early Elizabethan London documents, LRS (1962), 152–5. 79. TNA, E 122/185/3, 185/19; Munro, ‘Struggles’, 322–3. 80. W.R. Childs, Anglo-Castilian trade in the later Middle Ages (Manchester, 1978), 79–8. 81. N.J. Kerling, Commercial relations of Holland and Zeeland with England from the late 13th century to the close of the Middle Ages (Leiden, 1954), 73–5, 123; E.B. Fryde, ‘The English cloth industry and trade with the Mediterranean c.1370–c.1480’, in L.S. Olschki, ed., Produzione commercio e consumo dei panni di lana, vol.  2 (Florence, 1976), 353; P. Wolff, ‘Three samples of English fifteenth-century cloth’, in N.B. Harte and K.G. Ponting, eds., Cloth and clothing in medieval Europe (London, 1983), 120–5. For the dyestuffs’ and mordant trade in the mid-fifteenth century, see Bolton, ‘Alien merchants’, 102–73.

Woollens Production, English Advantage 47 82. Oldland, ‘Clothmaking’, 122–4, 160–6; Barron. London, 344–6. 83. TNA, E 159/329–90. 84. Statutes, 8 Eliz, c.6; G.D. Ramsay, ‘Industrial discontent in early Elizabethan London: clothworkers and Merchant Adventurers in conflict’, London Journal, 1 (1975), 238–9. 85. D. Peacock, ‘Dyeing Winchcombe kersies and other kersey cloth in sixteenthcentury Newbury’, TH, 37 (2006), 26. 86. Oldland, ‘Dyeing English woollens’, forthcoming. 87. Oldland, ‘Clothmaking’, 167–79. 88. H. Zins, England and the Baltic in the Elizabethan era (Manchester, 1972), 163. 89. TED, vol. 3, 130–48. 90. D.R. Bisson, The Merchant Adventurers of England: The company and the crown, 1474–1564 (Newark, 1993), 45. 91. G. Unwin, ‘Woollen cloth—The old draperies’, in W. Page, ed., VCH, Suffolk, vol. 2 (London, 1911), 262. 92. J. Oldland, ‘The economic impact of clothmaking on rural society, 1300– 1550’, in M. Allen and M. Davies, eds., Medieval merchants and money: Essays in honour of James L. Bolton (London, 2016), 246–7. 93. This assumes adult population to be 60  per cent of the total. In 1679 a pamphleteer estimated that 700,000 were connected with, or dependant on, the woollen industry; see A.P. Usher, The industrial history of England (New York, 1920), 208. 94. Endrei, ‘Manufacturing’, 14–33. 95. Manuscripts of Lord Kenyon, Historical Manuscripts Commission, 14th report, appendix part 4 (1894), 572–3. 96. The estimated size of the export and domestic market combined. 97. M. Kowaleski, ‘Women’s work in a market town: Exeter in the late fourteenth century’, in B.A. Hanawalt, ed., Women and work in pre-industrial Europe (Bloomington, 1986), 152. 98. Oldland, ‘Economic impact’, 240–6. 99. E.H. Phelps Brown and S.V. Hopkins, ‘Seven centuries of building wages’, Economica, new series, 22 (1955), 205; P. Bowden, ‘Statistical appendix’, in J. Thirsk, ed., The agrarian history of England and Wales, volume IV 1500–1640 (Cambridge, 1967), 864–5; G. Clark, ‘The long march of history: Farm wages, population and economic growth, England 1209–1869’, EcHR, 60 (2007), 100. 100. BL, Cotton ms, Titus B V, f. 314. 101. J. Humphries and J. Weisdorf, ‘The wages of women in England, 1260– 1850’, Journal of Economic History, 75 (2015), 431; J. Humphries and B. Schneider, Spinning the industrial revolution, Discussion papers in economic and social history, University of Oxford, 145 (2016), 2; R.C. Allen, Spinning their wheels: A reply to Jane Humphries and Benjamin Schneider, Discussion papers in economic and social history, 166 (2018), 3–4. 102. Munro, ‘Textiles’, 218–21. 103. Barron, London, 53–4. 104. C. Brett, ‘Thomas Kytson and the Somerset clothmen, 1529–1539’, Somerset Archaeology and Natural History, 143 (1999), 31. 105. Birmingham Reference Library, Zachary Lloyd collection, 51/1; London, Drapers’ Hall, Thomas Howell ledger, f. 56v, 64v; Brett, ‘Somerset’, 31; C. Brett, ‘Thomas Kytson and Wiltshire clothmen 1529–1539’, Wiltshire Archaeology and Natural History Magazine, 97 (2004), 38; P. Ramsey, ‘The Merchant Adventurers in the first half of the sixteenth century’ (Unpub. D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1962), 184.

48  Woollens Production, English Advantage 106. G.D. Ramsay, The Wiltshire woollen industry in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (London, 1965), 25; LMA, Letter Book N, f. 316. 107. I. Blanchard, ‘Sir Thomas and the “House of Gresham”: Activities of a mercer-Merchant Adventurer’, in F. Ames-Lewis, ed., Sir Thomas Gresham and Gresham College: Studies in the intellectual history of London in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (London, 1999), 14–15. 108. G.D. Ramsay, The city of London in international politics at the accession of Elizabeth Tudor (Manchester, 1975), 25. 109. G. Connell-Smith, ‘The ledger of Thomas Howell’, EcHR, 2nd series, 3 (1950–51), 363–70; G. Connell-Smith, Forerunners of Drake: A study of English trade with the Spanish in the early Tudor period (London, 1954), 69–70. 110. Oldland, ‘Clothmaking’, 259. 111. W-R. Baumann, The Merchant Adventurers and the continental cloth-trade (1560s–1620s) (Berlin and New York, 1990), 38–9. 112. Oldland, ‘Clothmaking’, 167–8. 113. H. Van der Wee, The growth of the Antwerp market and the European economy (fourteenth–sixteenth centuries), vol. 2 (Louvain, 1963), 2, 133. 114. Ibid, 197, n.302. Van der Wee was quoting O. De Smedt, De Engelse natie de Antwerpen in de xvie eeuw (1496–1582), vol. 2 (Antwerp, 1950–54), 356. 115. I. Blanchard, The international economy in the “age of the discoveries”, 1470–1570 (Stuttgart, 2009), 79–95. 116. F. Edler, ‘The Van der Molen, commission merchants of Antwerp: trade with Italy, 1538–44’, in J.L. Cate and E.N. Anderson, eds., Medieval and historiographical essays in honour of James Westfall Thompson (Chicago, 1938), 78–135; Ramsay, City of London, 8–11; J. Munro, ‘The Low Countries’ export trade in textiles with the Mediterranean basin’, The International Journal of Maritime History, 11 (1999), 14–24. 117. Ramsay, City of London, 22. 118. Ibid, 40–1. 119. Statutes, 5&6 Edward VI, c. 6. 120. J. Munro, ‘The “industrial crisis” of the English textile towns, c.  1290– c.1330’, in M. Prestwich, R. Britnell and R. Frame, eds., Thirteenth century England: VII (Woodbridge, 1999), 113, note 35. 121. Bridbury, Clothmaking, 106–9. 122. Statutes, 4 Edward IV, c.1; 6 Henry VIII, c. 9. 123. Crowfoot, Textiles, 44–5. 124. Prices rose with inflation from 1520: Gregory Clark’s broadcloth prices rose from 33d/yd. in 1500 to 50d/yd. in 1550; see G. Clark, ‘The macroeconomic aggregates for England, 1209–2008’, Research in Economic History, 27 (2010), Table A1. It is likely that coarse cloth prices rose far more slowly than finer cloth, as coarse wool prices remained low and competition remained intense. 125. Thorold Rogers, Prices, vol. 2, 536–9. 126. F.E. Baldwin, Sumptuary legislation and personal regulation in England (Baltimore, 1926), 47–50. 127. Ibid, 106. 128. D.L. Farmer, ‘Prices and wages, 1350–1500’, in AHEW, 512–5. 129. Reduced to 2.5lb in 1557–8. 130. Length and weight of cottons voided in 1557–8. Welsh cottons varied considerably in length, weight and price; see BL, Cotton ms., Titus B, 5, f. 242. The 1557–8 act required that cottons weigh at least one pound a yard. 131. The length and price of cottons is nearly always given in goads, generally thought to have been a yard and a half based on Lewis Roberts’ Map of Commerce published in 1707.

Woollens Production, English Advantage 49 132. P. Chorley, ‘The English assize of cloth: A note’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 59 (1986), 126. Long cloth was paid the alnage subsidy at 5d a cloth as was half-grain, grain at 6d and standard broadcloth at 4d. 133. E. Kerridge, Textile manufactures in early modern England (Manchester, 1985), 21. 134. For the history of scarlets see Munro, ‘Medieval scarlet’, 13–70. 135. Munro, ‘Technology’, 216. 136. Baldwin, Sumptuary, 79. 137. TNA, E 122/142/2. 138. L. Jefferson, ed., The medieval account books of the Mercers of London, vol. 2 (Farnham, 2009), 671, 849, 939. 139. Statutes, 4 Henry VII, c.8. 140. Bridbury, Clothmaking, 109. 141. Riley’s Memorials, 256; LMA, Letter Book I, ff. 176–7. 142. Statutes, 3 Henry VII, c. 11. 143. A. Sutton, ‘Order and fashion in clothes: the king, his household, and the city of London at the end of the fifteenth century’, TH, 22 (1991), 260, 263–4. 144. Consitt, Weavers, 204–5. 145. Statutes, 4 Edward IV, c. 1. 146. E. Spenser, Faerie Queene, bk. 7, c7, st. 31. 147. Kerridge, Manufactures, 19. 148. Ibid. 149. Ibid, 9. 150. Rogers, Prices, vol.  3, 501; vol.  4, 568. The calculation of the length of frieze in the fifteenth century was based on the purchase in 1494 at Sion at 6d/yd., and a roll of frieze at 16s. However, in the customs accounts a roll of frieze was standardised at London in 1488/9 at 13s. 4d, which would give the length of a roll closer to 26 yards; see TNA, E 122/78/7. 151. BL, Cotton ms., Titus B, f. 242; Statutes, 8 Eliz., c. 12. 152. T.C. Mendenhall, The Shrewsbury drapers and the Welsh wool trade in the XVI and XVII centuries (Oxford, 1953), 3–8; Jenkins, Welsh, 100. The 1557–8 cloth act prohibited weavers of Welsh cottons and linings from finishing the cloth themselves. 153. Kerridge, Manufactures, 5, 25. 154. P. Ramsey, Tudor economic problems (London, 1963), 49. 155. M. Boone, ‘L’industrie textile à Gand au bas moyen âge ou les resurrections successives d’une activité repute moribonde’, in M. Boone and W. Prevenier, eds., Drapery production in the late medieval Low Countries (Leuven-Apeldoorn, 1993), 32; J. Munro, ‘The origins of the English “new draperies”: The resurrection of an old Flemish industry’, in N.B. Harte, ed., The new draperies in the Low Countries and England, 1300–1800 (Oxford, 1997), 49. 156. J. Oldland, ‘Wool and cloth production in late medieval and early Tudor England’, EcHR, 67 (2014), 29, 30–8. 157. G. Espinas and H. Pirenne, eds., Receuil de documents relatifs à l’histoire de l’industrie drapière Flandre: Ire partie: des origins à l’époque bourguignonne, vol.  2 (Brussels, 1906–24), 305–8; G. de Poerck, La draperie medievale en Flandre et en Artois: technique et terminologie, vol. 1 (Bruges, 1951), 257–67; J. Munro, ‘Industrial protectionism in medieval Flanders: urban or national?’ in H.A. Miskimin, D. Herlihy and A.L. Udovitch, eds., The medieval city (New Haven and London, 1977), 256, table 13.2. 158. Munro, ‘Struggles’, 230; Munro, ‘Technology’, 49–51.

50  Woollens Production, English Advantage 159. H. de Sagher, Receuil de documents relatifs à l’histoire de l’industrie drapière en Flandre, 3 vols. (Brussels, 1906), vol. 2, 146, 151; Munro, ‘New draperies’, 49–51; J. Munro, ‘Spanish merino wools and the nouvelles draperies: an industrial transformation in the late medieval Low Countries’, EcHR, 58 (2005), 469–75. 160. J. Smail, ed., Woollen manufacturing in Yorkshire: The memorandum books of John Brierley cloth frizzer at Wakefield 1758–1762, vol. 155 (Yorkshire Archaeological Society, 1991), 5. 161. E. Coornaert, La draperie-sayetterie d’Honschoote (xive-xviiie siècles) (Paris, 1930), 11, 17, 28–9. 162. TNA, E 122/81/31a. 163. H.L. Gray, ‘The production and exportation of English woollens in the fourteenth century’, EHR, 24 (1924), 20–1; L. Stone, ‘State control in sixteenth-­ century England’, EcHR, 17 (1947), 119; J. Oldland, ‘ “Fyne worsted which is almost like silke”: Norwich’s double worsted’, TH, 42 (2011), 190. 164. Carus-Wilson and Coleman, Export, App. 5. 165. Hudson and Tingay, Norwich, 407; Statutes, 7 Edward IV, c.1; Cal. LBE, 252; Riley’s Memorials, 178; D. Keene, ‘The textile industry’, in M. Biddle, ed., Object and economy in medieval Winchester (Oxford, 1990), 206–7; M. Sellars, ed., York memorandum book, vol. 2 (Surtees Society, 1915), 195–6. 166. A.F. Sutton, ‘The early linen and worsted industry in Norfolk and the evolution of the London Mercers Company’, Norfolk Archaeology, 40 (1989), 203. 167. F.W. Weaver, ed., Somerset medieval wills (1383–1500), 16 (1901, Somerset Record Society), 23, 123. 168. K. Lacey, Medieval worsted textiles project, 1990–1991 (University of East Anglia, 1991), 68. 169. Ibid, 69. 170. M. Hayward, ed., The Great Wardrobe accounts of Henry VII and Henry VIII, 47 (LRS, 2012), 5, 7, 18. 171. Weaver, Somerset, 25, 29, 44, 61, 75, 87, 134, 163, 206, 282. 172. W. Skeat, ed., The works of Geoffrey Chaucer (Oxford, 1972), vol. 5, 29. 173. Ibid, vol. 4, 8. 174. For a comparison of cloth dimensions and weights of Flemish says and the new light draperies in 1578, see A.P. Usher, The industrial history of England (New York, 1920), 200.

3 Dress, the Wool Supply and Industry Regulation

Three over-arching factors influenced the course of textile development throughout the period, creating the environment that made English success possible: fashion and dress, the wool supply and government regulation. Fashion was one factor that determined what people wore, and changing fashions continually reshaped the market for textiles. Wools were always England’s ace card as graziers grew the wools that wool merchants and clothmakers wanted, fine as well as coarse. And England’s relatively unregulated environment permitted production specialisation and free trade so that each clothmaking area capitalised on its local strengths.

Fashion and Dress After food, and sometimes accommodation, clothing was the largest item in most people’s budget: to keep them warm and decent, to reflect status, to provide liveries for retainers, and to give alms. Cloth was also used for many non-clothing purposes such as home furnishings. Wage earners around 1300 spent 60–90 per cent of their income on food.1 Today the US consumer price index projects that households spend 3–5  per cent on apparel. The late-medieval aristocracy usually allocated somewhere between 8  per cent and 16  per cent of their budget to clothing.2 The wool stapler, George Cely spent approximately 18 per cent of his household expenditures on clothing between 1486 and 1488.3 Among the rich and ostentatious, expenditure on clothes and jewellery might account for 10–30 per cent of expenditures in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe.4 People dressed themselves as well as they could afford. They replaced leather by woollens, woollens by linen for undergarments, and woollens by silks for tunics and doublets. Softer fustian (a cotton/linen mix) was perceived to be preferable to linen for some clothing. Silks were more expensive than all but the most expensive woollens made with the finest English wools. Linens were usually, but not necessarily, less expensive than quality-finished woollens.

52  Dress, the Wool Supply, Industry Regulation Early-fourteenth century tax records at Shrewsbury confirm that, after food, peasants and artisans’ largest annual expenditure was for clothing. A total of 250 residents who had more than 120 pence in moveable assets (excluding fixed goods, work implements and debts) were assessed to pay the tax.5 Moveable wealth included larger farm animals, stores of grain, artisans’ work inventory, clothing other than for daily use, household utensils, brassware, jewellery and ready money.6 Clothes accounted for 14.1 per cent of their moveable wealth, an average of 62d per person assessed. Those with wealth of under £1 (240d) had 17 per cent of goods in clothes, worth on average 28d, while those with more than £4 (960d) owned clothes worth 195d, 12  per cent of their moveables. All valuations were probably underestimates but the relative value of goods was probably accurate. If animals, work inventory and grain supplies were excluded, the percentage of moveable wealth in clothes was far greater than 14 per cent. Clothes of the poorest were assessed as low as 12d, equivalent to a yard of coarse cloth. The poorer sort seem to have been spending the same percentage on clothes: so a doubling of wealth from one to two pounds was matched by a doubling in the value of their clothes, so it is likely that the average household continued to spend generously on clothes as their standard of living rose. Most woollen cloth was coarse. Fine luxury cloth can only have accounted for a small, but profitable, segment of the domestic market. If we consider this superfine market to be equivalent to cloths made exclusively of English wools at the end of the fourteenth century, and that 6.74 broadcloths could be made from a sack of wool, then the 18,514 sacks exported annually from 1391–5 would have produced a continental ultra-luxury market of 124,784 broadcloths.7 England cannot have accounted for much more than 4 per cent of the European population in 1500, so the English market for superfine cloth would not have been much more than 5,000 cloths a year, probably just 3 per cent of the total cloth consumed, if we assume domestic consumption of approximately 160,000 cloths.8 Fine clothing was a luxury good, purchased mainly by the aristocracy and the wealthiest in larger towns. Clothes were sufficiently valuable that they were handed down. Clothes were included in 48 per cent of latemedieval wills between 1327 and 1487, most of the testators being artisans and merchants.9 A  mercer, Thomas Bradbury, wrote to Elizabeth Stonor in 1479 that ‘the sarcenet is very fine. I think most profitable and most worshipful for you and shall last your life and your child’s after you, whereas harlotry of 40d or 44d a yard would not endure two seasons with you. Therefore for a little more cost, me thinketh most wisdom to take of the best’.10 Salesmanship remains unchanged. The Pastons, a fifteenth-century gentry family, were continually buying cloth in London, because the quality was not good enough in Norwich, even though it was the leading provincial town.11 There was a very wide range of prices.

Dress, the Wool Supply, Industry Regulation 53 Scarlets, the finest woollens dyed in grain, were perhaps twenty times more expensive than straits, cheap narrow cloth 12 yards long. London brokerage charges in the fifteenth century for cloths dyed in grain (scarlets) or ‘long’ superfine cloths were 40d on cloths worth £12–14; 12d for London medley cloth; 6d for Northampton and Ludlow cloths; 4d for West Country broadcloth, bastards and blankets; 2d for Guilfords and 1d for Taunton and Bridgewater straits.12 One other way to understand the wide price disparity between luxury cloths and less expensive mass-market cloths is to relate it to the purchasing power of an artisan, such as a master mason. From 1350 to 1450 first-quality cloth used at Winchester College would take a mason approximately 100 days’ wages, compared with second-quality broadcloth around 75 days’ wages. Even a third of a cloth that might be needed to clothe a peasant or artisan family annually would therefore take twenty-five days’ wages.13 Attitudes to dress woven from fine woollen cloth changed from exclusive to commonplace. In the thirteenth century, royalty wore woollens, particularly scarlets, as well as silks for their robes, as wardrobe purchases for Henry III at the fairs and elsewhere clearly demonstrate.14 The Great Wardrobe was buying large quantities of woollen cloth in 1212, and the early-fourteenth century accounts clearly show that the finest imported woollens were still purchased for the king’s personal use.15 Scarlet was the Rolls-Royce of clothing. An early-thirteenth century Athurian romance described it well: ‘(it) was more costly than any other in the world. It was coloured by the purest dye and always looked like a flaming fire: there was no sign of fading. It was soft to the touch, for the thread was smooth, fine, tightly woven, and made from choice, gleaming wool . . . nothing marred its beauty: it was faultless’.16 The aristocracy wore sets of clothes, called robes, made out of the same fabric, which included as many as six different garments, but basically a tunic and lined outerwear called a supertunic, often with a hood. A middling aristocrat in 1298, Osbert de Spaldington, owned a wardrobe that included robes of ray, perse, and white camelin, a scarlet supertunic and six pairs of hose.17 From the 1340s, there was a fundamental fashion change as inner garments started to hug the contours of the body rather than simply drape from the shoulders to the ankle, and this opened up an age of experimentation that continues today.18 For everyday wear at the court of Edward III, tunics became shorter, and men wore hose.19 Middling classes aped their betters to the extent their resources, and the sumptuary laws, allowed. Scarlets and half-grain (cloth dyed with a mixture of scarlet/kermes and other dyes) cloths continued to be worn by the rich and powerful until black became fashionable at northern courts at the end of the fifteenth century.20 The value of kermes dye imports that produced the famed scarlet, at London and Southampton in 1438–9 was £2,531, almost as much as the £3,164 for the primary dye, woad.21 In the fifteenth century one of the largest markets for high-quality woollens was

54  Dress, the Wool Supply, Industry Regulation ceremonial robes for urban officials.22 Even the wife of a London tailor in 1467 owned two gowns of brown and murrey, partly dyed in grain.23 The pace of change in fashions accelerated, particularly in the second half of the fifteenth century, with improvements in tailoring and techniques of decoration. Sumptuary laws reflect the slowly declining social value of woollens. The first law in 1363, soon after the Black Death, was in response to the perception that there was ‘outrageous and excessive apparel of divers people against their estate and degree’, that might lead to ‘the great destruction and impoverishment of all the land’.24 Grooms and servants were restricted to woollen cloth less than £1 6s 8d; yeoman and handicraftsmen to cloth below £2; esquires, gentlemen and merchants with property of £1,000 were allowed broadcloth to £3; and knights with less than £200 a year could wear woollens valued at £4 and above. This had the effect of limiting cloth dyed with grain to the richest knights and those above them. In the 1350s the best broadcloth was worth £4 4s 8d and second-quality cloth £2 5s, so there was a clear distinction between woollen cloth worn by labourers and people of distinction.25 A century later, in 1465, the only restriction on woollen cloth in the sumptuary legislation was that those with incomes of less than forty shillings a year were forbidden to wear scarlet, and agricultural labourers and servants were limited to wearing broadcloth worth less than two shillings a yard (£2 a cloth), and hose worth 14d a yard (the width of kersey was a yard, compared with 1¾ yards for broadcloth). Meanwhile the average price of cloth had significantly declined, so that in the 1460s first-quality broadcloth was only £2 1s, and second quality, £1 17s.26 Even the lower classes could now buy much better-quality woollens than a century before, making it less fashionable for the aristocracy. As today, high cost was a reason for purchase, because it signalled exclusivity and paraded wealth. For scarlets, it was the cost of the dye that made the difference. As silks became more varied they took over the ‘most expensive’ spot. The decline in woollens’ status was therefore a result of competition from other fabrics, particularly silks. Silk was widely purchased in the thirteenth century, but its availability was less than woollens, and the full range of silk fabrics had to wait until the fourteenth century.27 Silk imports increased significantly in the fifteenth century as Florentine galleys started to call at Southampton.28 Silk had so many advantages for those seeking fashion and status: high cost that brought exclusivity, tremendous variety of pattern, design and finish that allowed silks to be offered in many forms: baudekins, camacas, velvets, satins, taffetas etc., and greater availability as silk manufacture spread from Lucca throughout Italy and Spain. Relatively unchanging woollens became staid. Silk-twisting frames, powered by water wheels in the earlyfourteenth century to mechanise the process required to give the necessary high degree of twist in the silk, replaced perhaps several hundred hand reelers by two or three operators.29 By the early-sixteenth century

Dress, the Wool Supply, Industry Regulation 55 silks were now within the means of the gentry, merchants and urban professionals. It is important not to exaggerate the transition from woollens to silks as an analysis of the Great Wardrobe accounts reveal (Table 3.1), because declining aristocratic usage was offset by purchase for liveries, clothes given to servants that visually reinforced association with their lord.30 Woollens predominate in the drapery account as do silks in the mercery account. There is a trend from woollens to silks but it is modest, especially after the mid-fourteenth century. Silks were already extensively used by the royal household by 1300, and the king continued to wear expensive scarlets throughout the period. Cloth purchased by the Great Wardrobe in 1438–9 and by John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, from 1462 to 1469, and 1481 to 1482 show a similar balance between woollens and silks.31 For the Duke of Norfolk woollens accounted for 42 per cent of the cloth budget, silks 39 per cent, cloth of gold 18  per cent, and 1  per cent for the odd piece of fustian, buckram and canvas. While as a generalisation silks were more expensive than woollens, the cheaper silks, especially the camlets, which were probably a worsted/silk mixture, were as cheap as coloured broadcloths and the woollens dyed in grain were as expensive as some satins and damasks. Expensive velvets, on the other hand, were four times the cost of coloured broadcloths. Great Wardrobe accounts for Henry VII and Henry VIII tell us about courtly usage of woollens and their price.32 The Wardrobe kept a stock of satins and linens, but bought woollens on an ‘as-required’ basis. The king now rarely, if ever, wore woollens, even scarlets. In 1510–11 10 yards of scarlet were purchased to make hose for the king, and a violet-in-grain gown was made for the king’s Maundy.33 Scarlet was still used for ceremonial robes issued to senior officials at the Exchequer and Keeper of the Wardrobe: for half gowns and cloaks for the king’s squires and pages, and to line doublets and stomachers for some senior members of the household. But woollens’ primary clothing use was to provide liveries:

Table 3.1 The allocation of Great Wardrobe funds among drapery, furs and mercery, in per cent

1300–49 1350–99 1400–99

Number of surviving wardrobe accounts

Drapery

Furs

Mercery

11 3 10

37.7 32.5 31.8

22.0 20.0 21.3

40.3 47.5 46.8

Source: TNA, E 101/364/4, 359/18, 376/30, 379/12, 380/14, 398/24, 384/6, 385/1, 386/5, 390/1, 391/14, 392/3, 394/12, 402/13, 405/14, 405/22, 407/1, 407/13, 409/2, 409/6, 409/12; TNA, LC 9/50, f.10–37; BL Add. Ms. 17; BL, Harley 478.

56  Dress, the Wool Supply, Industry Regulation russet (red-brown) and tawny (orange-brown) to members of the chamber and privy chamber, and parti-coloured green and white liveries for servants around the king. In terms of the quantity of broadcloth, as much was used to cover horses and barges as was made up into clothing. Cottons and frieze were used for linings, covering horses, and occasionally frieze for a riding coat. Kersey was used for hose, but also for linings, making cassocks and coats. When the king went to France in 1544 he issued liveries of red and yellow kersey, using more than 5,000 yards.34 The lowest-priced cloth purchased by the Great Wardrobe was wadmal at 4d/yd. Narrow cottons and frieze could be purchased for 6–7d/yd., but rose to 10d/yd. for coloured frieze, and 16d/yd. for russet or black cottons. Kersey was mainly purchased from 20d to 32d/yd. The cheapest broadcloth was motley at 16d/yd. White and green cloth to cover barges was bought for 34–38d/yd., 42–48d/yd. was paid for the cloth that covered the horses. Coloured cloth for clothing ranged from 48d/yd. for russet, tawny, and green and white liveries to 108d/yd. for the fine blue cloth issued to make gowns and hoods for members of the Order of the Garter. The price of scarlet and half-grain cloth went from 106 d/yd to 160d/yd. The wearing of ceremonial robes by the urban elite for ceremonial occasions increased as guilds became more structured. Six hundred of London’s finest greeted Edward IV on his return from France in 1475.35 These robes and hoods were changed every one to three years, and this frequently required a change in colour for each craft.36 London’ richest company, the Mercers, even dressed their officials in cloths of grain. In 1461–2 six officials were given a small yardage of murrey-in-grain, and samples of this cloth were distributed to the senior members of the company.37 Perhaps more typically, twenty-four mercers who rode out to meet and greet Edward IV, after the battle of Towton in 1461, were each given 2½ yards of green broadcloth at four shillings a yard.38 While the aristocracy wore more silk and fewer woollens, peasants wore more and better woollens. Peasants around 1300 would have worn loosely fitting worsted tunics, an over-garment called a supertunic, and a few might also have worn linen undergarments. Most wore rough, undyed homespun. Fashion, higher standards of living and lower prices changed the quantity and quality of peasant dress after the Black Death.39 A ‘basket of consumables’ costing 155.6d in 1361–5 had fallen as low as 104.4d in 1441–5, and had only risen to 111.2d in 1495–1500.40 The fall in wool prices from 1380 to 1520 made woollen cloth more accessible. The late-fifteenth century peasant wore the more tailored doublet and hose, and outer garments, usually cloaks with a hood. Just about all clothes were coloured. Linen undergarments were now widely worn. Woollen broadcloth was always the principal cloth worn by the general population. The Venetian, Alessandro Magno, visiting London in 1562, wrote in his journal, ‘It is never very hot in these parts, and in the time we were there, which was the hottest season, and in the height of

Dress, the Wool Supply, Industry Regulation 57 summer, I always wore woollen cloth’.41 Middling and lower classes were much better dressed in the early-sixteenth century than they had been in the thirteenth. A writer of the time of Henry VIII commented, ‘I knowe when a servynge manne was content to goo in a Kendall cote in sommer and a frysecote in winter, and with playne white hose made meete for his bodye. . . . Now he will looke to have at the leaste for somere a cote of the finest clothe that may be gotten for money and his hosen of the finest kerseye, and that of some straunge dye, as Flanders dye or Frenche puke, that a prynce or greate lorde canne were no better if he were (wear) clothe’.42 Liveries became much more important. An average aristocratic household tripled in size between 1300 and 1500 which must have been accompanied by a rapid increase in the distribution of liveries.43 It was not just woollens but linen usage that soared after the Black Death, most of which was imported. Linen alien imports are estimated to have been 200,000 ells in 1384, 380,000 in 1390, and 420,000 in 1480–1.44 William Shelton’s London shop contained nearly 300,000 ells of linen in 1448.45 Linen imports were valued at an estimated £6–7,000 in 1390, and £66,666 in 1530, a tenfold increase.46 In 1559–60 London’s linen imports were valued at £61,673 13s 4d, and fustians at £23,349 10s, for a total of £85,023 3s 4d.47 The change to doublet and hose in the fifteenth century was a catalyst for increased kersey production, as its twilled weave allowed the cloth to stretch. The quality of kersey now came to be regulated in the sumptuary laws: in 1465 agricultural labourers and servants were restricted to cloth worth 14d a yard. In 1510 the regulations were more detailed: serving men could wear hose worth 20d, but servants, shepherds, labourers, servants to artificers outside a city and farmers worth less than £10 a year were limited to hose worth only 10d. In 1533 small farmers might buy cloth for hose worth 2s a yard, while servants had to be content with hose worth 16d a yard.48

Changes in the Wool Supply Now, moving from one end of the business system to the other, from clothes to wool, the raw material on which everything else depended. A traditional saying of woolmen and clothiers was, ‘I thank my god and ever shall, it was the sheep that paid for all’.49 Wool was always the largest cost in cloth manufacture, typically 30–40 per cent of manufacturing cost, and it determined the quality of cloth; fine wool, fine cloth; coarse wool, coarse cloth. Costs were much higher for continental draperies using English wools with the imposition of duties from 1275 onwards, and after several fourteenth-century increases, wool might account for 50 per cent of total cloth cost.50 Wool accounted for 57 per cent of production of very heavy, unfinished, white cloth for the monks at Beaulieu abbey around 1270, but only 35 per cent for coloured cloth at Laleham

58  Dress, the Wool Supply, Industry Regulation manor in 1294–5.51 In 1386 wool was 36 per cent of the cost of a finished tawny at Colchester.52 Michael Zell estimated that wool accounted for 36  per cent of manufacturing costs for Kentish coarse cloth in the 1560s.53 In the mid-sixteenth century cheap Spanish wools used in the Medici drapery made up only 30 per cent of total manufacturing costs.54 It was the ability of English graziers to meet demand for various quality wools, and of clothiers to make cloth that their customers wanted from the wool the graziers grew, that made English cloth so competitive. Consequently, the composition of the wool supply was constantly evolving as it responded to market needs. The growth in demand for fine, short wools to fuel the Flemish woollen industry at the end of the twelfth century was satisfied it seems initially by Cistercian abbeys. This was specialised production that supplemented growing medium-length wools for the worsteds that most people wore. In the thirteenth century the transition to serge required shorter wools for the weft and the expansion of woollens in the fourteenth century further stimulated demand for shorter wools. After the Black Death three somewhat conflicting forces influenced the quality of the wool supply: falling wool prices that forced graziers to find economies in livestock farming at a time when demesne farming was giving way to tenant farming; a reduction in exports of fine wools; and the conversion of arable to pasture that increased yields, but lengthened and coarsened wools. The consequent decline in the quality of the wool supply was fortunately matched by increased demand for lower-quality cloth, as increasing domestic demand for cloth steadily replaced falling fine-wool exports. Pasture sheep produced heavier fleeces, with longer, straighter, coarser wools. As arable was converted to pasture when population fell dramatically in the century following the Black Death, the percentage of pasture to field wools increased, and therefore the percentage of coarser to fine wool also rose. In 1548 a memorandum to the government recommending a sheep tax came up with the very rough estimate that half the sheep in England were now grazing on enclosed grassland, and the other half on the commons or common arable.55 Medieval sheep produced lightweight fleeces, about 1.5 pounds  per fleece in the earlyfourteenth century, falling to 1.25lb in the mid-fifteenth, rising to 1.9lb in the mid-sixteenth, and then steadily becoming heavier in the following centuries to reach 3.5lb in the mid-eighteenth.56 Lastly the wool supply must have been affected by specialisation in cloth production, as each area concentrated on supplying clothiers’ specific needs, and clothiers used local wools to become more competitive in a particular segment of the market. Wool quality was also a function of sorting. Wool fleeces were often graded for quality across the fleece, with the refuse (scrap) wool and locks often removed.57 At Beaulieu Abbey, for example, in 1269–70, monks were classifying wool into good, coarse, coarse locks, warpelock

Dress, the Wool Supply, Industry Regulation 59 and gardus (refuse wool); and at Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire in 1457 there were six grades that included, grey, black and refuse.58 Wools were generally divided into fine, medium and coarse, and cloths often similarly described. Thorold-Rogers’ cloth price series for the fifteenth century clearly distinguished first-, second- and third-quality cloth.59 The clothmaker sorted his wools so that the finest were used for the weft, and slightly longer wools for the warp threads. As the market for the very best cloth declined dramatically it was not the quality of the finer wools that was important, but rather the ease of access and variety of wools as well their low price that was valued. English clothmakers were skilled at matching the price of wools to the quality of cloth they were making, whether it be fine, good, medium or coarse. England grew the finest wool. In the thirteenth-century Cistercians, other monastic orders and many lay demesnes across the country were able to produce very high-quality wools for export through specialisation, investment in good farming practices and wool sorting. Late-­thirteenth and early-fourteenth century price lists show a relatively narrow price range for fine wools across many counties.60 However, the decline in demand for these fine wools narrowed the production area by the latefifteenth century. The most highly regarded wools were those of the Ryeland breed from the vales of Hereford, and the March wool of Shropshire and Staffordshire that were cotted (placed in sheep cotes) throughout the year, followed by Old Cotswolds that were cotted in winter.61 These March wools, ‘that with silkworm’s thread for smallness does compare’, whose fleece weighed only a pound, benefited from sheep being sparsely fed on the hilly terrain of the Welsh Marches.62 In the sixteenth century, when English clothmakers at last penetrated the ultra-luxury continental cloth market, it is unsurprising that nearby Worcester became the leading supplier of unfinished, long, superfine cloths sold at Antwerp. As Leland commented, ‘The wealthe of the towne of Worcester standeth most by drapering, and noe towne of England at this present tyme maketh so many cloathes yearly, as this towne doth’.63 The average price of exported wools was set at good Cotswolds as the superior March wools were offset by lower-priced Middle Cotswold and Lindsey wools. In the 1499 staple price list, North Holland wools were priced at 64 per cent of Gloucester Cotswolds, other Lincolnshire wools at 44 per cent.64 At the end of the fifteenth century when there was a sudden increase in demand for fine wools, both at home and abroad, their prices spiked as graziers were presumably reluctant to re-invest in these scrawny sheep. Superior luxury broadcloths made by the leading continental draperies relied exclusively on the best English wools until the mid-fifteenth century by which time Spanish merino wools had sufficiently improved in quality that some draperies began to blend them with English wools. Continental draperies could afford to buy only the most expensive wools in the fifteenth century, as duties were fixed rather than based on wool values. For

60  Dress, the Wool Supply, Industry Regulation the finest cloth, English wools were a necessity, whereas English mediumpriced wools now became too expensive for standard broadcloth. It has been estimated that this gave English quality cloth an estimated 25–30 per cent cost advantage over those continental draperies that were dependant on English wool.65 The improvement in Spanish wools caused an English merchant to comment in the early-sixteenth century that ‘Spanysh woll is almost as good as English wool, which may well be soo, by that Spayn hath housbonded ther wolle frome wurse to better, and England from better to wurse’.66 Wool exports in the 1540s were equivalent to making fewer than 20,000 cloths. After the mid-sixteenth century high-quality English wool ceased to be a competitive advantage, but now the growth segments of the woollen industry were lighter, worsted cloths that did not require high-quality wools, and coarser, cheaper cloths. By the end of the century merino wools now matched English quality, and soon surpassed them as English wool quality continued to decline.67 The Low Countries from the twelfth through to the fifteenth centuries, and Italians in the fifteenth century, took most of the English fine clip, while most good, middling and coarse wools were used to make English cloth. Staplers had to go to extraordinary lengths to force continental wool buyers to take any middling-quality wool, lowering their price and accepting that they would make no money on these wools.68 It was only in the early sixteenth century when there was a resurgence in production of fine English cloth for export that domestic clothmakers competed for good wool with London staplers and Italian merchants buying wool for the continental market. West Country clothiers were able to buy goodquality wools locally in Cotswolds, but also from the Midlands, particularly Lincolnshire, even though its wool quality was slowly declining.69 The East Anglian broadcloth industry likely sourced most of its wool from the Midlands. Berkshire wool improved as Reading, Newbury and Hampshire broadcloth and kersey clothiers started to make high-quality cloth. There was still good wool to be found in many counties, and this accessibility must have favoured English clothiers. The Johnson brothers, mid sixteenth-century graziers and staplers, were able to find good wools in Northamptonshire which they sold in Calais, selling off some of the poorer wool to Suffolk and Kentish clothiers.70 Michael Zell has suggested that sixteenth-century Wealden fine clothmakers could find some of the wools they needed from local sources, either from places like Romney Marsh or local wool dealers, but leading clothiers also bought quality wools from London staplers.71 Coarser wool became more important as domestic consumption rose in the fifteenth century. Wool prices, which had risen in the 1360s and 1370s above their pre-plague level, fell dramatically in the 1380s and then tended to drift downwards for most of the fifteenth century. This can only have been a catalyst for cloth industry growth, especially for cheaper cloths, as wool prices fell even faster than grain prices.72 Cheap

Dress, the Wool Supply, Industry Regulation 61 wools were an incentive to use more wool in the cloth, and indeed English broadcloth became steadily heavier over time, from an estimated 50lb in the early-fourteenth century to 64lb in the mid-sixteenth century. Heavier cloth was warmer and more durable. Clothmakers found coarse wools in many places. Even good fleeces contained inferior wools. At the turn of the sixteenth century inferior Cotswolds remys wool (refuse wool that was from the legs and head of the sheep and substandard fleeces) was priced at around two thirds of good wool.73Wools were graded by quality—good, medium and locks— with locks around 60  per cent the price of good in the late-thirteenth century.74 The poorest wools tended to be found in the far western and northern counties by the fifteenth century. In the hilly areas of Cornwall, Wales and north-east England, where the sheep were left to roam, the fleeces were coarser and hairier. These low-cost wools contributed to the development of a large cottons and frieze industry in Wales, Cheshire, Lancashire and Cumbria. In the 1450s, based on T.H. Lloyd’s limited price series, Northumberland/Durham wools, some of the coarsest in the country, were 48 per cent the price of lesser Cotswolds wools.75 Refuse and lamb’s wool was made up into cloth; and thrums or flocks, a by-product of the weaving and shearing processes, was often added illegally to the cloth to give it weight, or re-spun to produce a very poorquality weft.76 In 1514 flocks were not permitted to be used in weaving except for certain cheap cloths, such as kendals, carpenal-whites, tavistocks, Cornish cloths, cottons, linings and frieze.77 In 1531 it was forbidden to wind flocks and lambs’ wool, and again in 1552 making cloth from lambswool was prohibited.78 In 1533 a commission was set up to investigate West Riding’s practice of weaving cloth with flocks. So ubiquitous was flock usage, so difficult was it to find clothiers to cooperate with the investigation, and so important was it to the local industry, that no corrective regulations were passed.79 Longer, straighter worsted wools were important in the thirteenth century, but much less so thereafter. When Edward III was allocated 30,000 sacks by parliament, the densest concentration of sheep was in Norfolk, partly because it had the highest population but also because it produced worsted wool.80 The East Anglian breed was well suited for the poorquality heathland and arable stubble that produced medium length, straighter, coarser combing wool for worsteds.81 It is unsurprising therefore that it was only in Norfolk that the worsted industry remained more important than woollens throughout the period. In 1541 legislation was passed to restrict export of these worsted wools, as continental light draperies were imitating fine Norwich double worsteds.82 In contrast with our detailed knowledge of how staplers bought, sorted, packed and shipped wool as it moved from graziers or West Country wool markets to Calais, we are starved of information on the workings of the internal distribution system: how the woolwinders (wool gatherers and

62  Dress, the Wool Supply, Industry Regulation sorters) and woolshuters (valuers, packers and shippers) who combined were knowns as woolpackers/woolmongers/woolmen worked with graziers, clothiers, woolbroggers (wooldrivers), staplers and other marketers of wool across the country.83 We can assume that a system developed to efficiently distribute wool and to ensure that the clothworker could trust that he received the wool he needed, but no historian has taken on the task of fully explaining the process and how it evolved in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Many clothmakers bought wools directly from graziers or at wool markets, and woolbroggers supplied the independent weaver with small amounts of wool on a regular basis, even though he was often accused, as a middleman, of raising wool prices. But clothiers in the Home Counties needed to access distant wools and had to trust their quality. Woolmen were competing and cooperating with staplers in assembling wool until 1473 when Staplers were able to have an act passed preventing any packers of wool from buying wool.84 As Lloyd observed, ‘it was essential that woolpackers be accepted as indifferent by both buyer and seller’, but this idealised role was difficult to achieve, as they were caught in the awkward middle, representing the London stapler but usually under the scrutiny of graziers in the country. Woolmen were sometimes accused of fraudulent activity, usually because the statement of the contents of wool sarplars, bales containing 2–2¾ sacks, differed from the wool inside. To help solve the problem in 1482 government ordered that all wool be packed in the county where it was produced.85 This may have disrupted the industry as it made it more difficult for woolmen to assemble cloth from various places, and may have provided an opportunity for staplers to aggressively serve the domestic industry. Staplers sold some of their cloth to clothiers, but we do not know their degree of involvement in this internal trade. Staplers’ numbers increased from about 257 members in 1472 to almost 500 who were granted a pardon for offences in 1505.86 Membership seems to have declined in the sixteenth century with the renewed decline of London’s wool exports as London mercers complained in 1527 that Stapler’s membership had fallen from 400 to 140, and there were only 195 staplers exporting wool in 1558–9.87 This spike in membership at the end of the fifteenth century may have indicated that the company was now serving larger clothiers at a time when their wool exports were stagnating, and that their membership now included more woolwinders and woolpackers as London woolmen were now in decline. It may have been that staplers’ attempt to control the internal market for wool failed as clothiers chose to either work directly with graziers or buying at wool markets, employing their own country woolmen, thereby undercutting and by-passing staplers. In summary, the interdependence of the wool and cloth markets over the period was an important factor in the eventual strength of the English cloth industry. In the thirteenth century wool growing was geared to two

Dress, the Wool Supply, Industry Regulation 63 distinct markets: fine, short, curly wools for export, and medium-length wools for the domestic production of serges and worsteds. The wool market was primarily geared to serve foreign wool buyers, while cheaper wools were broadly available for domestic use. Given the high levels of profitability of late-thirteenth century demesne sheep farming, landlords were prepared to invest in sheepcotes, shepherds, feed, medical care and good breeding practices that not just raised wool yields and birthing rates, but also maintained the high wool quality that Italian merchants, who dominated the wool trade by the end of the century, demanded.88 Wool-price schedules, thoroughly analysed by John Munro, show that the differences between the prices of regional wools was far less in the late-thirteenth to early-fourteenth centuries than it was at the end of the fifteenth. In the 1297 exchequer schedule, prices for the counties ranged between £7 and £12 per sack; in 1454 between £2 12s and £13.89 It was possible in the early-fourteenth century to purchase good-quality wools from most counties. Mid-fourteenth century price schedules still show that wools from across the country were exported, sustaining demand for both high- and mid-quality wools.90 Wool markets were transformed from 1370 to 1500 as a result of declining wool exports, rising cloth exports and the changing characteristics of the domestic market. In the early-fourteenth century wool exports may have accounted for more than 60 per cent of the wool produced, but this had declined to only 6  per cent by the mid-sixteenth century. The average quality of wools exported as cloth, or needed for the domestic market, was far lower than it was for exported wool. English cloth merchants, denied access to the Flemish market and seeing a declining ultra-luxury market, wisely made little effort to develop the marketing networks, quality control and reputation required to sell fine cloths in continental markets, dominated by Low Countries and Florentine merchants, until the late-fifteenth century. Consequently, in the fourteenth and early-fifteenth centuries most of the cloth shipped by denizens from eastern ports was of middling- to low-quality cloth, and Hanseatic merchants looked to England for cheap, narrow kersey and straits.91 The Genoese were buying more high-quality cloth, but the Venetians and Florentines also bought mostly cheaper cloths.92 Bristol, London and Spanish merchants, serving the Iberian Peninsula, shipped higher-quality cloths.93 English merchants were able to sell more quality, unfinished cloth finished in Antwerp towards the end of the century, as the European cloth market revived. The effect of the changing demand for cloth on the wool supply is clearly illustrated by the changes in wool growing in individual regions. Yorkshire wool quality fell dramatically from 1357 to 1454.94 Hull’s wool exports declined after 1370, but at no faster rate than other ports before 1450, but then they declined precipitously. It may have been that Yorkshire agricultural conditions were less favourable than those of the

64  Dress, the Wool Supply, Industry Regulation Cotswolds, but the falling demand for quality wool, both locally and for export, can only have accelerated the rate of decline. Distance from London made it more difficult for its clothmakers to compete with southern clothiers making quality cloth. In 1484, when standards were set for York’s quality broadcloth, it was stipulated that only Cotswolds and Lincolnshire wool be used.95 In the sixteenth century Yorkshire and Westmoreland found new markets for their cheap wool used for its dozens, kersey and penistones, as did Lancashire for making its cottons and frieze. In contrast to Yorkshire, Cotswolds wool maintained its value because there was continued demand for quality wool from West Country clothiers. Initially it was demand from Bristol that kept the quality level high, as it was the leading cloth port after the Black Death, shipping quality cloth mostly to Gascony and Portugal.96 The average value of Bristol broadcloth was 47s 10d in 1378–9, much higher than the average price of cloth sold from eastern ports in the 1390s.97 At the end of the fourteenth century, the West Country (Somerset, Western Wiltshire, Bristol and Gloucestershire) was the dominant clothmaking area in the country, not just serving western ports but providing good-quality cloth to the Italians at Southampton, and selling quality cloth on the London market. As a result the price of fine Cotswolds wool held up much better than Lincolnshire wools from the mid-fourteenth to mid-fifteenth centuries. Edmund Fryde has traced the importance of fine Cotswolds wool to the Italians who stopped buying Lincolnshire wool in the fifteenth century. The Genoese, who bought better-quality cloth than either Florentines or Venetians looked to the Cotswolds for their cloth.98High wool prices sustained demesne sheep farming on large estates like those of the bishopric of Worcester until falling sales and prices in the depressed mid-fifteenth century economy finally forced them to lease their pastures.99 As demand for quality broadcloths and kerseys rose on the Antwerp market, the quality Cotswolds wool-growing area expanded to include Berkshire. The price of the best wools rose in the second half of the fifteenth century, as wool exports stabilised when the European economy revived, and some West Country clothiers, and clothmakers in Worcester, Reading and the Kentish Weald started to make fine broadcloths. The quality of Berkshire wools seems to have steadily improved to the extent that they were superior to Lincolnshire wools by the end of the century. Also some Surrey and Kent wools rose in value, and were good enough to be included in the short 1499 list of exported wools, although the finest Kentish cloth must have also been made from wools purchased from London dealers.100

Regulation and Taxation Lastly, it is important to consider the role of government, and regulation in particular, because it proved, over the longer term, to be positive for

Dress, the Wool Supply, Industry Regulation 65 the English industry and a negative for many continental draperies. There was low taxation of cloth exports, a welcome mat for alien artisans and merchants, and unrestricted movement of cloth around the country which ultimately led to regional specialisation, rural industrialisation and the efficient centralised distribution of cloth through London. Towns often supervised the movement and sale of cloth but rarely prevented rural cloth entering towns. On the surface there was a plethora of regulation at all levels of government from which we can learn so much about the industry, and without which it would have been very difficult to write this survey. The regulation of the cloth industry steadily increased as production became specialised and organised by urban guilds of weavers, fullers, shearmen and dyers, and as cloth exports became more important to the English economy. Central, civic and guild governments regulated the cloth industry in order to tax it, control it, organise its trade, solve production and quality problems; to settle knotty conflicts between guilds or even within guilds, and manage working conditions. The crown was primarily interested to stimulate the cloth trade so that its production and export could be taxed, but not excessively because a profitable cloth industry was needed to finance imports and to balance foreign trade. The town’s oligarchy was concerned to ensure that the profits from the sale of cloth fell mainly to merchants who controlled its trade, and to minimise the most egregious production practices. Crafts were determined to regulate conditions of work, to match supply of labour with demand for their services, to loosely supervise quality, and to manage discord between masters and journeymen. All this activity brought organisational stability and merchant hegemony in towns. Some regulation was undoubtedly beneficial. Central government tended to favour free trade, as it did in 1335 with the passage of the Statute of York which allowed domestic and alien merchants to trade throughout the country.101 A  few towns were able to negotiate, for a short period of time, some limits to rural competition, but never with the same success as did Flemish towns in the fourteenth century.102 Norwich was able to supervise worsted production across Norfolk and Worcester limited rural competition in the county through parliamentary statute in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.103 Merchants were always able to purchase rural cloth even as they regulated its sale within the town. Competition between town and town, and between town and countryside went on relentlessly, with the end result in most cases that urban clothmaking eventually declined; and rural clothworkers and clothiers were free to adapt, innovate and access merchant networks. Government intervention undoubtedly favoured the revival of the cloth industry in the first half of the fourteenth century. Edward III encouraged continental textile workers to bring their skills in order to make English cloth more competitive, and he placed short-term restrictions on cloth imports. He

66  Dress, the Wool Supply, Industry Regulation also raised wool duties that made alien cloth too expensive for the English market. Another protection that was positive for the industry was the monopoly given to the Merchant Adventurers Company over trade with the Low Countries. It was able to negotiate favourable trading rights at the Brabant fairs, organise trade efficiently, and arrange to have English cloth dyed and finished in Antwerp. There was a surge in cloth legislation from the mid-fifteenth century onwards as it became increasingly important to the economy, but it did little to impede competition. This reflected the increasing economic importance of the industry, and the relative ease with which narrow interests could secure passage of acts. But ease of passage was not matched by enforcement. For example, the wide-ranging 1484 cloth act, promoted by London, was repealed within a year as there was very little appetite for its enforcement outside the capital.104 This was the first act that set out detailed quality standards, not just for cloth dimensions, but for sealing cloth, and for finishing and dyeing.105 Alnagers, or sheriffs, were expected to bring faulty cloths before the mayors. Proceeds from the sale of seized cloths were to be split between the government and those who had uncovered faulty cloths. This act had obviously been put on the books at the initiative of London MPs since it reflected recently passed local ordinances, and it made excellent sense for London merchants who increasingly controlled the export trade, and had a vested interest in improving quality standards and the reputation of English cloth. It was of little interest to most of the country’s clothmakers who probably resented attempts by London merchants and local officials to interfere with their freedoms. It was simply not worth the effort for many to enforce the law. Within the year most sheriffs across the country were discharged from their obligations because the regulations ‘had been found hurtful’.106 It was only in the mid-sixteenth century that the tide turned in favour of greater regulation as London merchants, parliament and the crown joined forces to tighten control of the industry. Government for the most part favoured open competition in international trade, even though wider political considerations nearly always trumped narrower economic interests. Perhaps the best example was the determination to prevent bullion leaving the country in the fifteenth century, whatever effects it might have on the export of wool and cloth. It was government policy until the mid-sixteenth century to protect the alien cloth trade, in spite of merchant opposition and considerable anti-alien feeling in London. The Hanse enjoyed lower cloth duties than domestic merchants and extensive privileges in England which were not reciprocated on the continent. Spain enjoyed lower tax rates for thirty years in the late-fifteenth century, and duties for non-Hanseatic aliens were reduced for seven years in the 1530s and 1540s. Both these initiatives stimulated the alien cloth trade. This strong alien presence was beneficial, as alien merchants controlled marketing networks on the continent to

Dress, the Wool Supply, Industry Regulation 67 which denizen merchants had little access. It forced English merchants to improve their competitiveness by improving accounting methods, reducing costs, and seeking product and marketing opportunities that they might otherwise have been disinclined to grasp. The Hanse and Italians were also essential to the growth of the cloth industry as they provided most of the raw materials: ashes, oils, dyes and mordants, some of the cards for preparing the yarn, and even large shearmen’s shears. A series of treaties from 1470 to 1510 opened up markets, and the early Tudors maintained the flow of goods to and from Antwerp once it became critical to the nation’s burgeoning cloth trade. Edward IV was a merchant himself, as he personally traded wool, cloth and tin, and imported goods on his own account.107 The early-sixteenth century has been seen as one of the ‘great free trade periods of modern English history’.108 Henry VIII personally had little time for merchants, commenting to the Emperor that he was ‘to give no further credit unto them in their sutes, clamours and complaints thenne is convenient’, and pursued a foreign policy with scant respect for their interests.109 But there were limits to the dislocation of trade with Antwerp that was acceptable, and the trading links with Antwerp remained open during Henry VIII’s reign except for a brief hiatus in 1527–8. Successive governments wisely kept English cloth duties low. The fixed tax on cloth production, the alnage, was set at a low level of four pence for a short broadcloth, and only collected in areas of high cloth production. Export duties were lower on cloth than wool. In 1356–7 customs duties on wool and cloth were 61  per cent of royal revenue, and they were still around 50 per cent in the second half of the fourteenth century, with most of the income coming from wool rather than cloth.110 Government received little benefit from rising cloth values in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries as duty was paid on the number of cloths rather than their value. In the last five years of Henry VII’s reign, customs brought in £40,000 in revenue, just a little less than £42,000 from land, for a total revenue of £113,000, so customs had fallen to 35 per cent of the total.111 Customs revenues were lower under Henry VIII than they had been under Henry IV even as the value of exports had risen dramatically, and they continued to decline for most of his reign as wool exports fell.112 Henry VIII chose to rely on subsidies, forced loans, benevolences, selling monastic land and currency debasements to balance his books. Only in 1558 were cloth duties raised and made comparable to the tax on wool.113 Regulation and protectionism had worked well for the Flemish industry until the fifteenth century, but it ultimately made it resistant to change. Town cloth ordinances had set strict quality standards that led to strong cloth reputations; and when the Champagne fairs declined and trade turned down in the early-fourteenth century the Flemish industry survived far better than its competitors in northern France as it focused

68  Dress, the Wool Supply, Industry Regulation almost entirely on selling fine luxury cloth, and this required extensive regulation.114 When English exports revived in the mid-fourteenth century Flanders simply banned English cloth. When smaller draperies, nouvelles draperies, eroded the market share of the Ghent, Bruges and Ypres draperies, with cheaper luxury cloths, they also strictly regulated their own draperies. Even as the market for luxury woollens declined, Flemish draperies continued to compete successfully in international markets until the mid-fifteenth century. Textile markets eventually withered but other industries producing luxury products replaced woollens.115 Urban Flanders wisely concentrated on trading other value-added products, among them tapestries and a range of metal luxury goods, many of which were exported to England.116 It is therefore difficult to fault Flemish protectionism even though it ultimately failed to prevent its woollens’ decline. Flemish luxury woollens became uncompetitive, but in south-west Flanders, its worsted industry, the sayetterie, revived and prospered with little government interference. The English government did try to restrict woollens production to towns in the thirteenth century but it met with little success as most towns appeared to be in decline by the end of the century. Few English towns  developed a textile industry so dominant that its merchant oligarchy felt obliged to protect it, except for Worcester and Reading in the sixteenth century, and perhaps Norwich, Salisbury and Coventry in the fifteenth century. Consequently, urban clothworkers were always forced to face competition from rural cloth. London clothworkers, for example, never accounted for more than 5 per cent of its occupational base, and it rarely exceeded 15–20 per cent in provincial towns.117 English towns therefore rarely attempted to regulate their cloth industries with the same dedication as their continental rivals, although guilds made some attempts to set quality standards. Anybody who studies this medieval industry is soon struck by the fact that nearly every medieval cloth town in the Low Countries passed ordinances that controlled the quality and structure of its cloth industry, especially with respect to the wools used. Comparable ordinances were virtually non-existent in England, except perhaps for Bristol in the fourteenth century and Coventry in the sixteenth. English cloth had to conform to cloth assizes and statutes that determined width and length, enforced by a government official, the alnager.118 The earliest guild records that have survived, those from Leicester in the mid-thirteenth century, were concerned with monitoring quality of weaving and fulling, and the fullers were expected to report any faults to the mayor. One way guilds hoped to maintain an acceptable level of quality was to make production visible. At Bristol the weavers could not work at night and the looms had to be at street level in sight of the people. In late-fifteenth century London tenters were restricted to two places where they could be easily observed.119

Dress, the Wool Supply, Industry Regulation 69 If a civic cloth industry was prospering and a reputation developing, guilds and civic authorities often undertook search of its members to maintain quality, and marked and sealed their cloths.120 As early as 1346, Bristol weavers were required to mark their cloths, presumably so that any faults could be easily traced back to its perpetrators. In 1381 London started to place a seal on all its cloths, and a statute was passed to reinforce this in 1402 in order to prevent provincial cloths claiming London provenance. York’s Council required fullers in 1484 to ‘serche the said walking shall have a seale or token that all and every cloth and clothes made and to be made within this said citie and libertiez of the same may be knowen for good and sufficient cloth or clothez’, and that ‘they to have a difference for the draperie of this citie evidently to be knowen as wele beyonde the see as on this side (of) the see’.121 By the second half of the fifteenth century, a few enlightened civic governments realised, in the light of the success of clothiers’ organisation of rural clothmaking, that conflict between artisans and merchants had to be replaced by cooperation, and urban clothmaking had to focus on the finest cloth that could afford higher urban labour and infrastructure, and needed the specialised skills that could be best assembled in towns. Norfolk worsted manufacture grew from the 1390s, concentrating on weaving expensive double worsteds. Worsted weavers, dyers and shearmen prospered as did Norwich mercers who sold worsteds across the country and developed export markets out of Yarmouth. The surviving Worsted Weavers’ Books show the close supervision of weavers and shearmen production of double worsted. Worcester and Reading expanded their luxury woollens industries in the sixteenth century. Freedom at Reading was restricted to around seventy-five people who had the right to trade and supervise cloth production, but weavers, dyers and fullers were prominent among the burgesses. At Worcester, weavers, fullers and clothiers had common ordinances.

Notes 1. C. Dyer, ‘Luxury goods in medieval England’, in B. Dodds and C.D. Lilly, eds., Commercial activity, markets and entrepreneurs in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2011), 223. 2. C. Dyer, Standards of living in the later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1989), 70. 3. A. Hanham, The Celys and their world (Cambridge, 1985), 328. 4. C. Cipolla, Before the industrial revolution (New York, 1980), 28. 5. D. Cromarty and M. Cromarty, eds., The wealth of Shrewsbury in the early fourteenth century: Six local subsidy rolls 1297 to 1332: Text and commentary (Stroud, 1993), 89–99. 6. Ibid, 40. 7. J. Munro, ‘Medieval woollens: The western European woollen industries and their struggles for international markets, c.1000–1500’, in D. Jenkins, ed., The Cambridge history of western textiles, vol.  1 (Cambridge, 2003),

70  Dress, the Wool Supply, Industry Regulation 304; J. Oldland, J. Oldland, ‘Wool and cloth production in late medieval and early Tudor England’, EcHR, 67 (2014), 29. 8. Cipolla, Before the industrial revolution, 4. 9. K.M. Burkholder, ‘Threads bared: Dress and textiles in late-medieval English wills’, in R. Netherton and G. Owen-Crocker, eds., Medieval clothing and textiles, vol. 1 (Woodbridge, 2005), 136. 10. A. Sutton, ‘Order and fashion in clothes: The king, his household, and the city of London at the end of the fifteenth century’, TH, 22 (1991), 271. 11. H. Castor, Blood and roses: One family’s struggle and triumph during England’s tumultuous Wars of the Roses (New York, 2004), 79, 107–8, 130. 12. L. Jefferson, ed., The medieval account books of the mercers of London, vol. 2 (Farnham, 2009), 680. 13. J.H. Munro, ‘Luxury and ultra-luxury consumption in late medieval and early modern European dress: Relative and “real” values of woollen textiles in the low countries and England, 1330–1570’, Working Paper, 28 (2006), 81–9. 14. E.W. Moore, The fairs of medieval England (Toronto, 1985), 24–47. 15. M. Carlin, ‘Shops and shopping in the early thirteenth century: Three texts’, in L. Armstrong, I. Elbl and M.M. Elbl, eds., Money, markets and trade in late medieval Europe: Essays in honour of John H.A. Munro (Leiden, 2007), 524. 16. M. Carlin and D. Crouch, eds., Lost letters of medieval life: English society, 1200–1250 (Philadelphia, 2013), 44. 17. F. Lechaud, ‘An aristocratic wardrobe of the late thirteenth century: The confiscation of the goods of Osbert de Spaldington in 1298’, Historical Research, 67 (1994), 96–7. 18. F. Piponnier and P. Mane, Dress in the Middle Ages (New Haven, 1995), 65–9. 19. K. Staniland, ‘Clothing and textiles at the court of Edward III 1342–1352’, in J. Bird, H. Chapman and J. Clark, eds., Collectanea Londoniensis: Studies in London archaeology and history presented to Ralph Merrifield, London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, special papers, 2 (1978), 224–5. 20. J. Munro, ‘The anti-red shift-to the dark side: Colour changes in Flemish luxury woollens, 1300–1550’, in R. Netherton and G.R. Owen-Crocker, eds., Medieval clothing and textiles, vol. 3 (Woodbridge, 2007), 56–77. 21. J.L. Bolton, ‘Alien merchants in England in the reign of Henry VI, 1422–61’ (Unpub. B.Litt. thesis, University of Oxford, 1971), 113. 22. Sutton, ‘Order and fashion’, 262–7. 23. Ibid, 257. 24. Rot. Parl., vol. 2, 278. 25. Thorold Rogers, Prices, vol. 1, 593. 26. Ibid, vol. 2, 584–5. 27. Staniland, ‘Clothing’, 246–9. 28. H.S. Cobb, ‘Textile imports in the fifteenth century: The evidence of the customs’ accounts’, Costume, 29 (1995), 6. 29. A. Muthesius, ‘Silk in the medieval world’, in CHWT, 346. 30. I am grateful to Eleanor Quinton for the use of her meticulous transcription of the wardrobe accounts. 31. Source: J.H. Munro, ‘Industrial protectionism in medieval Flanders: Urban or national?’ in D. Herlihy and A.L. Udovitch, eds., The medieval city (New Haven, 1977), 257–60; Munro, ‘Struggles’, 319; Rogers, Prices, vol.  3, 498–500. 32. M. Hayward, ed., The Great Wardrobe accounts of Henry VII and Henry VIII, vol. 47 (LRS, 2012). 33. Ibid, 103, 113. 34. Ibid, 167–84. 35. Sutton, ‘Order and fashion’, 263.

Dress, the Wool Supply, Industry Regulation 71 36. Ibid, 265. 37. Jefferson, Medieval account books, vol. 2, 939. 38. Ibid, 915. 39. Dyer, Standards of living, 175–7. 40. Munro, ‘Three centuries’, 40. 41. C. Barron, C. Coleman and C. Gobbi, ‘The London journal of Alessandro Magno, 1562’, London Journal, 9 (1983), 148. 42. Historical Manuscripts Commission, Com Rep, vol.  8, 93, quoted by L.F. Salzman, English industries of the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1923), 242. 43. K. Mertes, The English noble household 1250–1600 (Oxford, 1988), 218. 44. J.H. Munro, ‘The “industrial crisis” of the English textile towns, c.1290– c.1330’, in M. Prestwich, R. Britnell and R. Frame, eds., Thirteenth century England, vol. 7 (Woodbridge, 1999), 103–42. 45. A. Sutton and P. Rutledge, ‘A Norfolk inventory of mercery, 1403’, Norfolk Archaeology, 46 (2010), 94. 46. R. Van Uytven, ‘La Flandre et le Brabant, “terres de promission” sous les ducs de Bourgogne’, Revue du Nord, 43 (1961), 296. 47. B. Dietz, The port and trade of early Elizabethan London: documents (LRS, 1972), 152–6. 48. Baldwin, Sumptuary, 106, 145, 160. 49. H.E.S. Fisher and A.R.J. Jurica, eds., Documents in English economic history: England from 1000 to 1760 (London, 1977), 31. 50. F. Franceschi, ‘Woollen luxury cloth in late medieval Italy’, in B. Lambert and K.A. Wilson, eds., Europe’s rich fabric: The consumption, commercialisation, and production of luxury textiles in Italy, the Low Countries and neighbouring territories (fourteenth-sixteenth centuries) (Farnham, 2016), 198. 51. E. Miller and J. Hatcher, Medieval England: Towns, commerce and crafts 1086–1348 (London, 1995), 96. 52. Britnell, Colchester, 62. 53. Zell, Industry, 208. 54. Munro, ‘Struggles’, 317. 55. M.W. Beresford, ‘The poll tax and census of sheep, 1549’, AHR, 1 (1953), 13. 56. P. Bowden, The wool trade in Tudor and Stuart England (London, 1962), 27. 57. M.L. Ryder, ‘Fleece grading and wool sorting: The historical perspective’, TH, 26 (1995), 13–15; P.H Bowden, ‘Wool supply and the woollen industry’, EcHR, 2nd series, 9 (1956), 51. 58. Ryder, ‘Fleece grading’, 14. 59. Rogers, Prices, vol. 4, 583–8 60. J. Munro, ‘Wool-price schedules and the qualities of English wools in the later Middle Ages c.1270–1499’, TH, 9 (1978), 121–2. 61. Bowden, Wool Trade, 30; E. Kerridge, ‘Wool growing and wool textiles in medieval and early modern times’, in J. Geraint Jenkins, ed., The textile industry in Great Britain (London, 1972), 23–4. 62. M.L. Ryder, ‘The history of sheep breeds in Britain’, AHR, 12 (1964), 77. 63. M.V. Taylor, ‘Cloth’, in W. Willis-Bund and W. Page, eds., VCH, Worcester, vol. 2 (London, 1971), 287. 64. Munro, ‘Wool-price schedules’, 147–8. 65. Munro, ‘Struggles’, 281. 66. J. Munro, ‘Spanish merino wools and the nouvelles draperies: An industrial transformation in the late medieval Low Countries’, EcHR, 58 (2005), 470. 67. Bowden, ‘Wool supply’, 48. 68. A. Hanham, ‘Profits on wool exports, 1472–1544’, Historical Research, 55 (1982), 146. 69. Bowden, ‘Wool supply’, 47, 49; Munro, ‘Wool-price schedules’, 146.

72  Dress, the Wool Supply, Industry Regulation 70. B. Winchester, Tudor family portrait (London, 1955), 214. 71. Zell, Industry, 201–5. 72. J. Oldland, ‘The variety and quality of English woollen cloth exported in the late Middle Ages’, JEEH, 39 (2010), 247. 73. C. Dyer, A country merchant 1495–1520: Trading and farming at the end of the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2012), 110–11. 74. Munro, ‘Wool-price schedules’, 124. 75. T.H. Lloyd, The movement of wool prices in medieval England (Cambridge, 1973), 43. 76. Statutes, 1 Richard III, c .8. 77. Statutes, 6 Henry VIII, c. 8, 9. 78. Statutes, 5&6 Edward VI, c. 6; Statutes, 23 Henry VIII, c. 17. 79. Heaton, Yorkshire, 133–5. 80. R. Trow-Smith, A history of British livestock husbandry to 1700 (London, 1957), 141. 81. K.J. Allison, ‘Flock management in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’, EcHR, 2nd series, 11 (1958), 106. 82. Statutes, 33 Henry VIII, c. 16. 83. E. Power, ‘The wool trade in the fifteenth century’, in E. Power and M. Postan, eds., Studies in English trade in the fifteenth century (New York, 1966), 39–90; T. Lloyd, The English wool trade in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1977), 312; A. Hanham, The Celys and their world: an English merchant family of the fifteenth century (Cambridge, 1985). 84. Power, ‘Wool trade’, 57–8. 85. CPR, 1476–85, 321. 86. Lloyd, Wool trade, 283. 87. Sutton, Mercery, 424–6; C. Martin, ‘The woolmen of London: Early formation and later development of the company up to 1600’, in C. Barron and A. Livingstone, eds., Those who worked, those who fought and those who prayed, special issue of Medieval Prosopography in honour of Joel T. Rosenthal, 33 (Kalamazoo, 2018), 39. 88. K. Biddick, The other economy: Pastoral husbandry on a medieval estate (Berkeley, 1989), 100–15; C. Dyer, ‘Sheepcotes: Evidence for medieval sheepfarming’, Medieval Archaeology, 39 (1995), 136–64; M. Page, ‘The technology of medieval sheep farming: Some evidence from Crawley, Hampshire, 1208–1349’, AHR, 51 (2003), 137–54; D. Stone, Decision-making in medieval agriculture (Oxford, 2005), 74–5. 89. Munro, ‘Wool-Price Schedules’, 140. 90. Ibid, 140–2. 91. Oldland, ‘Variety and quality’, 219–20, 229–31, 244–6. 92. E.B. Fryde, ‘The English cloth industry and the trade with the Mediterranean c.1370–c.1480’, in N. Spallanzani, ed., Produzione commercio e consumo dei panni di lana, vol. 2 (Florence, 1976), 349–54. 93. W. Childs, Anglo-Castilian trade in the later Middle Ages (Manchester, 1978), 81–97. 94. J. Munro, ‘The 1357 wool-price schedule and the decline of Yorkshire wool values’, TH, 10 (1979), 217. 95. A. Raine, ed., York civic records 1475–1487 (Yorkshire Archaeological Record Series, 1939), 94–7; M. Sellars, ed., The York mercers and Merchant Adventurers 129 (Surtees Society, 1918), 65. 96. E. Carus-Wilson, ed., The overseas trade of Bristol in the late Middle Ages (Bristol Record Society, 1937), 190–203. 97. Ibid, 180–9; Oldland, ‘Variety and quality’, 217–19.

Dress, the Wool Supply, Industry Regulation 73 98. H.L. Gray, ‘English foreign trade from 1446 to 1482’, in E. Power and M.M. Postan, eds., Studies in English trade in the fifteenth century (New York, 1966), 7; Fryde, ‘English cloth industry’, 354. 99. Ibid, 91–6. 100. Zell, Industry, 203–5. 101. Statutes, 9 Edward III, c. 1. 102. Munro, ‘Struggles’, 249–55. 103. Statutes, 7 Edward IV, c. 1; 14&15 Henry VIII, c. 3; 25 Henry VIII, c. 18; 26 Henty VIII, c. 16. 104. Oldland, ‘Richard III’, 5–8. 105. Statutes, 1 Richard III, c. 8. 106. CPR, 1476–1485, 494. 107. C. Ross, Edward IV (London, 1974), 351. 108. F.J. Fisher, ‘Commercial trends and policy in sixteenth-century England’, EcHR, 10 (1939–40), 101. 109. Ibid, 102. 110. J.H. Ramsay, A history of the revenues of the kings of England 1066–1399, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1925), 292; A.R. Myers, ed., English historical documents 1327–1485 (London, 1969), 512–14. 111. H.S. Cobb, ‘ “Books of rates” and the London customs, 1507–1558’, Guildhall Miscellany, 4 (1971), 1. 112. F.C. Dietz, English government finance 1485–1558 (Urbana, 1920), 12, 103; J. Oldland, ‘The expansion of London’s overseas trade from 1475 to 1520’, in C. Barron and A. Sutton, eds., The medieval merchant (Donington, 2014), 55–92. 113. T.S. Willan, A Tudor book of rates (Manchester, 1962), 72–3. 114. Munro, ‘Struggles’, 228–55. 115. H. van der Wee, ‘Structural changes and specialization in the industry of the southern Netherlands, 1100–1600’, in The Low Countries in the early modern world (Aldershot, 1993), 203–21. 116. J. Oldland, ‘London’s trade in the time of Richard III’, The Ricardian, 23 (2014), 21–30. 117. Barron, London, 66. 118. Bridbury, Clothmaking, 106–11. 119. Cal.LBL, 198. 120. W. Endrei, and G. Egan, ‘The sealing of cloth in Europe, with special reference to the English evidence’, TH, 13 (1982), 47–76. 121. L.C. Attreed, The York house books, 1461–1490, vol.  2 (Stroud, 1990), 312–14.

4 The Thirteenth Century A False Start?

Starting this survey in 1200 is not to begin the story of broadcloth at its inception, but soon after, when records become more frequent.1 The horizontal treadle loom that was to replace the upright loom was in use in the eleventh century, and the broadloom and the fine cloth it produced was probably a Flemish innovation of the twelfth century. English fulling mills were first recorded in the latter part of the twelfth century, and England was already integrated into the continent-wide industry as stanforts were selling in Genoa in 1197, and there was a large international trade in dyes, as London merchants paid fines worth £96 6s 8d in 1194 to import woad, and the duties on woad amounted to £600 in 1213.2 In fact, around the turn of the thirteenth century, the international cloth industry was in the midst of a boom, perhaps not to be matched until the expansion of the cotton trade in the early-nineteenth century. Rapid growth was fuelled by several inter-connected forces. The recent introduction of the broadloom forced the development of two broadcloths in northern Europe: the expensive fulled woollen broadcloth and more moderately priced serge. The Champagne fairs in north-central France became the conduit for the trade in these cloths between north and southern Europe after 1175. Finally, a growing economy which was a result of an increase in population, rising prices and a more commercialised society expanded the market for these textiles. England benefited from this expansion primarily because it produced the fine wools prized by northern European draperies, but alien merchants also bought cloths that allowed draperies from Oxford to Beverly to flourish. This wool and cloth was purchased at the cycle of international fairs at Stamford, St. Ives, Boston, London, Winchester and Northampton. England had become one node in the international cloth trade. Eleanora Carus-Wilson claimed that ‘the late twelfth and the early thirteenth centuries saw the zenith of the urban cloth industry in England’, as she thought the eastern Midlands towns were the ‘second most important cloth-producing region comparable in extent to Flanders with Artois, though much less densely industrialised’.3

The Thirteenth Century 75 Typical of these cloth towns was Stamford: and with some imagination, we can still see the thriving thirteenth-century wool and textile market town with its famous international fair. One of the ten largest towns in the country it was located at the furthest navigable point on the Welland which provided water access to the ports of the Wash, particularly Boston, and it was an important borough on the great north road that connected London with Lincoln.4 It was surrounded by sheep from the abbeys in the fens and close to quality wools from Lincolnshire.5 Thirteenth-century hall houses and undercrofts are still standing, and the fine tower of St. Mary and the arcades of All Saints church were to be built during the thirteenth century. There were fourteen churches, two monasteries and four friaries in the town. The meadow, close to the city centre where the great Lenten international fair was held, seems to be little changed. Stamford had become famous for its worsted haberget at the beginning of the century, but this had been replaced by a serge named stanfort (often called Stamford, presumably because the town became known for this cloth) by mid-century.6 It is generally thought that the true derivation of the name was stamen forte, ‘of strong warp’.7 Historians have paid more attention to the failures of the thirteenth century than they have to the successes of the fifteenth. Eleanora CarusWilson, Edward Miller, Anthony Bridbury and others have combed the English records exhaustively, and Patrick Chorley and John Munro have added their perspective from examining the continental records, so it is unlikely that we will learn much more about the thirteenth-century English textile industry.8 They have documented how widely clothmaking was distributed in towns, large and small. What has struck historians is the contrast between the beginning of the century when English cloth towns were flourishing and the end of the century when they were obviously declining. What went wrong? Carus-Wilson’s investigation of fulling mills led her to believe it was an ‘industrial revolution’, and to suggest that the ‘development of the fulling mill affected decisively the location of the industry, in that it should be dispersed over the countryside rather than concentrated in towns’.9 She concluded that by the end of the century urban clothmaking was in decline everywhere, squeezed both by intensifying continental competition and rising rural clothmaking.10 Edward Miller questioned the significance of the fulling mill at this time since any cost advantage would fall to the mill owner rather than the fuller, and he felt that the weakness of the urban industry at the end of the century was a function of an increase in imported cloth. Anthony Bridbury mulled it all over, sceptical that urban clothmaking was in such great difficulty at the end of the century.11 Patrick Chorley and John Munro’s contribution has been to analyse the cloths traded internationally, and to add a European perspective to the recession in the cloth industry which occurred at the end of the century.12

76  The Thirteenth Century What this chapter  hopefully provides is not new information but a different perspective as it interprets developments in the context of a steadily evolving market for woollen cloth. It is easy to over-emphasise the importance of quality woollens in light of their future success and because woollen broadcloth was a relatively new product in the thirteenth century. Yet broad serges were perhaps the larger success story as they displaced worsted says and accounted for most of the cloth sold internationally.13 Fine woollens were profitable and important but had limited appeal because of their high price; serge on the other hand was a mass-market product that, because of its great volume, was responsible for the size of the principal draperies in Flanders and northern France. English clothmakers by and large correctly ignored the fine woollens market where they operated at a competitive disadvantage, but found some success with cheaper serges. The reason why the thirteenth century is important for English clothmaking is that it sowed the seeds for later success: the experience with serge paved the way for cheaper woollens, the weakness of urban clothmaking promoted small-town and rural competition, and the rapid development of fairs and markets laid the groundwork for the more efficient distribution of cloth across the country. At the close of the century, carding and wheel-spinning of weft yarn using coarser wool enabled lower-quality woollens to be woven at prices that were competitive with serge, and this allowed rural clothmakers to embrace a rapidly expanding market for true woollens. The thirteenth-century cloth market with its cheap worsteds, middling-quality serge and high-quality woollens was therefore totally different from the all-woollens market that followed.

Fine Woollens and Serges The great growth of the international woollens trade seems to have been heralded by the expansion of the broadloom in the late-twelfth century which helped to further industrialise and urbanise clothmaking, and provided northern draperies with two winning products, the very expensive greased woollen (draperie ointe) and less expensive serge (draperie sèche) that they could trade at the Champagne fairs for distribution in the Mediterranean basin. The thirteenth century was characterised by a greater variety of cloths, worsteds/says, serges and fine woollens, than in the centuries that preceded and followed it. In the mature woollens market of the fifteenth century the standard broadcloth dominated, there were limited differences among cloths, and we understand these differences quite well. Competition was often a question of the cost efficiency of various processes and the quality of the wools used. In the thirteenth century the three cloths, worsteds, serges and fine woollens, all competed but records about them are much more limited, especially when it comes to serges which were only of major importance during the thirteenth century.

The Thirteenth Century 77 Unfortunately, continental cloth ordinances only begin around 1275 so it is difficult to clearly understand product innovation that preceded that date. And there is always a tendency to simplify what was obviously a rapidly changing market as draperies developed specialty cloths to give them market advantage. It may well be that innovation and competition between northern draperies was one of the key reasons why they were so successful in their trade with the south, and that by the end of the century, southern draperies were catching up with the technology behind serge cloth, especially at the price-sensitive end of the market, and this diminished trade. Historians may well have underestimated the importance and distinctiveness of these serge cloths because of the future importance of greased woollens and only a poor understanding of the cloth itself. All twelfthcentury draperies could make worsteds, but serge was probably a new halfway product, with some woollen properties but priced 40–60  per cent below the cheapest greased woollen, and some of these northern serges were priced only slightly above locally produced cloths in southern markets.14 For the majority of large northern draperies it was serge and not greased woollens that accounted for much of their large output; Saint Omer, for example, exporting 60,000 says annually around 1250.15 They sold in higher volumes than greased woollens, and so gave many northern draperies economies of scale that English clothmakers could never match. One other reason for the great success of serge in international trade was that, like broadcloth, they were woven on a broadloom.16 Serges were still an important cloth type at the turn of the fourteenth century as the Great Wardrobe was still purchasing coloureds and scarlets (greased woollens), and serges in roughly equal quantities.17 Broad fine woollens created a gold standard. Nearly all other cloths were trying to deliver some of the characteristics of a fine woollen, but at a lower price point where there were more customers. Worsteds disappeared from international trade because southern European draperies had the longer wools and skills to make them. John Munro simply classified cloths as the draperie ointe (fine woollens), draperie sèche (worsted) and a hybrid, serge with a woollen greased weft and a worsted warp. Serge was more a woollen than a worsted because it had a lower warpthread count than a worsted, a higher percentage of weft to warp thread, and the cloth needed to be fulled and finished.18 But this probably simplifies reality. The serge with a worsted warp and a greased woollen weft undoubtedly existed, as it was sold by the St. Omer and Douai draperies, but this seems to have been just one of many serge cloths of the dry drapery that featured in thirteenth-century international trade.19 Unfortunately, we know their names but not their discriminating characteristics, or the types of wools they used. As a generalisation serge appears to have been around half the price of coloureds, but there was a wide difference in the price of both coloureds

78  The Thirteenth Century and serges. In the 1303 Wardrobe accounts, coloureds were 40d/yd., renforchiés 34d/yd., and stanfort 27d/yd. (Table  4.1). Yet at Ypres, their renforchiés, usually rays, were almost twice the price of their rayed stanforts.20 The primary cost factor was wool which could account for 40 per cent of cost.21 The thirteenth-century price lists suggest that the finest woollens were made from fine English wools that ranged in price between £8 and £14 a sack.22 However, the price lists include wools as low as £5. Further, wools were sorted into good, medium and locks which tended to be around 60 per cent of the price of good wools. And, of course, many of the wools used on the continent were local, and included lambswool and fell-wool that further reduced the cost. So much of the price difference can be accounted for by the difference in wool cost. A true fine woollen could only be made from finer English wools that were greased, and then combed and hand-spun. Serges were much more likely to use cheaper English wools, Scottish and Irish as well as local wools.23 These ‘dry’ cloths were called says, renforchiés, stanforts, biffes and various rays but all subtle differences between these products are largely unknown. To complicate things further, at least one cloth, says, seems to have been a generic name for a ‘dry’ cloth encompassing worsteds and serges.24 Patrick Chorley is of the belief that most serges did not have a greased but a dry weft, and that the weft wool was different from warp wool, whereas fine woollens and worsteds were woven with similar wools for warp and weft. It was possible to produce a woollen-type weft, for example, from lambswool if it was bowed rather than combed. The bowstring was set in the middle of the wool and struck by a mallet, which caused the string to vibrate and separate the fibres: and before carding was introduced, seems to have made the wools easier to interlace when spun. It may have been that for most of the thirteenth century most serge cloth was made with bowed weft, and that later in the century it was spun on the wheel.25 All these serges were fulled: their length unchanged

Table 4.1 Great Wardrobe cloth purchases, 1300–4 Cloths

Per cent of yards sold to Cloth prices per yard, the Wardrobe, 1300–4 1303–4, in pence26

Scarlet Coloured woollens Ray afforcie (stiffened serge)27 Stanford ray (serge) Black say London Candlewick and Cornish russet (serge and worsteds)

3.2 38.6 23.9 22.0 .8 11.4

Source: TNA, E 101/359/18, 366/4.

77 40 34 27 44 16

The Thirteenth Century 79 because of the finely twisted worsted warp, but their width contracting by a third.28 A key distinction between the greased and dry draperies was in wool preparation: in the greased drapery the wool was of similar quality for both warp and weft, the wools were scoured, woad-dyed and then greased with butter before combing and spinning. The woven cloth was then redyed in-the-piece to produce a range of colours. In the dry drapery the weft and warp yarns were different. The warp wool was combed and spun in its natural oil; the weft bowed, and later bowed and wheel spun, and the wools were dyed either in-the-yarn or as cloth (in-the-piece).29 There were other important differences: the main greased woollens had a lower thread count and more weft so that the warp/weft ratio might be 2:3 whereas fine serges were 3:2; and greased woollens were subject to far greater care in finishing.30 Only a few draperies made fine greased woollens. They required better English wools, higher standards and controls throughout the production process. Surprisingly, we have a number of surviving regulations on fabric weight by area for worsteds and serges, but none for greased woollens, so we cannot tell how much heavier were greased woollens than other cloths, if at all. Luxury broadcloths were known as ‘coloureds’ or dyed cloths (pannum tinctum) on the continent, and this was the term used in all the early Great Wardrobe accounts for expensive woollens other than those dyed in grain, almost all of which were imported. However, in most English records these cloths were more precisely defined by colour, most frequently bluets (blue), burnet (a range of darker cloths, blue-black and dark brown), in grain (scarlet), ray (striped), green, red, etc. It is difficult to underestimate the importance of colour since in 1200 most were dressed in undyed cloth, from white, beige to almost black cloth woven from undyed wools. It may have been that the strong overall bright colour made greased woollens distinctive, so that they were prized as much for their colour as for texture, weight or status that came from their premium price. The broad use of kermes dye that produced the fabled, costly scarlet seems to coincide with the introduction of broadcloth.31 It has been suggested that wool dyeing with woad and then re-dyeing cloth with other dyes produced brighter colours than were previously available.32

The Trade in Fine Woollens and Serges The thirteenth century was a period of population and economic expansion that resulted in an expanding cloth market. Recent estimates of population have it rising from 3.1 million in 1190 to peak at 4.75 million a century later, before beginning to slowly contract.33 This growing economy produced an increasingly unequal society, with landowners and richer merchants benefiting from rising prices and wool exports, and with

80  The Thirteenth Century both winners and losers among peasant society.34 It seems that expansion of wool and cloth exports from the late-twelfth to the mid-thirteenth century produced a favourable balance of payments, and raised the supply of silver which in turn caused an inflation in prices and an increase in landed revenues.35 Wool exports may have doubled from 1180 to 1280.36 The economies of villages and towns became more integrated, and a network of markets and fairs supported widespread commerce, from towns to the countryside but also in the opposite direction.37 The influx of silver increased the coinage available for trade, the money supply rose tenfold between 1180 and 1300 and credit expanded.38 Towns grew in size and number, with the number of English boroughs increasing from 217 to 495, while markets doubled or tripled.39 Jim Bolton concluded that ‘buying and selling became easier, transaction costs were lowered, the already extensive market network worked more effectively and that held back price rises’.40 By 1300 barter was being replaced by monetary transactions, the legal framework for trade had improved and, because it was a more literate society, transactions could be recorded and debts collected. The evidence from coin finds suggests that there was far greater use of coin at the local level.41 Simply said, ‘more money in circulation, more money income from rents and sales of produce, more places to spend it, more on which to spend it, and last, but not least, the ability to borrow’.42 Wages, on the other hand, were low and stagnant (1.37d/day for farm labourers, 2.78d/day for building craftsmen in 1200), while the cost of living rose 77 per cent over the century.43 It has been argued that, in the face of falling real wages, artisans and peasants were forced to become more entrepreneurial: there was an increase in non-farm employment; in building of stone churches, palaces, bridges and mills; food processing; manufacturing and trading that, in some cases, supplemented static wages.44 The greater use of horse power, even among the peasantry, and the expansion of milling, for example, shows technological response to opportunity, an ability to access and apply capital, and a relative buoyant employment market.45 Even without the evidence of fulling mills, rural clothmaking was expanding in the thirteenth century and all the conditions that enabled rural cloth to be sold in towns were in place: ‘inland trade in wool grew both because of the expansion of exports up to the end of Edward I’s reign and because of the simultaneous expansion of industry to clothe a rising population’.46 In spite of propitious economic circumstances, urban clothmaking floundered, and the thirteenth century proved to be a false start, a damp squib as far as the market for fine woollen broadcloth was concerned. The evidence suggests that only a few fine English woollens were exported in the thirteenth century and that imported fine woollens came to dominate the home market. English draperies had more success with exporting serges, but they also had to compete with imported serge. As a consequence, English urban clothmakers were in some trouble by

The Thirteenth Century 81 the end of the century; this is discussed in some detail in the following chapter. England had no direct access to the Champagne and other continental international fairs, and alien merchants at those fairs would have had little interest in selling English fine cloths which competed with their own best cloths. Continental draperies were able to buy fine English wools at attractive prices, because there were no duties on wool exports before 1275 and low levels of duty until 1340, and then send finished cloth back to England. English draperies suffered diseconomies of scale compared with continental cloth towns, and perhaps also had great difficulty matching the quality of colour and finishing required. Ypres, Ghent, Malines, Brussels, Louvain and Douai draperies were each making between 10,000 and 50,000 cloths.47Arras and Valenciennes were probably the largest producers, Provins was reputedly producing 50,000 cloths in the 1270s, Chalons was still making 36,000 pieces in the mid-fourteenth century, and Ypres probably more.48 English draperies were far smaller: in 1348 Lincoln weavers claimed that in the reign of Henry II there were 200 weavers in the city, and Northampton officials contended that there were 300 weavers in the town during the reign of Henry III, suggesting that the leading cloth towns were producing at the most 4–6,000 cloths.49 Fine woollens production was confined to towns both because they could assemble the required skills, but also because regulation required that cloth be woven on a broadloom. It was probably the invention and rapid diffusion of the narrow horizontal loom that had produced fine woollens, probably in the late-eleventh century, and this had given weavers the opportunity to improve their status.50 The new loom enabled production of longer cloth and produced a threefold increase in productivity over the warp-weighted loom. The first references to fullers who were key to the production of this luxury woollen were near Stafford around 1118 and Barton-on-Humber around 1140, and Winchester had a guild of fullers in the reign of Henry I.51 By 1130 weavers in London, Lincoln, Oxford, Nottingham and Huntingdon had received royal charters.52 York weavers were paying the crown for their guild in 1164, and at Winchester both weavers and fullers received charters.53 In return, these textile groupings received a monopoly of local production, as did Yorkshire boroughs for rays and broadcloth throughout the county, and Lincoln Weavers’ a monopoly that extended twelve miles outside the city.54 Nottingham dyers were given a monopoly within a ten-league radius of the city in 1200; and Shrewsbury was given a monopoly on the purchase of unfulled cloth in 1227 so that it might be finished in the town.55 Charters at Norwich, Oxford, Derby and York required that cloth made outside the town be brought to the town for sale.56 For these privileges London Weavers paid £12 annually; York £10; Lincoln, Winchester and Oxford £6; and Huntingdon and Nottingham £2: Winchester Fullers paid £6.57 Since these crafts were independent of the merchant guilds, clothworkers

82  The Thirteenth Century were free to produce and sell their goods as they wished, travelling to fairs and markets. The ability to obtain these charters and pay the annual farm strongly suggests that weavers were relatively prosperous artisans in twelfth-century England. The invention and diffusion of the broadloom in the mid-twelfth century once again disrupted the industry. The first cloth assize, in 1196, may have been an attempt to achieve a consistent width across the country and firmly establish the broadloom and finishing of finer cloth in towns, as well as an excuse to levy fines from merchants, domestic and alien, who were selling narrow cloth. Towns may have been in trouble because Winchester weavers could not pay their farm in 1198 and were still in arrears in 1202, and similarly York weavers failed to make payment in 1214, although this may well have been because weavers were fleeing to the suburbs or were uncompetitive with country cloth.58 Whatever the reason, neither city was prospering from making fine woollens. The assize required that all cloth, whether imported or domestic, be 2 yards wide; and that cloth for sale, except black, be dyed in cities and capital boroughs.59 This width applied both to worsteds like haberget as well as luxury woollens. This was the broadest width in the late-medieval period, no problem for weavers of unfulled worsteds, but probably the maximum width possible for fulled woollens which may have shrunk 37 per cent in width with fulling. In 1202 the industry had not fully adjusted to the new regulation because twenty-eight towns paid a fine to be exempted from the assize. The leading cloth towns at the time seem to have been Lincoln and York, with Newcastle upon Tyne, Beverley, Leicester, Northampton and Winchester following closely behind.60 Magna Carta re-affirmed the assize in 1215, ensuring that the broadloom would be firmly established in towns. One result of these width restrictions was that narrow cloth almost completely disappeared from estate accounts, although nearly all rural cloth had to have been woven on a narrow loom.61 It is doubtful if the width restriction was strictly enforced. In 1271 Brabant cloth was allowed in at 6 quarters wide, and had to be 26 yards long; and cheaper English cloth had to be only 7 quarters wide. In 1276 200 merchants trading at London were fined for contravention of the assize.62 In 1278 three widths were established, cloths worth 4s a yard had to be 2 yards wide, cheaper cloths 7 quarters and alien cloth 6 quarters.63 Burels were allowed to be 1½ yards wide in 1300.64 In 1328 the Statute of Northampton simplified the assize, the width of coloured cloth was set at 6½ quarters by 26 yards long, and rays at 6 quarters by 28 yards long.65 The very high cost of coloureds limited demand. It has been estimated that the domestic cloth market might have been 150,000–200,000 standard cloths (24 by 1½-2 yards); and that from 1304 to 1309, an estimated 17,684 cloths were imported annually.66 The luxury market was perhaps 10 per cent of total consumption, mostly Flemish, and later in the century, Brabant cloth.67 English clothmakers found it very difficult to

The Thirteenth Century 83 sell ‘coloured’ broadcloths in the international market, and this in turn must have made it more difficult to compete domestically. There were no duties on imported cloth in the thirteenth century and London merchants were scrambling to compete with continental merchants for a slice of this profitable import business. In 1276, of the 200 merchants fined in London, fifty-two were Londoners.68 These Londoners were among the leading citizens, many of them aldermen who were either importing cloth themselves or buying it from Flemish and Brabant merchants.69 The 1300–1 Great Wardrobe accounts seem to indicate that luxury broadcloths were almost all imported, and that continental merchants were supplying 60 per cent of the cloth.70 In London and Winchester, there was very little quality cloth woven. London weavers were poor and generally absent from the records, as they were working for burellers who made the city’s cheap Candlewick cloth. Only with difficulty were they able to keep their twelfth-century charter. The aldermen were able to purchase the Weavers’ charter in 1202, which was only returned to the weavers when they matched the city’s offer, and they had to take further actions to protect it during the century.71 Similarly, Winchester’s weavers were making mostly cheap burels and worsted bed coverings.72 It is possible that the quality of English dyeing and finishing was a weakness, even though dyers were more influential in civic government than they were to be in succeeding centuries. Finishing, specifically dry shearing and in-the-piece dyeing, were critical skills that gave heavily fulled woollens their bright colour and smooth, silky texture, and it took time and experience for these skills to be developed.73 Large continental draperies concentrating on these cloths could more easily perfect these skills, and purchase imported dyes and mordants. They had easy access to woad from Picardy, madder from Holland and Zealand, and the Champagne fairs traded cloth for alum, kermes and other dyes. England produced a range of dyes but, as demand for coloured cloth rose, English supplies needed to be supplemented with imports, mostly purchased from foreign merchants who had come to buy English wool.74 Over the century woad became readily available but there is limited information on other dyeing materials. Picardy merchants developed a virtual monopoly of the English woad trade in the thirteenth century.75 In 1237 the merchants of Amiens, Corby and Neale paid fifty marks a year to warehouse and sell woad in London both to citizens and foreigners, and to transport woad outside the city.76 They also contributed £100 to the conduit then being built from Tyburn to London, indicating the importance of the London woad market.77 In 1303 woad merchants were no longer permitted to stay in the city but had to sell their woad on the wharves.78 In 1334 this farm was granted exclusively to Amiens merchants who were exempted from murage and pavage. The agreement specified that metres and brokers of woad were to be chosen by the merchants of London and Amiens, and to be approved by the mayor.79

84  The Thirteenth Century Picardy merchants set up similar arrangements in other ports and towns close to textile areas, and they negotiated the right to sell in the surrounding towns and villages.80 For example, a licence was granted by Norwich in 1286 that fixed duties, and allowed Picardy merchants to stay in the town. There were as many as nine woad importers working at any one time.81 Picardy merchants forged an agreement with Bristol dyers on the price of woad in 1281.82 It has been estimated that woad to the value of £4,000 was imported in the early-fourteenth century, together with some alum and much potash to fix the dyes.83 In 1326 the king prohibited export of madder, woad and fuller’s earth.84 There are far fewer references to madder, and it may have been that most reds were made from scarlet or vermilion.85 In the London freedom registrations of 1309–12, William le Maderman and Robert le Maderman bought their freedom and Thomas le Maderman, apprentice of Simon le Maderman, received his freedom, which suggests that a small group were buying and processing this dye-root.86 Dyers were usually members of the merchant guild while weavers and fullers were rarely accepted. This was partly because they were dye merchants and needed considerable capital to manage a dyehouse, but also because they were acting as clothiers, organising production and sale.87They had no need to obtain the charters that weavers and fullers sought in the twelfth century because they were part of the governing elite, and government regulation restricted almost all dyeing to towns. Dyers were to lose status in many fourteenth-century towns when the trade in dyes came to be handled by grocers and other merchants; and they became simply another artisan craft that dyed wool and cloth but no longer coordinated production, and were forced to sell their cloth to merchants. There is no way to determine the degree of dominance that imported luxury woollens enjoyed before the Wardrobe accounts become available from 1300 onwards. Paul Harvey concluded that English finished cloth exports were already declining by 1220, and there is some evidence of decay in urban clothmaking early in the century.88 Edward Miller proposed that ‘imports grew slowly during the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, had become of major importance by about 1250 and in 1300 dominated some sections of the English market’.89 Few towns were able to develop a fine woollens drapery in the face of imported cloth. Ellen Moore concluded that ‘it seems reasonable to assume that Flemish cloth probably began trickling into England from about 1180 at least, and the imports continued to increase until the economic wars in the 1270s’.90 Royal purchases at the fairs from the 1240s to the 1260s were overwhelmingly from Flanders, purchases of English cloth only between 8 and 28  per cent.91 This probably underestimates the Great Wardrobe’s purchase of English cloth, as some of it was bought in London or as the king travelled. As there seems to have been little fine cloth woven

The Thirteenth Century 85 in London, it may have been that most fine woollens were imported throughout the century. Until 1270 merchants from Ypres and Douai seem to have been the principal cloth importers.92 At the Winchester fair there were Ypres and Douai streets, Frenchman’s row at St. Ives fair was mostly occupied by Douai merchants, and Henry III’s officials went to the Midland fairs to buy cloth, mainly from Ypres and Douai.93 Douai seems to have focused on superior cloth as it was usually among the most expensive in continental price lists, with Ypres cloth priced lower.94 By the beginning of the fourteenth century Flemish merchants had been replaced by those from Malines, Brussels and Louvain. Continental competition between Flemish and Brabant draperies for fine woollens undoubtedly intensified towards the end of the century as the north-south trade in serges weakened, and the English urban industry, like many draperies in northern France, was probably a casualty in this commercial warfare as the international cloth trade contracted. The primary location of the cloth industry in the East Midlands and Yorkshire must have been driven by its proximity to many of the fairs, where merchants could buy and sell wool and cloth. Leicester, for example, had its own row of shops at the Boston fair in 1259.95 Many of the Cistercian monasteries that produced the finest wool were located in the north and Midlands.96 When the records of wool exports by port begin in 1275, Boston is the chief port followed by London, Hull, Southampton and Lynn.97 In spite of continental competition, Lincoln and Beverley, and probably York and Stamford, made some cloth of quality comparable with continental draperies.98 In 1249 Stamford provided scarlet and blue cloth for the king.99 In 1268 Lincoln scarlets were priced higher than Flemish scarlets in a Castilian price list, and English scarlets were also more expensive in Portugal in 1253.100 Edward I bought Lincoln scarlets at the end of the century, and the scarlets exported from Boston in 1303 were probably from Lincoln, as were those exported from London.101 Lincoln drapers rented thirty stalls at the St. Ives fair, and were taking space at the Winchester fair in the 1280s.102 Lincoln’s strong presence at the fairs suggests that their merchants were also broadcloth suppliers to the Great Wardrobe and other aristocratic wardrobes.103 Stephen of Stanham, a Lincoln draper, was an official supplier to the royal wardrobe from 1294 to 1304. He attended at least two or three fairs each year, plus traded from a shop in Lincoln. Cloth was his specialty but he traded in other items, and he owned a ship which sailed regularly out of Boston to Flanders.104 The crown purchased Beverley coloureds, blues and burnets in the 1230s, 1240s and 1250s, and Spanish merchants were buying its scarlets in the 1270s.105 The 1265 Wardrobe accounts and purchases at the fairs suggest that some luxury woollens were also made at Northampton and Stamford.106 Both scarlets and quality broadcloth were exported from Hull in 1305–6, and Beverley broadcloth worth £4 was exported from Boston in 1303.107

86  The Thirteenth Century Most exported cloth was distributed in Mediterranean markets based on the evidence of the surviving price lists, and therefore trade was in the hands of continental rather than English merchants. In the twelfth century the Flemish ‘Hanse of London’ organised the trade in English wool, while the Hanse of seventeen towns managed trade at the Champagne fairs by the 1230s.108 Much of the north-south continental trade was funnelled through the four fairs at Troyes, Provins, Bar-sur-Aube and Lagny as the thirteenth century opened. It was not until later in the century that the Champagne fairs started to decline although they remained important as a financial centre, but after 1320 they declined precipitously. From the 1180s merchants from Saint-Omer, Ghent, Ypres, Lille and Douai came to the cycle of English international fairs to buy wool and some cloth, and sell other wares.109 The first surviving record of English cloth exports was in 1204 when John of Beverley was loading Stamford scarlet on a London ship, and in 1210 when Genoese contracts mention English cloth.110 Most English exports were likely serges, and increasingly so as English ‘coloureds’ declined in the face of continental competition. They included stanforts which at mid-century were long cloths, around 47–8  yards in length, and cloths generically known as northamptons that were 26–7  yards long.111 Stanforts were generally a much higher-quality cloth, and sometimes as expensive as lower-quality ‘coloureds’, while Northampton plains were usually priced among the cheaper cloths.112 Around mid-century English stanforts and northamptons appeared in most surviving, southern European price lists along with those from the largest European draperies; and Lincoln scarlets and stanforts were known on the continent as they were favourably mentioned in the literature of the time.113 Demand for English cloth on the continent declined in the second half of the century.114 At the beginning of the fourteenth century, customs recorded the export and import of cloth by alien merchants. Cloth imports were estimated to have been four times exports: aliens were the primary importers and denizen merchants the primary exporters (Table  4.2). Alien merchants now had little interest in English cloth as the north-south European cloth trade was in decline. Boston exported more scarlets and coloured cloths

Table 4.2 Estimated annual overseas trade in cloth, 1304–9, in pounds Alien trade

Imports Exports

Denizen trade

Total trade

Quantity

Value

Quantity

Value

Quantity

Value

11,684 379

46,736 1,516

6,000 (est.) 3,500 (est.)

24,000 14,000

17,684 3,879

70,736 15,516

Source: Miller and Hatcher, Medieval England, 213. Cloth values have been determined from the average of Great Wardrobe purchases.

The Thirteenth Century 87 than any other port, indicating that Lincoln and perhaps other Midlands towns were still making some fine cloth. In addition to woollens there was a broad range of mostly cheap cloth: blanket, russet, Louth says, worsteds and wadmal.115

Worsteds We know as much about says (worsteds) and serges as greased woollens at this time because of both their export and the manufacture of these less expensive cloths across the country. Worsteds were still an important English cloth in 1200. The name came from Worsted, a Norfolk village, but it only became the accepted English name for says at the end of the century.116 The worsted with the best reputation seems to have been haberget; a broad, twilled, patterned worsted, named after the diamond pattern associated with chain mail for hauberks.117 It came in a wide quality range, from the most expensive scarlet to coarse cloth worth 5–10d a yard.118 On the continent, pure unfulled says had largely disappeared for clothing by 1200.119 Haberget had disappeared by mid-century, presumably overtaken by serge. Says of Louth were sold on the continent around mid-century and again early in the fourteenth century, and they were bought by the Great Wardrobe in 1285–6.120 Black says were regularly sold in small quantities to the Great Wardrobe in the late-thirteenth and early-fourteenth centuries; in 1300–1 they came from Lincoln.121 Worsted became a specialty cloth, and continued to be used for bedding and other household purposes throughout the late-medieval period. The other important worsted was burel, an inexpensive coarse cloth which may have been of Norman origin, as Norman burels were still being imported into England in 1270.122 It was woven in many English and continental towns. As early as 1171–2, 2,000 ells were sent from Winchester to Henry II’s army in Ireland, and Cornish burel was purchased by the crown in 1179.123 The king bought burel from London, Winchester, Marlborough and Bedwyn in Wiltshire primarily for alms: it was bought at Kent in 1207 and at Gloucester.124 Henry III purchased it for 8d a yard although the price could rise to 11d.125Apart from its purchase by the urban lower classes, usually as an outer garment, burel was the cloth purchased by the king and others for their servants, for alms, or occasionally for the army and for other non-clothing purposes.126 There are no references to burel in London after 1270. Burellers’ cloth was then known as Candlewyk cloth from the ward where many lived, and was presumably a range of cheap serge cloth. The Winchester 1275 Customs refer to burel throughout, but the word had dropped out of usage by the early-fourteenth century.127 Burellers were London’s largest clothmaking craft by the middle of the thirteenth century. The reference in 1225 to burellers who ‘cause burels to be made’ suggests that the leading burellers were entrepreneurs,

88  The Thirteenth Century subcontracting production to others.128 In 1250, forty-one London burellers were owed £155 18s 8d by the crown for more than 4,000 cloths.129 Unlike urban weavers and fullers who were firmly controlled by the merchant class, burellers were free to produce and market their cloth. Leading burellers were operating like fifteenth-century clothiers, putting out the wool and having cloth made either by lesser burellers or out-of-work weavers, and then having the cloth fulled and dyed.130 They sold cloth to the Great Wardrobe themselves, or through drapers.131 Burellers had maintained their own seld at St.  Giles fair in Winchester since at least 1236 when they had invested £2 19s in its maintenance, and where it was known as Burellers or later, Candlewyk Street. They were found continuously trading there from 1292 to 1337.132 Burellers were also present at the Northampton fair in 1280.133 At Winchester there were burellers from the 1230s, as the bishop was taxing burellers’ looms at 5s around this time.134 Weavers claimed in 1327, when they were negotiating a reduction in their farm, that merchants, from as far away as Wales and Scotland, had come to Winchester fair to buy cloth and bed coverings.135 Worsted weaving was also firmly rooted in north-east Norfolk. Norwich Cathedral Priory, for example, was buying Norfolk worsted for tunics from at least 1297, and it was being sold in Oxford in 1301.136 Much of this worsted was sold in London, as many Norfolk families became London mercers, from at least 1270 onwards when London’s continuous civic records begin.137 Throughout the late-medieval period London mercers continued to sell worsteds while drapers specialised in woollens. Many towns also had chaloners or tapicers (tapeners in Winchester) weaving worsted bed coverings and wall hangings on an upright loom.138 At Winchester they were first noted in the records in 1218–9, and they seem to have increased in numbers in the late-thirteenth century, even participating in city government which no other textile craftsmen achieved.139 In London they lived in Langbourn ward where eleven were prosperous enough to pay taxes in 1319, living close to weavers and burellers in Walbrook and Candlewick wards.140

Rural Clothmaking and Fulling Mills Urban clothmaking was not only facing competition for its finer cloths from the continent but also from cheaper country clothmakers who could easily make most serges and worsteds. London and Winchester might sell its cheap cloth at the fairs, but urban merchants were always buying provincial cloth. In 1200 cloth was made in every village and town as most cloth was homespun. The king, while he purchased much of his cloth at the principal annual fairs, had no difficulty buying cheaper cloth throughout the land.141 Around 1220–40, a draper’s shop, in addition to quality coloureds, carried black or white russet, russet of Leicester or Oxford, shorn and unshorn russet, London burel or burel

The Thirteenth Century 89 of Beauvais, russet haberget, white, unshorn or shorn grossum and grey cloth of Totnes and Cornwall.142 For example, thirteenth-century rural Essex made russets, cheaper worsteds and chalons (coverlets), and fulling mills were recorded in 1275 and 1285.143 Cloth was made in Essex towns as we would expect, at Colchester and Sudbury; and in villages such as Coggeshall and Halstead after 1225 that were dependant on the larger centres. Dyers were to be found exclusively in towns, as were most fullers. But while there were industry concentrations, there are references to clothmakers throughout the county.144 Dyers and fullers appear in the records after 1230, especially in the central and northern area of the county that was to become an important centre for clothmaking. There were also dyers and fullers in Chelmsford, finishing cloth for the London market. In the second half of the century burel weaving seems to have been in decline, but weaving chalons may have increased. There seems to have been a slump after 1280 in the northern clothmaking region. Clothmakers were moving to the suburbs, especially in those towns where weavers had to pay a farm, or as in the case of Winchester, there was a tax on looms.145 Lincoln Weavers’ guild had jurisdiction for twelve leagues outside the town in order to exercise control over the surrounding countryside.146 Landlords and even townsmen were promoting industry in the countryside, as was the case at Oxford where notables were financing looms in surrounding villages in 1275.147 The regulation at Winchester that no citizen was to have burels or chalons made outside the walls seems not to have stopped emigration. Shrewsbury merchants were buying rural cloth because they were interested in controlling its dyeing, finishing and sale.148 Some towns were able to limit rural competition, as seems to have been the case in Colchester, as rural clothmaking failed to develop in the surrounding communities.149 Many small towns had the expertise to make worsted and serge that required relatively low skill levels for finishing and dyeing cloth. Expansion in the number of towns and markets both created new opportunities and reduced transaction costs for rural clothmakers. It is easy to see that the closely integrated market network of the countryside, small towns and larger towns like Coventry, Warwick and Worcester, investigated by Christopher Dyer for the fifteenth century in the West Midlands, was essentially in place in the thirteenth.150 Rodney Hilton has identified that there was already a concentration of rural clothmaking in the West Midlands, both in the Cotswolds and north Worcestershire. Few villagers were not within daily access of a market, and many had more than one to choose from. Small towns assembled a wide range of clothmaking skills and were part of a developing distribution network. Stratford-upon-Avon, for example, had a Thursday market, was granted borough status in 1196, and hosted an annual fair in 1215.151 By 1251–2 there were approximately a thousand inhabitants, mostly immigrants from the surrounding countryside. There was a fulling mill and three

90  The Thirteenth Century dyepans, two weavers, two fullers and three dyers. There was a street of fullers by 1277, Walker’s Street, and one of the prominent burgesses was William the dyer.152 Presumably, Stratford’s two weavers wove cloth to meet local demand but its fullers and dyers were also working on country cloth. In the West Midlands alone no fewer than 133 markets had been established by 1300, and there are records of twenty-six fulling mills, so that the experience of Stratford was not unusual.153 Kidderminster, close by, had three dyers on its 1275 tax list.154Also in the Midlands, in the small parish of Halesowen, six dyers and three weavers were recorded on the court rolls between 1270 and 1307.155 As Carus-Wilson claimed, fulling mills reflected an industrialisation of the countryside and growth in rural clothmaking. She argued that millfulling was dictating industry location and contrasted the growth of mills in the countryside with the declining industry in towns at the end of the century, drawing the conclusion that rural clothmaking was making inroads on urban cloth. She has been criticised for overstating her case: mills were concentrated in hilly areas where there were fast-­flowing streams, often located in areas not normally associated with clothmaking, and were therefore unlikely to impact clothmaking in eastern lowland towns. Owners of the mills must have filtered most of the cost savings from mechanical fulling in fees, so there may have been little cost advantage, and mill-fulling was often uneconomical given the low cost of thirteenth-century labour and the high cost of capital.156 Fulling mills were simply a reflection that, once worsteds declined, most cloths required some fulling, and it made sense to have this process centralised in smaller towns and villages. It developed in the countryside because there was considerable demand, mills were efficient in hilly areas, rural clothmakers were less concerned about cloth quality, and weavers may have had little time to full their own cloth and so were forced by the lord to use his mill. The mill and tenter built at Taunton as early as 1218–9 for a budgeted cost of £16 4s 5½d shows that there was a growing market for serge and woollens, as more mills were added in the district in 1231–2, and also close by in Devon in 1238 and 1244.157 The mill seems to have been profitable given the high rental, at least initially. Landlords often forced mill use, as there is evidence that peasants would have often preferred to full the cloth themselves rather than take it to the lord’s mill.158 It did not take that much production to justify a mill. At Beaulieu abbey in 1269–70 its mill was busy fulling around fifty cloths to be worn by monks and lay brothers, and maybe around twenty-three other cloths.159 In the West Midlands fulling mills were typically owned by large landowners, but tended to be located in the Cotswolds and the Thames Valley near Cirencester where there was an emerging cloth industry.160 The steady growth of mills through the thirteenth century is what we would expect from a growing population; and the transition from worsteds

The Thirteenth Century 91 to cheaper serges, and then serges to coarse woollens which required additional fulling. There were perhaps 600 fulling mills in 1300.161 This growth of mill-fulling was therefore a reflection of the industrialisation of serge manufacture in the countryside, and the emergence of small clusters of clothmakers around these mills who sought to sell their cloth not only to meet local demand but also to market in towns. Urban drapers believed that foot-fulling finer cloth was superior to mill-fulling, and labour was cheap and readily available. Mechanical fulling was therefore limited to coarser cloth, as higher-priced woollens were foot-fulled to maintain their quality. Leicester fullers’ ordinances in 1260 confirm that cloths were foot-fulled.162 It simply was not worth the small savings to risk any damage by the heavy oak hammers.163 Foot-fulling only accounted for around 7–20 per cent of pre-finishing manufacturing cost.164 Mechanical fulling was slow to develop in Eastern towns that were tied into international markets, and fulling mills were less efficient on slower-moving rivers unless expensive dams, ponds and mill-races were constructed. This capital investment could be justified for corn mills but not for less-profitable fulling mills.165 The overshot mill in which the water was channelled to pour into buckets at the top of the wheel was far more efficient than the undershot mill, but there is little evidence for its wide usage before the sixteenth century.166 Rural cloth became increasingly competitive, but mill-fulling was a minor factor in this development. It played a more significant role in clothiers’ widespread use of fulling mills to make unfinished broadcloth in the West Country in the later-fifteenth century. Thirteenth-century greased woollens were probably far lighter than they were to become in the fifteenth century, so the risk of damage was real.167 At both Louvain and London in 1298, ordinances declared that no cloth was to be taken out of the city to be fulled unless the owner approved.168 In 1376 London’s cappers and hatters agreed that hats and caps were not to be mill-fulled for fear that they would be damaged.169 Even in the later-fifteenth century London’s fullers were arguing that thinner cloth should be foot-fulled as it might be wrecked at the mills.170 Edward Miller surveying the industry in 1300 saw a mounting number of places in the countryside making cloth, and in East Anglia, ‘a rural industry geared to the supply of distant markets was developing’; cloths from Coggeshall, Maldon and Sudbury among cloths exported from Ipswich.171 And it does seem that fulling mills were a catalyst for groups of clothmakers to cluster together, as in the Cotswolds, in Berkshire along the Kennet, and beside the Bradford Avon, all areas which were later to be bastions of the industry. He concludes that, ‘the traditional industry of the countryside, especially when it was organised and financed by urban commercial capital, was increasingly capable of competing with town crafts’.172 Village cloth was being taken to towns, fairs and markets, and town merchants were reaching out to the countryside

92  The Thirteenth Century for coarser cloth. There is also evidence of a growing finishing industry in small towns. The fulling mill also demonstrates that the countryside could be an early adopter of technical innovation, while the town with its foot-fullers and regulations were slower to adapt. Deteriorating economic conditions for the peasantry in the countryside at the end of the century may have encouraged some to supplement their income by making cloth, which they could now sell across a far wider trading network than was previously available. Villagers could have their cloth fulled, dyed and finished in local towns that now had access to dyes and supported dyers and finishers, just at a time when large towns’ clothmaking was in severe difficulties. At the end of the thirteenth century woad could be found even in remote market towns like Appleby in Westmoreland.173 Rural and small-town clothmakers were well positioned to take advantage of a changing market, and the introduction of coarse woollens provided such an opportunity.

Notes 1. For the twelfth century industry see E. Miller and J. Hatcher, Medieval England: Towns, commerce and crafts (London, 1995), 98–107. 2. R.L. Reynolds, ‘The market for northern textiles in Genoa’, Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire, 8 (1929), 846; E. Carus-Wilson, ‘The English cloth industry in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries’, in Venturers, 217. 3. Carus-Wilson, ‘English cloth’, 211; E. Carus-Wilson, ‘The woollen Industry’, in M. Postan and E. Miller, eds., The Cambridge economic history of Europe, 2nd edition, vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1987), 633. 4. E. Carus-Wilson, ‘The medieval trade in the ports of the wash’, Medieval Archaeology, 6–7 (1962–3), 186–7, 193. 5. Ibid, 187. 6. In the Great Wardrobe accounts the cloth was called staunford. 7. See discussion in J. Munro, ‘The “industrial crisis” of the English textile towns, c.1290–c.1330’, in J. Prestwich, R. Britnell and R. Frame, eds., Thirteenth century England, vol. 7 (Woodbridge, 1999), 104, note 7. 8. E. Miller, ‘The fortunes of the English textile industry during the thirteenth century’, EcHR, 2nd series, 18 (1965), 64–82; Miller and Hatcher, Medieval England, 93–127. 9. Carus-Wilson, ‘English cloth’, 211; E. Carus-Wilson, ‘An industrial revolution of the thirteenth century’, in Venturers, 203. 10. Carus-Wilson, ‘Woollen Industry’, 668–73. 11. Bridbury, Clothmaking, 1–15, 27–36. 12. Munro, ‘Industrial crisis’, 103–42; P. Chorley, ‘The cloth exports of Flanders and northern France during the thirteenth century: A luxury trade?’ EcHR, 2nd series, 40 (1987), 349–79; P. Chorley, ‘English cloth exports during the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries: The continental evidence’, Historical Research, 61 (1988), 1–10. 13. Chorley, ‘Cloth exports’, 366–8. 14. Ibid, 360. 15. J. Munro, ‘The origins of the English “new draperies”: The resurrection of an old Flemish industry, 1270–1570’, in N. Harte and D. Coleman, eds., The new draperies (Oxford, 1997), 107.

The Thirteenth Century 93 16. Ibid, n. 267, page 126. 17. TNA, E 101/359/18, 366/4. 18. Munro, ‘Resurrection’, 91–3. Say/serge at the end of the thirteenth century had 290 warps per quarter ell, whereas fine woollens had around 225 warps. Worsted had a warp/weft ratio of 2:1. 19. Munro, ‘Resurrection’, 92. 20. Chorley, ‘Cloth exports’, 360; J. Munro, ‘Industrial crisis’, 109–11. 21. Munro, ‘Resurrection’, 122–3, note 232. 22. J. Munro, ‘Wool-price schedules and the qualities of English wools in the later Middle Ages c.1270–1499’, TH, 9 (1978), 119–35. 23. Chorley, ‘Cloth exports’, 373–4. 24. Chorley, ‘Cloth exports’, 372; Munro, ‘Resurrection’, 87–93. 25. P. Chorley, ‘The evolution of the woollen, 1300–1700’, in N. Harte, ed., The new draperies in the Low Countries and England, 1300–1800 (Oxford, 1997), 10–11. 26. This assumes that scarlet was 28 yards in length, coloureds 23 yards, and ray 24 yards. 27. The difference between higher-quality afforcie and regular stanforts is unknown, but the afforcie disappear from the Wardrobe accounts after 1303–4. 28. Munro, ‘Resurrection’, 90–1. 29. Chorley, ‘Cloth exports’, 374–5. 30. Some coarse serge had lower thread counts than coloureds; see Chorley, ‘Cloth exports’, 372. 31. J. Munro, ‘The medieval scarlet and the economics of sartorial splendour’, in N. Harte and K. Ponting, eds., Cloth and clothing in medieval Europe (London, 1983), 25, 58–9. 32. Chorley, ‘Cloth exports’, 375. 33. S. Broadberry, B.M.S. Campbell, A. Klein, M. Overton and B. van Leeuwen, British economic growth 1270–1870 (Cambridge, 2015), 30. 34. J. Bolton, Money in the medieval economy, 973–1489 (Manchester, 2012), 176–84. 35. P. Harvey, ‘The English trade in wool and cloth, 1150–1250: Some problems and suggestions’, in M. Spallanzani, ed., Produzione commercio e consumo dei panni di lana (Florence, 1976), 372; M. Allen, ‘Silver production and the money supply in England and Wales, 1086–c.1500’, EcHR, 64 (2011), 128. 36. J. Langdon and J. Masschaele, ‘Commercial activity and population growth in medieval England’, P&P, 190 (2006), 50. 37. J. Masschaele, Peasants, merchants and markets: In land trade in medieval England, 1150–1350 (New York, 1997). 38. N.J. Mayhew, ‘Money and prices in England from Henry II to Edward III’, AHR, 35 (1987), 121–33, Bolton, Money, 184. 39. R. Britnell, The commercialisation of English society 1000–1500 (Manchester, 1996), 79–127; C. Dyer, ‘The hidden trade of the Middle Ages: Evidence from the west Midlands of England’, Journal of Historical Geography, 18 (1992), 153. 40. Bolton, Money, 184. 41. C. Dyer, ‘Peasants and coins: the uses of money in the Middle Ages’, British Numismatic Journal, 67 (1997), 30–47. 42. J.L. Bolton, ‘Inflation, economics and politics in thirteenth-century England’, in P.R. Coss and S. Lloyd, eds., Thirteenth century England, vol. 4 (Woodbridge, 1992), 12. 43. G. Clark, ‘The macroeconomic aggregates for England, 1209–2008’, Research in Economic History, 27 (2010), Tables 1, 27. 44. Langdon and Masschaele, ‘Commercial activity’, 35–81.

94  The Thirteenth Century 45. J. Langdon, ‘Technology, labour opportunity and inventive thinking in medieval England’, in M.L. Heckman and J. Röhrkasten, eds., Von Nowgorod bis London: Studien zu Handel, Wirtschaft und Geselschaft in mittelalterlichen Europa (Gottingen, 2008), 445–51. 46. Britnell, Commercialisation, 113. 47. H. Hoshino, L’Arte della lana in Firenze nel basso medioevo (Florence, 1980), 148; W. Prevenier and W. Blockmans, The Burgundian Netherlands (Antwerp, 1985), 79. 48. Chorley, ‘Cloth exports’, 366; Prevenier and Blockmans, Burgundian, 79. 49. Rot. Parl., vol. 2, 85b-86a; CPR, 1348–50, 120. 50. G. Unwin, The gilds and companies of London (London, 1963), 43–6; Munro, ‘Technology’, 194. 51. Miller and Hatcher, Medieval England, 99; Keene, Winchester, part I, 295. 52. Pipe Roll, 31 Henry I, 2, 5, 37, 48, 109, 114, 144. 53. Pipe Roll, 10 Henry II 12; Keene, Winchester, part 1, 295. 54. L.T. Smith, English guilds (Oxford, 1870), cxvi; C. Gross, The gild merchant, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1890), 114–15; W. Farrar, ed., Early Yorkshire charters, vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1914), 263; Heaton, Yorkshire, 28. 55. Carus-Wilson, ‘Cloth industry’, 227–8. 56. E. Lipson, The economic history of England: The Middle Ages (London, 1937), 438. 57. Heaton, Yorkshire, 3. 58. Miller and Hatcher, Medieval England, 107. 59. Bridbury, Clothmaking, 106; Carus-Wilson, ‘English cloth’, 228. 60. York and Lincoln paid fines of £20 and over, Newcastle upon Tyne, Beverley, Leicester, Northampton and Winchester fines between £10 and £20, and Stamford, Coventry, Worcester, Hereford, Gloucester, Exeter, Bury St. Edmunds and Norwich between £5 and £10. For a full list, see Miller and Hatcher, Medieval England, 101. 61. Thorold Rogers, Prices, vol. 2, 536–7. There were, of course, some narrow looms in the city. They were taxed at Winchester in the 1270s, but they were presumably used to make coarse cloths for local needs; see Keene, Winchester, part I, 297. 62. M. Weinbaum, ed., The London eyre of 1276 (LRS, 1976), 82–3. 63. Bridbury, Clothmaking, 106–7; CCR, 1272–9, 502. 64. Liber Custumarum, vol. 1, 121–6. 65. Statutes, 2 Edward III, c. 14. 66. Miller and Hatcher, Medieval England, 126, 213. 67. E. Moore, The fairs of medieval England (Toronto, 1985), 25. 68. Weinbaum, London eyre, 82–3. 69. G.A. Williams, Medieval London: From commune to capital (London, 1961), 127–8. 70. Ibid, 155. 71. Ibid, 173–5. 72. Keene, Winchester, part I, 296. 73. This is well explained by John Munro with reference to scarlets; see Munro, ‘Scarlet’, 33–7. 74. Carus-Wilson, ‘Cloth industry’, 215–22. 75. E. Carus-Wilson, ‘La guède française en Angleterre: un grand commerce du moyen âge’, Revue du Nord, 35 (1953), 93–100. 76. H.T Riley, ed. and trans, Liber Albus: The white book of the city of London (London, 1861), 360–8. 77. Carus-Wilson, ‘Cloth industry’, 215–22. 78. Cal. LBC, 98.

The Thirteenth Century 95 79. Riley, Liber Albus, 365–8. These rights were confirmed and enlarged in 1333; see ibid, 418–28; Cal. LBG, 30. 80. Carus-Wilson, ‘La guède’, 97–100; T.H. Lloyd, Alien merchants in England in the high Middle Ages (Brighton, 1982), 75; J.B., Hurry, The woad plant and its dye (London, 1930), 75; Lipson, Economic History, 394, n.6. 81. W. Hudson and C.J. Tingay, eds., The records of the city of Norwich (Norwich, 1906–10), vol.  1, 209–12; E. Rutledge, ‘Norwich before the Black Death’, in C. Rawcliffe and R. Wilson, eds., Medieval Norwich (London, 2004), 170, 173. 82. E.M. Carus-Wilson, ‘Bristol’, in M.D. Lobel, ed., Atlas of historic towns, vol. 2 (London, 1975), 10. 83. W. Childs, ‘Finance and trade under Edward II’, in J. Taylor and W. Childs, eds., Politics and crisis in fourteenth-century England (Gloucester, 1990), 31. 84. Cal. P&M, 1323–1364, 44. 85. Carus-Wilson, ‘Cloth industry’, 218–19. 86. Cal. LBD, 74, 75, 154. 87. Carus-Wilson, ‘Cloth industry’, 227–33. 88. Harvey, ‘English trade’, 369–75. 89. Miller, ‘Fortunes’, 76. 90. Moore, Fairs, 31. 91. Ibid, 25. 92. Ibid, 30–4. 93. Ibid, 171. 94. Chorley, ‘Cloth exports’, 362. 95. Carus-Wilson, ‘Cloth industry’, 229. 96. A. Bell, C. Brooks and P. Dryburgh, The English wool market, c.1230– 1327 (Cambridge, 2007), 54–5. 97. Carus-Wilson and Coleman, Export, 36. 98. Moore, Fairs, 38. 99. K. Staniland, ‘Clothing provision and the Great Wardrobe in the thirteenth century’, TH, 22 (1991), 251. 100. Chorley, ‘English cloth’, 4. 101. Miller and Hatcher, Medieval England, 116; W. Childs, ‘The English export trade in cloth in the fourteenth century’, in R.H. Britnell and J. Hatcher, eds., Progress and problems in medieval England (Cambridge, 1996), 125–7, 142. 102. Moore, Fairs, 36. 103. Ibid, 28–9. 104. Ibid, 66. 105. R.E. Horrox, ‘Medieval Beverley’, in K.J. Allison, ed., VCH: Yorkshire East riding (Oxford, 1992), 39–40; Carus-Wilson, ‘Cloth industry’, 212. 106. Moore, Fairs, 38. 107. Childs, ‘English export’, 128. 108. Miller, ‘Fortunes’, 75. This Hanse of seventeen towns was expanded to 22 or 23 towns by the end of the century. The principal towns were Abbeville, Amiens, Arras, Beauvais, Bruges, Cambrai, Chalons, Dixmude, Douai, Ghent, Lille, Montreuil, Paris, Provins, Rouen, St. Omer, St. Quentin, Tournai, Valenciennes and Ypres. 109. Staniland, ‘Clothing provision’, 241. 110. Carus-Wilson, Venturers, 212; Chorley, ‘English cloth’, 2, note 3. 111. Chorley, ‘English cloth’, 2. 112. Ibid, 5. 113. Chorley, ‘English cloth’, 1–4; R. Van Uytven, ‘Cloth in medieval literature of western Europe’, in N. Harte and K.G. Ponting, eds., Cloth and clothing

96  The Thirteenth Century in medieval Europe: Essays in memory of professor E.M. Carus-Wilson, vol. 2 (Pasold Studies in Textile History, 1983), 161–2. 114. Chorley, ‘English cloth’, 5–9. 115. Childs, ‘English export trade’, 142. 116. A. Sutton, ‘The early linen and worsted industry and the evolution of the London Mercers’ company’, Norfolk Archaeology, 40 (1989), 207. 117. E. Carus-Wilson, ‘Haberget: A  medieval textile conundrum’, Medieval Archaeology, 13 (1969), 48–66. 118. Ibid, 57–8. 119. Chorley, ‘Cloth exports’, 372. 120. Chorley, ‘English cloth’, 3, 8. 121. TNA, E 101/359/18. 122. Cal. LBC, 98. 123. L.F. Salzmann, English industries of the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1923), 136. 124. Miller and Hatcher, Medieval England, 99. 125. TNA, E 101/350/4; Miller and Hatcher, Medieval England, 97; CLR, 1226–40, 159, 215, 319; CLR, 1260–67, 224. 126. There is a reference to surcoats of burel; see Weinbaun, London eyre, 80. 127. A. Woodger, ‘The eclipse of the burel weaver: Some technological developments of the thirteenth century’, TH, 12 (1981), 59–76, 73; D. Keene, ‘Textile terms and occupations in medieval Winchester’, Ler Historia, 30 (1996), 138. 128. CPR, 1216–1225, 523; Miller and Hatcher, Medieval England, 112. 129. CLR, 1245–51, 318. 130. Oldland, ‘Clothmaking’, 36–9. 131. TNA, E 101/350/4, 359/18, 371/18, 379/12, 380/14, 381/9, 384/6, 385/1, 385/11. 132. Keene, Winchester, part 2, 1097, 1114. 133. Miller, ‘English textile industry’, 71, note1. 134. Keene, Winchester, part 1, 297. 135. Ibid. 136. Sutton, ‘Early linen’, 202–3. 137. Ibid, 205–6. 138. Keene, ‘Textile terms’, 139. 139. Keene, Winchester, part 1, 297. 140. E. Ekwall, Two early subsidy rolls (Lund, 1951), 242–48. 141. Miller, ‘English textile industry’, 67–70; Miller and Hatcher, Medieval England, 98–107. 142. M. Carlin, ‘Shops and shopping in the early thirteenth century: The three texts’, in L. Armstrong, I. Elbl and M.M. Elbl, eds., Money, markets and trade in late medieval Europe: Essays in honour of John H.A. Munro (Leiden and Boston, 2007), 524. 143. M. Gervers, ‘The textile industry in Essex in the late 12th and 13th century: A study based in occupational names in charter sources’, Essex Archaeology and History, 20 (1989), 34–73. 144. Ibid, 42. 145. Keene, Winchester, part 1, 296. 146. Gervers, ‘Textile’, 43. 147. Miller and Hatcher, Medieval England, 111. 148. Carus-Wilson, ‘English cloth’, 227. 149. Gervers, ‘Textile’, 41–2. 150. C. Dyer, ‘The hidden trade of the Middle Ages: Evidence from the West Midlands of England’, Journal of Historical Geography, 18 (1992), 143–6.

The Thirteenth Century 97 151. E.M. Carus-Wilson, ‘The first half-century of the borough of Stratford-uponAvon’, EcHR, new series, 18 (1965), 46–63. 152. R.H. Hilton, A medieval society: The west Midlands at the end of the thirteenth century (London, 1967), 199. 153. R. Britnell, ‘The proliferation of markets in England: 1200–1349’, EcHR, 2nd series, 34 (1981), 210; Hilton, Medieval society, 172, 208. 154. J. Laughton and C. Dyer, ‘Small towns in the east and west Midlands in the later Middle Ages: A comparison’, Midland History, 24 (1999), 45. 155. Miller and Hatcher, Medieval England, 129. 156. Bridbury, Clothmaking, 16–26. 157. T.J. Hunt, ‘Some notes on the cloth trade in Taunton in the thirteenth century’, Proceedings of the Somerset Archaeological Society, 101–2 (1956–7), 89–105. 158. Carus-Wilson, ‘Industrial Revolution’, 201–2; Miller, ‘English textile industry’, 73. 159. J. Oldland, ‘Cistercian clothing and its production at Beaulieu abbey, 1269–1270’, in R. Netherton and G. Owen-Crocker, eds., Medieval clothing and textiles, vol. 9 (Woodbridge, 2013), 94. 160. Hilton, Medieval Society, 207–14. 161. J. Langdon, Mills in the medieval economy: England 1300–1540 (Oxford, 2004), 46. 162. Carus-Wilson, ‘English cloth’, 230–33. 163. J.H. Munro, ‘Industrial energy from water-mills in the European economy, 5th to 18th centuries: The limitations of power’, in S. Cavacocchi, ed., Economia e energia secc. XIII–XVIII (Florence, 2003), 261. 164. J. Munro, ‘Industrial entrepreneurship in the late-medieval Low Countries: Urban draperies, fullers, and the art of survival’, in P. Klep and E. van Cauwenberghe, eds., Entrepreneurship and the transformation of the economy (10th–20th centuries) (Leuven, 1994), 381–7. 165. R. Holt, The mills of medieval England (Oxford, 1998), 158. 166. Munro, ‘Industrial energy’, 233. 167. J. Oldland, ‘Wool and cloth production in late medieval and early Tudor England’, EcHR, 67 (2014), 31–5. 168. Cal. LBC, 51; Liber Custumarum, vol.  1, 127–8; Van Uytven, ‘Fulling mill’, 5. 169. Cal. P&M, 1364–1381, 230, 233. 170. Cal. LBL, 262; LMA, Journal, 9, f. 179. 171. Miller and Hatcher, Medieval England, 116–19. 172. Ibid, 120. 173. Carus-Wilson, ‘The woollen industry’, 669.

5 Coarse Woollens in the Early-Fourteenth Century1

Insufficient attention has been paid to the momentous transformation in coarse clothmaking from serges to woollens, and what impact this might have had on the development of the woollens market. It might be argued that the most important change in the woollens industry from 1100 to 1550, apart from the introduction of the broadloom, was the coarse woollen: more important for the development of the English industry than the fulling mill, or the collaboration between the Merchant Adventurers Company and clothiers from the mid-fifteenth century that brought such success in international markets. The decline in serges was a continent-wide phenomenon, and their disappearance from international trade was paralleled by the introduction in domestic markets of cheap, coarse woollens made from local wools. This transition is not easily detected as peasant cloth is rarely mentioned on the records. Cheaper cloths retained their old names (i.e. russet and blanket), even as their construction changed: and new production processes were rarely noted as they evolved over a number of decades. The advent of coarse woollens disrupted the market that was dominated by large northern European draperies, and created a mass market for a cloth that had, until then, been only affordable to the wealthy. Woollens were to dominate the international cloth trade for the next 300 years, and England was to become its best-value producer as the quality of its rural woollens improved. This transformation coincided with the contraction in the European cloth trade that may have started as early as 1270, and was probably quickening from 1290 onwards in the face of onerous war taxation and declining real wages.2 John Munro has suggested that decline sped up after 1290 when transaction costs associated with the north-south trade increased, mainly as a result of spreading warfare, forcing low-priced serge out of the market.3 Patrick Chorley has questioned this interpretation as early-fourteenth century records indicate that carrying costs from northern Europe to the Mediterranean were less than 10 per cent of cost, and cheap linens and fustians continued to be traded.4 This chapter suggests an additional, if not an alternative, hypothesis for this trade contraction: that coarse woollens not only made serges

Early-Fourteenth Century Coarse Woollens 99 uncompetitive in international trade, but also undermined many urban textile industries as coarse rural cloth became more competitive. Deteriorating economic conditions lowered standards of living for the peasantry, and this may have stimulated entrepreneurship in the countryside, as rural clothmakers rapidly accepted coarse woollens and encouraged some to find urban markets for these competitive cloths. With the introduction of coarse woollens some cities and states felt that they should now protect their blossoming coarse woollen industries by raising duties on imported cloth, thus speeding up the decline of serge. The chapter first examines this manufacturing change and its significance. Then it looks at its considerable effect on the size and structure of the international cloth trade and on urban cloth markets. The transition in England is evaluated, with particular reference to London and Winchester, thirteenth-century towns well known for making coarse cloth. Lastly, its effect on both rural and urban clothmaking is summarised.

The Course of Coarse Woollens It seems that throughout the thirteenth century clothmakers had been trying to make a cheaper cloth that would imitate greased woollens using lesser wools and less expensive processes. They had been partially successful in that hybrid serges had undoubtedly expanded international trade. The final step came with the combination of carding with wheel-spinning weft using coarser wools in the early-fourteenth century to produce an acceptable woollen at far lower cost. Until then a fine woollen could only be made from combing and hand-spinning very costly, short, curly wools. The transition from bowing/rock-spinning to bowing/wheel-spinning, and then to carding/wheel-spinning wefts was evolutionary as clothmakers tried to make an acceptable woollen weft without incurring the cost of combing and rock-spinning fine, greased wools. Experimentation with serge had laid the groundwork for the coarse woollen and explains why the coarse woollen was readily accepted. Peasants could now dress in the same type of cloth as their betters, even if the cloth was using lower-quality materials and lessexacting workmanship: and carding, wheel-spinning weft was much more efficient than combing and spinning with the distaff and spindle. Additional fulling of coarse woollens was no impediment as fulling mills were already a part of the rural landscape. Its rapid adoption made serge obsolete. As early as the mid-fourteenth century, sumptuary acts attempted to restrict the quality of woollens among the lower classes, reflecting rapid acceptance of low-priced woollens. It is also possible that there was far less resistance to the adoption of carding and wheel-spinning in England because the luxury market was dominated by imports, and therefore there was no entrenched and powerful finewoollens industry to protect.

100  Early-Fourteenth Century Coarse Woollens In fact, a coarse, dry woollen already existed because we have the detailed costing of such a cloth made for Cistercian monks and lay brothers at Beaulieu abbey in Hampshire in 1269–70, before carding/wheelspinning wefts were introduced, but it seems to have been too costly for most peasants to adopt.5 This Beaulieu account is invaluable because it is the only detailed costing for any woollen or worsted before the latefourteenth century. It was a coarse broadcloth because Beaulieu sold its best wools to wool merchants, reserving its coarse and coarse lockets for its own use, and it was a woollen because of its low thread count and high weft-to-warp ratio. The warp-thread count was 550/yd., compared with 1,470–1,800/yd. for a say/worsted.6 In a mid-fifteenth century London weaving price list the lowest warp count for broadcloth was 600/yd., and it was only cheap narrow cloths that were woven with only 400 threads per yard.7 It used 36lb of warp and 54lb of weft, a 40/60 ratio, typical for woollens. There is no cost for oil or butter in the accounts that would be required to grease the wools: and wearing high-quality greased woollens would be out of character for Cistercians who wished to lead a simple life and wear coarse, undyed cloth. Beaulieu cloth was very heavy, using 90lb of wool. This was a far heavier cloth than continental serges, worsteds or greased woollens of the time, the weight per square yard was 1.36lb, compared with Beaulieu summer worsted at 0.84lb, continental biffes, renforchiés and says weighing 0.70–0.90lb, sixteenth-century unfinished West Country broadcloth at 1.32lb and a modern heavy men’s woollen overcoat at 1.12lb.8 We have no weights for thirteenth-century greased woollens, but historians doubt that they were much heavier than serge.9 It may have been that the cloth had to be heavy to make a dry woollen that would not be harmed by the hammers at the fulling mill. The problem was to induce the longer, straighter, coarser wools to interlace, so perhaps the amount of wool to some extent offset the weakness of combing which tended to straighten the fibres and reject the shorter wools. If this is correct, most peasants probably could not afford to make this cloth since wool accounted for 50 per cent of cost at Beaulieu, way above the 30–40 per cent that was typical. At Beaulieu weft thread was far more expensive to prepare than warp which is unusual since weft was usually cheaper to produce. The cost for combing warp was 6d/stone (albe lane in stamina pectinandis) and weft (grosse lane) 10d/stone, and spinning warp cost 6.67d/stone and 7.22d/ stone for weft.10 A generation later, cloth woven in 1294–5 at Laleham manor, Middlesex, had a combing cost of 8d/stone, warp spinning cost of 2d/lb, and weft spinning at 1d/lb.11 The implication is that Beaulieu combers and spinners needed more skill and time to produce a woollen weft. There is also an extra charge (artinanda et miscenda); the exact purpose is unknown but it accounted for 6  per cent of manufacturing cost. The accounts are set up to compare actual costs with a normative

Early-Fourteenth Century Coarse Woollens 101 cost. In the normative account, artinanda et miscenda is associated with combing grey weft. It seems likely that the charge has to do with sorting wools, perhaps for colour, length or suitability for making weft. The added cost, and presumed difficulty of preparing weft thread using combing and rock-spinning, may have deterred peasants fromm making coarse woollens. The introduction of carding and wheel-spinning was a huge step forward since it produced a superior weft using coarse wools, it lowered the cost for both preparing the roving and spinning the yarn, and presumably did it more quickly. The spinning process alone produced a threefold improvement in productivity.12 Also it would have been easier to organise since fewer spinners would have been required to keep a weaver busy. There was an upfront capital cost for cards and spinning wheels, but the payout must have been rapid. There were new skills to be learned, but these were easily acquired. The process of carding was very similar to combing. The wheel tended to produce an uneven thread but this did not matter if the cloth was coarse. It is probable that it was first used to produce blanket which was likely a heavier cloth, but as skills improved, to make lighter russet cloth, or pannus, the standard descriptive for broad woollens. A further efficiency was that weavers could use the simple tabby weave rather than the twill weave favoured by worsted/ serge weavers. The diffusion of carding and wheel-spinning weft seems to have been remarkably quick and universal for making coarse cloth. Perhaps the move to bowing made it easier to accept carding, and wheel-spinning preceded carding, so carding/wheel-spinning was just the last link in a chain of development. Regulations sometimes banned these new production processes. Wheel-spinning was banned as early as 1224 in Venice and in several other towns during the century but sometimes only for warps: and carding was banned in Paris in 1273 and Lier in 1332, but was permitted for wefts in Florence as early as 1317.13 Analysis from excavations at Winchester has detected a decline in spindle whorls after 1270, suggesting that the spinning wheel had begun its introduction around that time.14 In northern Italy around 1300 weft was bowed and probably wheel spun, so it was perhaps a simple change to adopt carding.15 There is evidence that both carding and wheel-spinning were in wide use by 1320.16 Interestingly, there was a cloth called carde, as Osbert de Spaldington owned a piece of green cloth with that name in 1298. This seems to have been a very strong cloth woven with threads made of mixed fibres, such as wool and flax, priced at only 4–5d/ell.17 It is not known if there was a connection between this cloth and the carding process. Carding did a better job of separating shorter wools and making them intertwine. Cards were paddles fixed with small hooks which crossed and intertwined the individual fibres. John Munro explained the complementary benefits of carding and wheel-spinning: ‘Carding thus disentangled

102  Early-Fourteenth Century Coarse Woollens and aligned the wool fibres, indeed separating and multiplying the strands more effectively than did combing, but without removing the very short fibres. Carding, furthermore, allowed the short, curly serrated fibres to protrude and become criss-crossed in a spongy, soft, air-filled cylinder, thus promoting their natural felting properties’.18 The yarn spun from the prepared rovings gained its strength from the interlocking of the short fibres, ‘in woollen spinning, draft and twist are imposed simultaneously; the tendency is for the longer fibres to take the strain and form the core of the yarn, the shorter fibres finding their way to the outside, some of their ends protruding; the yarn is thus full and fuzzy’.19 Warp yarn continued to be combed and rock-spun with more twist than the weft because it needed to be stronger. Carding was also better for blending a variety of wools which was an advantage for coarser wools and medley cloth. The spinning wheel produced a less consistent and weaker yarn because of its great speed, and was slow to be adopted to make quality woollens.20 There was no advantage for fine draperies to adopt the new technology because it was important for the weft and warp wools to be consistent, and rock-spinning did a better job of this; and combing and rock-­spinning was sufficient to interlace short, curly, scaly wools. Further, draperies would have been reluctant to accept new technology, especially as wheelspinning produced an inconsistent yarn and often a weaker thread. Consequently, combing and hand-spinning continued to produce warp yarn for at least another 150 years, and many fine continental draperies passed regulations to prevent carding and wheel-spinning wefts. In summary, coarse woollens’ rapid adoption was probably because there were production savings from carding and wheel-spinning, the yarn was more quickly spun; and these efficiencies offset any additional cost from the added wool required, and extra fulling or finishing. Thorold Rogers compiled a price series for second-quality cloth from 1260 onwards, and it shows no upwards trend until the 1350s: prices fluctuated around a decennial average from the 1260s to the 1340s of 16d per yard.21 Coarse woollens may well have been perceived as a superior cloth at no extra expense. We cannot be absolutely sure that coarse woollens were greased (that is scoured and greased with butter or oil), because there were no ordinances to confirm or deny it. Initially there was probably a distinction between fine greased woollens and ‘dry’ coarse woollens, but that over time the scouring and greasing of wools became standard for most woollens.22 Thorold Rogers finds a clear distinction between three types of cloth: coloured, russet and blanket. Coloured was a quality greased cloth although he found examples of cheap blue cloth; blanket was probably a heavy, undyed cloth used for bedding, linings and sometimes clothing and most likely ungreased; and russet was undyed coarse cloth. Russet in the fourteenth century seems to have been undyed and a standard cheap woollen using natural wools, but by the fifteenth century it was a

Early-Fourteenth Century Coarse Woollens 103 specific colour. It is interesting to speculate that russet was initially dry and undyed, but became coloured and greased as fashion changed and incomes improved. By the sixteenth century the best russet was a very expensive cloth. Striped ray cloth and medleys were usually cheaper than the average broadcloth because they were used for liveries, and may have been a dry cloth using coloured yarn, but we have no proof of this.23 Most exported cloth was coloured, and at the end of the fourteenth century some of this was cheap, narrow cloth.24 Again it is tempting to draw the conclusion that nearly all exported cloth was greased because it had to be a cut above continental local cloth. This would suggest, for instance, that late-fourteenth century Suffolk straits for export were woad dyed in-the-wool, greased and then dyed in-the-piece.

Impact on the Cloth Trade Serge became unfashionable and cheaper serges were replaced by coarse woollens made locally, and this contributed to the severity of the decline in the international cloth trade. We cannot quantify its size in the midthirteenth century, but it was vast since it included not only cloth for aristocrats, but also lower-priced serge that was used for servants and soldiers, cooks and children’s clothing.25 The speed and depth of the trade decline suggests that it was not just interruptions in trade flows that were responsible, but that there was something far more significant occurring. Since it seems that the trade in lower-priced serge cloth greatly exceeded that of fine woollens, its rapid decline was a catastrophe for draperies like St. Omer and Provins that were making more than 50,000 cloths in the mid-thirteenth century, most of it serge.26 This contraction disrupted every major drapery, and many never recovered. We hear very little about these large draperies in northern France in international markets during the fourteenth century as the fine woollens industry migrated northwards to Flanders, Brabant and later to Zeeland. Yet even Ypres, one of the three great Flemish cloth towns, saw its sales decline from 1310 onwards and Florence declined from 100,000 pieces in 1309–10 to 70,000 pieces in 1339, falling further to 30,000 pieces in 1373.27 New draperies such as Flanders’ nouvelles draperies and English southern towns emerged from the ashes of the industry in the fourteenth century, but they were making woollens, not serges. It is quite possible that the size of the continental cloth trade did not match that of the thirteenth century until the midsixteenth when English broadcloth and kersey led the woollens market, and cheap, light, narrow Flemish says and serges, draperies légères, once again found southern markets. As serge declined some draperies successfully restructured to emphasise fine woollens. In the 1290s relatively cheap northern cloths were still the dominant cloths in international trade, and they were still sold in Florence in 1318–22, but faded soon after.28 As far as can be determined from

104  Early-Fourteenth Century Coarse Woollens city regulations the market for serges was in free fall from the 1310s: northern draperies stopped regulating the manufacture of says, and at Ypres, for example, cloth halls for says were frequently unrented in the early-fourteenth century, and had disappeared by the 1320s.29 From 1300 northern draperies were switching their emphasis to their luxury cloths, and in Brabant clothmakers stopped using fulling mills.30 John Munro has always argued that successful draperies in the Low Countries doubled down on fine woollens because they were the only products that could now be traded internationally and could bear high marketing and transaction costs. There may be some truth to this. But they were pushed in this direction because local small-town and country cloth was taking over the market for low- and medium-priced cloth. In England there are difficulties in determining the exact steps that led to the change from serge to woollens and its timing, but it seems that the changeover in England was similar to that on the continent, and that coarse woollens were widely available by the 1330s. London excavations tell us that the transition from worsteds to woollens was occurring in the first half of the fourteenth century and was complete by the end of the century.31 One costly serge, renforchiés, disappears from the Wardrobe accounts after 1305. In 1315 serge continued to be an important rural cloth coming into London as murage of a penny was charged for serges, ‘staminis’, grey cloth, Stamfords and light cloths from Stamford and Northampton.32 The Wardrobe was still buying stanfort rays around mid-century, and approximately a quarter of London-excavated woollens during the first half of the fourteenth century were rays.33 It seems possible that coarse woollens quickly replaced cheaper serges, but that fine serge rays remained fashionable for some time. One indicator of the transition is blanket. Before 1300 blanket seems to have been a quality broadcloth. The first reference to blanket was in 1212 when the Great Wardrobe purchased 243 ells dyed in grain at St.  Ives fair.34 Around 1250 a French poem celebrated ‘blankets of Blyth’.35 It becomes an undyed, coarse cloth, which starts to appear in the accounts in the 1310s. In London three blanketmakers as well as eleven burellers became apprentices between 1309 and 1312.36 It appears in the records collected by Thorold Rogers as a cheap cloth in 1315 at 14d/yd. (compared with russet at 16d/yd.), and it becomes very common after 1325 (at 14–16d/yd.).37 Cloth bought by the little priory of Maiden Bradley in south-west Wiltshire, near the Somerset border, was perhaps typical of the range of coarse woollens available in the 1320s. In 1325 it housed fifteen sisters who ministered to a leper colony, a prior, ten to twelve Augustinian priests, and four to six lay brothers. Rents of £10 a year were set aside for clothing.38 Fortunately the accounts, for four years from 1325 to 1328, have survived and have been summarised by Thorold Rogers.39 The priory purchased linen for shifts, shirts and surplices; cloth (pannus)

Early-Fourteenth Century Coarse Woollens 105 for copes; russet for sisters’ mantles; and blanket for tunics, hose and scapulars. Pannus was purchased from Westbury and Sherborne for 11d/ yd. and 18d/yd.; broad russet for 11¼-12½d/yd.; narrow blanket for 5–7½d/yd. and broad blanket in dozens (cloth 12 feet in length), some from Corsham and Salisbury, for 12–14d/yd. The priory therefore was able to acquire coarse woollens from a number of small towns and markets as well as at Salisbury. These woollens were bought in a very narrow price range, principally for outerwear, mostly woven on a broadloom, undyed, lightly finished, or perhaps unfinished in the case of blanket. At Cambridge in 1332, among those rioting were a number of shearmen, which suggests that there was a large finishing industry at that time.40 Therefore, in summary, it seems reasonable to argue that serges became uncompetitive in international trade as they went out of fashion. Northern draperies were unable to sell coarse woollens in their place because these could be made locally in southern markets at low cost. Northern draperies had no other choice but to concentrate on higher-quality woollens woven with fine English wools that required high standards of finishing. In most cases the size of urban draperies declined even as they took steps to protect their draperies from rural competition. The same process took place in England. Some urban draperies suffered because they were selling serge that went into decline in international markets, others like London and Winchester because coarse rural woollens largely replaced cheap urban serge. Accordingly, with little support from the merchant elite, urban clothmakers focused on replacing woollen imports and exporting some quality cloth, while merchants at the same time were buying cheaper rural woollens which were then finished in towns.

Transition at London and Winchester In London the transition from serge to coarse woollens is illustrated by the sudden decline of the burellers’ craft. At the turn of the fourteenth century burellers were the strongest textile craft and most weavers seemed to have been working for them. Weavers had the exclusive right to make quality woollens but there was little demand for their cloth and so they were reduced to weaving cheap worsted and serge. Burellers’ cloth at the end of the thirteenth century was called the ‘cloth of Candlewykstrete’, after the ward where burellers mainly lived, suggesting that London’s burellers were now making a broad range of cheap serges rather than worsted burel. The 1300 Weavers’ ordinances refer to cloths 1½ yards wide in a range of weaves and colours named andley, menuet, porries, bisset, hawes and rays. They were lightweight cloths at 9–11 pounds, and could be woven in two to three days compared with six to seven days for a sixteenth-century broadcloth.41 After 1300 the Great Wardrobe purchased cloth of Candlewick Street for 12–16d a yard, suggesting a higher-quality product than the burel bought almost a century before.42

106  Early-Fourteenth Century Coarse Woollens One family, the St.  Edmunds, rose to prominence in the City. Fulk de St. Edmunds was among the ten richest Londoners in the 1292 subsidy records and was sheriff in 1279 while his son, James, was also sheriff in the early-fourteenth century.43 Burellers could not make the transition from serge to coarse woollens because only weavers had the right to weave woollens and drapers controlled its sale. As the market changed burellers simply disappeared as weavers demanded that their privileges be respected, and all had to be apprenticed to weavers, not burellers. Weavers had been impoverished as there were no weavers in the 1292 tax lists, a few in 1319 and more in 1332, but still fewer than burellers. In 1321 London’s burellers claimed that the number of looms had fallen from 380 thirty years before to just 80.44 In 1332 weavers took John le Roos to the mayor’s court for weaving cloth contrary to the liberties of the weavers, and in 1335 the weavers felt sufficiently powerful to bring a writ before the mayor’s court in an attempt to force burellers to be members of the weavers’ craft.45 Burellers were able to object that, as citizens, they could follow any trade, and the court decided that anyone could have looms in their homes. But the burellers acknowledged that their servants had been apprenticed as weavers. This certainly suggests that weavers were now completely independent of the burellers. Weavers were searching burellers’ cloth rather than the other way around. In 1342 bailiffs of the weavers brought Henry Neve, a bureller, before the court because he had woven Candlewick cloth to be fifty-four threads too narrow, and was fined half a mark.46 There are almost no references to burellers or Candlewick cloth after 1340.47 There was always a market for rural cloth in the city and no restrictions on its purchase. In 1315 the alnager, John Pecok, was seeking to extend his jurisdiction to measure cloths other than those already covered by the assize, before they were sold: these cloths were listed as wadmal, kerseys, says and worsteds, cloths from Heydok, Mendips, Norwich, Ireland, Causton, Lincoln, Norfolk, Suffolk, Kent, Stamford, Beverly, St. Osith, Devon and Cornwall.48 Once coarse woollens were introduced, drapers would have played off provincial and London clothmakers against one another. Merchants’ control of the London retail market would have been enhanced after 1335 as provincial cloth had to be sold to citizens prior to sale in the city.49 Mercers came to control the market for worsteds while drapers handled woollens, and London’s craft of chaloners made worsted bedding. Unfortunately, we cannot identify those drapers sourcing coarse provincial woollens as the burellers declined, but the mercers’ sourcing of Norfolk worsteds and linens provided an example that London merchants were controlling the sale of rural cloth.50 Perhaps as many as a third of London mercers between 1270 and 1350–60 came from Norfolk, and most of them came from rural clothmaking villages in northern Norfolk.51 Mercers handled Norfolk’s caps and hats, linen and worsted piece

Early-Fourteenth Century Coarse Woollens 107 goods, mostly short piece goods and some bolts of narrow cloth.52 London mercers on two occasions, in 1327 and again in 1346, attempted to force Norfolk worsted makers to standardise their cloths but to no avail. Richard de Elsing’s 1332 inventory, for example, included twenty-two items of worsted piece goods.53 Winchester was very similar to London in that there seem to have been few quality woollens produced there in the thirteenth century, and its weavers made burel while its tapeners made worsted bedding. There may well have been continuing contact between Winchester and London burellers as London sold their cloth at Winchester’s St.  Giles fair, and many Winchester burellers may have migrated to London as Winchester’s population declined and London’s grew in the thirteenth century.54 Many weavers migrated to the suburbs to avoid paying the farm. St. Giles fair had declined in the last two decades of the thirteenth century and weavers complained in 1327 that their trade had fallen away.55 Winchester’s weavers and fullers were excluded from the city’s franchise and were clearly subordinate to the merchant guild. Burels disappear from the records early in the fourteenth century. Interestingly, it was dyers who were the most prominent craft in the early-fourteenth century, some becoming bailiffs and even mayors. When manufacturing revived, as early as the 1330s, weavers were making pannus, standard woollen broadcloth, and it is likely that fullers were key to this revival; the first fuller to become a bailiff was in 1341–2.56 There had been fulling mills in and around Winchester since the early thirteenth century.57 By 1354 it has been estimated that there may have been sixty-one fullers working in the city, more than any other craft, which would suggest that they were finishing rural as well as city cloth.58 Unlike London there seems to have been no clear distinction between weavers and burellers, yet burellers seem to have declined as coarse woollens replaced serge. The strength of the dyers and fullers also suggest that they were finishing coarse woollens woven both in Winchester and elsewhere.

Urban Versus Rural Clothmaking English cloth towns were in decline as on the continent, mainly because exports fell and they faced strong competition from rural weavers making coarse woollens. The international cycle of fairs at St. Ives, Winchester, Stamford and Northampton were in trouble; Flemish merchants came in decreasing numbers, and this affected the cloth industry in Eastern Midlands’ towns.59 In the 1290s only drapers from Lincoln and York, and London burellers, were renting places at Winchester’s fair.60 At St. Ives fair in 1291, men from Cornwall replaced Frenchmen, which suggests a growing market for cheap rural cloth.61 Ellen Moore has suggested that ‘old-style draper-entrepreneurs no longer dominated the production and marketing of cloth. Their practice of frequenting the major fairs to sell

108  Early-Fourteenth Century Coarse Woollens their fine cloths and buy wool was replaced by marketing techniques more appropriate to the newer, cheaper cloths destined for more general consumption. Traders in these latter cloths, usually operating outside the traditional structures of the cloth guilds, found that their marketing could best be affected through regional distribution centres, such as Norwich in Norfolk, rather than through the fairs, which were more distant and sporadic as salesplaces’.62 Urban weavers, logically, would have initially made coarse woollens for which there was a large market but soon turned to production of higher-quality cloth, both filling the vacuum as sales of imported cloth diminished and avoiding competition from rural cloth. At the same time rural clothmakers may have looked to towns as their local market contracted with falling demand caused by population stagnation, higher taxation and harvest failure.63 Unfortunately, there are no studies of rural clothmaking in the first half of the fourteenth century, other than in Norfolk, to confirm any of this. An additional problem was that cloth woven in the countryside was often finished in towns and therefore impossible to distinguish from urban cloth. When cloth was first taxed in the 1350s, it was skewed heavily to towns where it was taxed, and only high-quality cloth was alnaged. Broadcloth with length less than a dozen and narrow cloth was not subject to tax. Even in the 1390s most rural broadcloth was made in dozens, not the full broadcloth. In the 1350s there was considerable cloth alnaged from counties surrounding London, Hampshire and from Somerset which suggests that rural cloth industries were developing to serve urban markets.64 The limited evidence suggests therefore that urban weavers concentrated on quality woollens, leaving cheap woollens to rural clothmakers who frequently sent their cloths to towns to be finished. Unfortunately, we cannot trace these coarse woollens coming into towns from 1325 to 1350, nor is there much evidence apart from fulling mills that rural clothmaking was prospering as well as urban clothmaking in the second quarter of the fourteenth century. Fulling mills were increasing in lowland eastern England where they had been slow to develop: in Suffolk nine of the twenty-five fulling mills identified before 1500 were in operation from 1284 to 1337.65 Rural clothmakers were well placed to take advantage of the opportunity presented by coarse woollens. The rapidly increasing number of fairs and markets, and other places where goods could be bought and sold, had simplified the process of selling rural cloth, and there were no legal impediments to moving cloth around the country, nor any urban regulations that impeded merchants buying rural cloth.66 There was an active credit market down to village level in the early-fourteenth century.67 London excavations show us that the warp and weave thread counts in tabby-woven, medium-quality woollens were between 10/10 per 10mm and 15/15 in the first half of the century, but that there was much more cloth with far higher warp and weft counts by the end of the century.

Early-Fourteenth Century Coarse Woollens 109 This suggests that rural weavers could with little difficulty match urban weavers’ skills, but that urban weavers soon strengthened their position by weaving much better cloth with higher thread counts than was generally made in the countryside. Merchants seeking cheaper rural cloth for finishing in towns helped develop rural clothmaking, but rural fullers may have also played an entrepreneurial role. The role of fullers was beginning to change. In the thirteenth century urban fullers walking in the trough were low paid and low status, often working for merchant dyers who usually owned the tenters that stretched the fullers’ cloth. The fuller in the later-fourteenth century, who took out the lease on a fulling mill, was a capitalist who owned his own tenter and might control cloth finishing, and in some cities like Winchester, fullers were to supplant dyers as the wealthiest textile trade. The estimated 600 fullers operating fulling mills in 1300, mostly outside larger towns, may have been catalysts for the development of rural clothmaking at this time. In the West Midlands there were already clusters of fulling mills at the end of the thirteenth century both in northern Worcestershire along the Stour and in the Cotswolds close to Cirencester, capable of fulling more cloths than could be easily sold locally.68 Their success depended on mill throughput. Fullers enjoyed an increase in work as woollens required more fulling than serge, but some must have sought out extra business. Some were also finishing cloth and sometimes organising its piece-dyeing. They were therefore ideally positioned to appreciate the market opportunity presented by coarse woollens, to establish contacts with urban merchants and encourage greater production by local weavers. Urban fullers who fulled cloth at the mills might also become entrepreneurs, supplementing the fulling of city cloth by also finishing rural cloth.

Notes 1. I wrote this chapter in early 2014, a few months after John Munro’s passing. I had often turned to him for advice and constructive criticism, and I have sorely missed the benefit of his knowledge and insight as I offer a new interpretation of industry change at the end of the thirteenth century. 2. J.L. Bolton, ‘Inflation, economics and politics in thirteenth-century England’, in P.R. Coss and S.D. Lloyd, eds., Thirteenth century England, vol. 4 (Woodbridge, 1992), 11; J. Langdon and J. Masschaele, ‘Commercial activity and population growth in medieval England’, P&P, 190 (2006), 74–5; J. Munro, ‘The “industrial crisis” of the English textile towns, c.1290–c.1330’, in M. Prestwich, R. Britnell and R. Frame, eds., Thirteenth century England, VII (Woodbridge, 1999), 119–21; M. Ormrod, ‘The crown and the English economy, 1290–1348’, in B.M.S. Campbell, ed., Before the Black Death: Studies in the ‘crisis’ of the early fourteenth century (Manchester, 1991), 153, 182–3. 3. John Munro’s thesis of increased transaction costs from escalating warfare that depressed international warfare can be found in numerous publication, notably J. Munro, ‘Industrial transformations in the north-west European textile trades, c.1290–c.1340’, in B.M.S. Campbell, ed., Before the Black Death: Studies in the ‘crisis’ of the early fourteenth-century (Manchester,

110  Early-Fourteenth Century Coarse Woollens 1991), 110–48; and summarised in J. Munro, ‘Medieval woollens: The western European woollen industries and their struggles for international markets, c.1000–1500’, in D. Jenkins, ed., The Cambridge history of western textiles, vol. 1 (Cambridge, 2003), 235. 4. P. Chorley, ‘The cloth exports of Flanders and northern France during the thirteenth century: A luxury trade?’ EcHR, 2nd series, 40 (1987), 369. 5. J. Oldland, ‘Cistercian clothing and its production at Beaulieu abbey, 1269– 70’, in R. Netherton and G. Owen-Crocker, eds., Medieval clothing and textiles, vol. 9 (Woodbridge, 2013), 73–96. 6. J. Munro, ‘The origins of the English “new draperies”: The resurrection of an old Flemish industry, 1270–1570’, in N. Harte and D. Coleman, eds., The new draperies (Oxford, 1997), 91. 7. Consitt, Weavers, 304–5. 8. Munro, ‘Resurrection’, 8–90. 9. Chorley, ‘Cloth exports’, 373. 10. Spinning summer worsted was 8d/stone. 11. T.L. Lloyd, ‘Some costs of cloth manufacturing in thirteenth-century England’, TH, 1 (1968–70), 334. 12. Munro, ‘Textile technology’, in J.R. Straefer et  al., The dictionary of the Middle Ages, vol. 11 (New York, 1988), 698; Chorley, ‘Evolution’, 10. 13. Munro, ‘Technology’, 198–201. 14. D. Keene, ‘Textile terms and occupations in medieval Winchester’, Ler Historia, 30 (1996), 137; D. Keene, ‘Textile manufacturing: The textile industry’, in M. Biddle, ed., Object and economy in medieval Winchester (Oxford, 1990), 203. 15. P. Chorley, ‘The evolution of the woollen, 1300–1700’, in N. Harte, ed., The new draperies in the Low Countries and England, 1300–1800 (Oxford, 1997), 19–11. 16. Ibid, 12. 17. F. Lechaud, ‘An aristocratic wardrobe of the late thirteenth century: the confiscation of the goods of Osbert de Spaldington in 1298’, Historical Research, 67 (1994), 95. 18. Munro, ‘Technology’, 198. 19. H. Lemon, ‘The development of hand spinning wheels’, TH, I (1968–70), 84. 20. Chorley, ‘Evolution’, 9. 21. Thorold-Rogers, Prices, vol. 1, 593. 22. Chorley, ‘Cloth exports’, 376–7. 23. Rays used different coloured weft and warp threads; medleys were made from mixed-colour wools. 24. J. Oldland, ‘The variety and quality of English woollen cloth exported in the late Middle Ages’, JEEH, 39 (2010), 214–20. 25. Chorley, ‘Cloth exports’, 369–71. 26. Munro, ‘Industrial transformations’, 112. 27. C.M. Cipolla, ‘The trends in Italian economic history in the later Middle Ages’, EcHR, 2nd series, 2 (1949), 181–2; R.S. Lopez and H.A. Miskimin, ‘The economic depression of the Renaissance’, EcHR, 14 (1962), 419; C. Cipolla, ‘Economic depression of the Renaissance’, EcHR, 2nd series, 16 (1964), 519–24. 28. Chorley, ‘Cloth exports’, 367–8; Munro, ‘Industrial transformations’, 117; J. Munro, ‘The rise, expansion, and decline of the Italian wool-based cloth industries, 1100–1730: A  study in international competition, transaction costs, and comparative advantage’, in Studies in medieval and renaissance history, 3rd series, vol. 9 (2012), 67–8. 29. Munro, ‘Industrial transformations’, 111–12.

Early-Fourteenth Century Coarse Woollens 111 30. Ibid, 113. 31. Crowfoot, Textiles, 27. 32. Cal. LBE, 65. 33. TNA, E101/391/14; Crowfoot, Textiles, 27, 52–5. 34. K. Staniland, ‘Clothing provision and the great wardrobe in the mid-thirteenth century’, TH, 22 (1991), 244. 35. Munro, ‘Industrial crisis’, 105. 36. S. Hovland, ‘Apprenticeship in later medieval London’ (Unpub. Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 2006), 267. 37. Rogers, Prices, vol. 2, 538–9. 38. H.F. Chettle and J.L. Kirby, ‘Priory of Maiden Bradley’, in R.B. Pugh and E. Crittall, eds., VCH, Wiltshire, vol. 3 (London, 1989), 299. 39. TNA, SC 6/1258/5, 6; Rogers, Prices, vol. 2, 538–9. 40. CPR, 1321–4, 151–3. 41. Liber Custumarum, ii, 545; W. Endrei, ‘The productivity of weaving in latemedieval Flanders’, in N.B. Harte and K.G. Ponting, eds., Cloth and clothing in medieval Europe (London, 1983), 110. 42. TNA, E 101/359/18, 381/9, 384/6, 398/24; Moore, Fairs, 43. 43. Cal. LBA, 210; E. Ekwall, Two early London subsidy rolls (Lund, 1951), 172; Oldland, ‘Clothmaking’, 38–40. 44. Munro, ‘Industrial crisis’, 120. 45. Cal. P&M, 1323–1364, 99; Cal. LBE, 296–98. 46. Cal. P&M, 1323–64, 204. 47. Oldland, ‘Clothmaking’, 40. 48. Cal. LBE, 63. 49. E. Quinton, ‘The drapers and the drapery trade of late medieval London, c.1300–c.1500’ (Unpub. Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 2000), 104. London was granted an ordinance that exempted it from the statute passed at York that provided freedom of trade to denizens and aliens throughout the country; see Statutes, 9 Edward III. 50. For a discussion of London drapers accessing provincial cloth in the earlyfourteenth century, see Quinton, ‘Drapers’, 99–106. 51. Sutton, Mercery, 55. 52. A. Sutton, ‘The early linen and worsted industry of Norfolk and the evolution of the London Mercers’ Company’, Norfolk Archaeology, 40 (1989), 208–9. 53. TNA, E154/1/18A. 54. Keene, Winchester, part I, 89. 55. Ibid, 297. 56. Ibid, 298–9, 305. 57. Ibid, 306; D. Keene, ‘The textile industry’, in M. Biddle, ed., Object and economy in medieval Winchester (Oxford, 1990), 209. 58. Keene, Winchester, part I, 307. 59. E.M. Moore, The fairs of medieval England (Toronto, 1985), 204–22. 60. Ibid, 36. 61. Ibid, 2, 213–6. 62. Ibid, 217. 63. B.F. Harvey, ‘Introduction to the “crisis” of the early fourteenth century’, in B. Campbell, ed., Before the Black Death, 1–24. 64. See the discussion of regional development in Chapter 7. 65. M. Bailey, ‘Technology and the growth of textile manufacture in medieval Suffolk’, Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History, 42 (2009), 15. 66. R. Britnell, ‘Markets, shops, inns, taverns and private houses in medieval English trade’, in B. Blonde, ed., Buyers and sellers: Retail circuits and

112  Early-Fourteenth Century Coarse Woollens practices in medieval and early modern Europe, vol. 9 (Studies in Urban History (1100–1800), 2006), 109–23. 67. C. Briggs, Credit and village society in fourteenth-century England (Oxford, 2009), 214–17; P.R. Schofield, ‘Dealing in crisis: External credit and the early fourteenth-century English village’, in M. Allen and M. Davies, eds., Medieval merchants and money (London, 2016), 253–70. 8. R.H. Hilton, A medieval society: The west Midlands at the end of the thir6 teenth century (London, 1966), 207–13.

6 The Fourteenth-Century Urban Revival

At the same time as coarse woollens were replacing serges there was an urban revival in the manufacturing of middling- and high-quality cloth at London and many large provincial towns. In 1300 it seemed that urban clothmaking was in decline everywhere; swamped by imports, and suffering from declining exports and robust rural competition. Yet, by 1370, imports had almost disappeared and English draperies were in the process of assembling the clothmaking skills to match continental quality.1 The restructured draperies in the Low Countries were able to retain their position in many continental markets, and even expand them in some, but not in England.2 Urban clothmaking revived as its weavers made superior cloth for the home market; as its fullers, shearmen and dyers finished coarser rural cloth; and as an export market was beginning to develop once more. This chapter focuses on how, when and where this urban revival took place. There is little evidence of any turnaround in the first quarter of the fourteenth century. With the fairs’ decline, the Great Wardrobe purchased more cloth in London, and London rather than alien merchants played a more important role.3 Exporting wool and importing luxury cloth remained the chief mercantile interests of London’s leading citizens until 1340.4 More towns complained about the decay of their textile industries. In 1290 the Oxford Weavers’ guild claimed that its membership had fallen from sixty before 1275 to just nine, and there were none by 1323. In 1304 York weavers complained that they were unable to pay the farm because rural weavers were infringing the monopoly on coloured and rayed cloth that had been given to York and other Yorkshire boroughs.5 In 1322 Leicester stated that there were no longer any fullers in the town. In 1334 Northampton claimed that, whereas there had been 300 weavers in Henry III’s reign, now there were none. Lincoln weavers were unable to pay the tax farm after 1322 because weavers were no longer there.6 In 1321 London’s burellers claimed that the number of looms had fallen to sixty from 300 in the reign of Edward I, to eighty.7 At Winchester in 1327 citizens were arguing for a reduction in their farm tax because weavers had left the city as their trade had declined.8 Many

114  The Fourteenth-Century Urban Revival of these claims may have been exaggerated in an attempt to reduce taxes, and clothworkers may simply have moved to the suburbs to avoid regulation, but there was a consistency in the complaints.9 There was one notable exception to this urban decline: Bristol. It is probable that Bristol was the largest urban manufacturer of luxury broadcloth at the start of the fourteenth century, and that it already had a thriving export trade, particularly with Gascony and Ireland. In 1295 large quantities of woad were confiscated from Picardy merchants, reflecting a well-developed dyeing industry at this time.10 The 1313 tallage revealed that textile workers were the largest occupational grouping in the town, around 20 per cent of households.11 At Bristol we can see from its ordinances how the woollens industry was managed. In the 1340s ordinances were passed for weavers, dyers and fullers, and for the proper use of woad, probably in response to a growing export trade and the industry’s growth, not just within the town, but in the surrounding countryside.12 Ordinances established higher standards through most production processes, and regulated the movement of wool and cloth in and out of the city. Weavers had to put their mark, and the city a seal, on cloths. Bristol and its surrounding countryside was probably the largest area for cloth manufacture in 1350. Alien weavers were working in Bristol in 1339.13 In 1346 fullers’ ordinances recognised ‘twelve notable fullers and 132 fullers of the commons’, a surprisingly large number.14 The other possible exception to urban decline was Norwich which had become the centre for finishing Norfolk worsteds, and its market had a ‘worthstede row’ in the second decade of the century.15 As worsteds and serge declined elsewhere, Norfolk may have benefited from its concentration on these cloths, capitalising on its longer wools. In the 1350s worsteds still accounted for 17 per cent of exports.16 In the mid-fourteenth century a third to a half of Yarmouth’s worsted exports was in the hands of Norwich merchants: by the end they controlled 90 per cent.17 The revival has always been interpreted as urban clothmakers recapturing the home market for woollens dominated by imported cloth, but this was a lengthy process.18 It seems reasonable to suppose that, as the Brabant industry restructured its industry around fine cloth, and as serges declined, that English clothmakers regained the market for ­middling-quality cloth, especially for serge and woollen rays, for which there continued to be a strong market as the Great Wardrobe accounts and the London excavations clearly show.19 In 1328 the Statute of Northampton determined that all rays had to be 28 yards by 6 quarters, probably designed to curb imported cloth. The length restriction was eliminated in 1336–7, perhaps because imported rays were no longer competing in the market. In the 1320s rays were no longer stanfort but pannus ray, suggesting that they were now true woollens. In the 1320s Florence was still importing some says from northern draperies but the rays were from Flemish draperies, and were undoubtedly woollens, not serges.20

The Fourteenth-Century Urban Revival 115 The struggle for the market in coloured woollens was longer lasting. In 1326–7 the Great Wardrobe expanded its cloth classifications, now making a distinction between long, superfine cloths (28–30 ells) and short (24 ells) coloured cloths, no doubt reflecting the emphasis placed in the Low Countries on their finest cloths made with English wools. Long cloths were of quality similar to those dyed with grain to produce scarlets, and probably all were imported through to the 1350s.21 Alien woollens’ imports from 1303 to 1311 and from 1323 to 1337 were comparable at around 10–11,000 cloths which suggests that, until the beginning of the Hundred Years’ War and the dramatic increase in the tariff on exported wools, Flemish and Brabant cloth continued to dominate the market for high-quality coloured cloth.22 The onset of war reduced imports to 919 cloths in 1337–8 and to 431 cloths in 1340–1 as cloth imports were banned, but they had revived to 4,447 cloths in 1342–3.23 In the 1350s aliens continued to import 4,606 cloths annually, falling to 2,050 broadcloths in the following decade.24 In 1355–7 denizens imported 1,108 cloths and aliens 3,433 cloths at London annually, and aliens imported another 1,037 cloths from other ports for a total of 5,578 cloths. Since cloths alnaged and probably domestically made were only 11,622 in 1355–6, then imports continued to account for a sizable part of the luxury market.25 Therefore, English coloureds started to erode imports in the 1340s but had not replaced them until the 1360s. However, offsetting these imports were exports of 4,423 cloths in 1347–8; that had risen to 10,604 cloths by 1356–7.26

Edward III’s Protectionism and Flemish Immigration Three interlocking factors—government protectionism, Flemish immigration and craft organisation—combined to develop urban textiles. Clothing had become more fashionable by 1350 as cloth was cut to fit more closely to the body, so changes in dress may have led to a growing preference for higher-quality broadcloth. Government statutory encouragement and fiscal protectionism undoubtedly gave the domestic industry the incentive it needed to revive, while the restructuring of the Flemish industry made it easier for English draperies to compete for the lower-priced, but still luxury, coloured broadcloth. Alien clothworkers and a more systematic regulation of urban clothworking served to raise the quality of English cloth, and this made imports less competitive and stimulated exports. Edward III’s taxation of wool exports to finance the initial stages of the Hundred Years’ War gave the woollens industry a massive incentive to improve quality and break the stranglehold that imported cloth had over the luxury market. Export duties, as a percentage of the price for better wools, rose from 10 per cent for denizen merchants and 14 per cent for alien exporters from 1331–5 to 41 per cent for denizens and 44 per cent

116  The Fourteenth-Century Urban Revival for alien merchants ten years later.27 This had an immediate depressive effect on the wool trade as exports fell from 33,645 sacks to 18,075 sacks over the same period, before reviving in the later 1340s.28 Given that wool accounted for approximately a third of production costs, this now gave English clothmakers at least a 10 per cent cost advantage. Edward also took more targeted steps to shield the English industry. His father had prohibited the export of teasles, woad, madder and fuller’s earth in 1326; and banned wool exports, except by licence, and cloth imports, except for the very rich, until the Northampton parliament in 1328. The Statute of Northampton had specified a 26 yards by 6 quarters standard for broadcloths that may have made it more difficult for merchants importing cloth to conform to the assize, and in 1332 Edward tried to stimulate the home industry by forbidding the wearing of foreign cloth for two years, and so must have been confident, by that time, that the domestic industry could supply much of the demand.29 In 1337 acts were passed that forbade the importation of cloth and that only English cloth be worn.30 The purchase of clothing for military purposes stimulated production of English cloth. For example, the Exchequer moved to York between 1333 and 1338 as the king managed the Scottish war. Several York drapers were selling Yorkshire cloth to the Wardrobe that included blanket, ray and coloured cloth, and some cheaper russet and kersey was purchased from Newcastle.31 Two thousand cloths were bought for the navy in 1337.32 It has long been known that immigrant Flemish and Brabant clothworkers contributed to the development of English industry, as political and industrial conflict in Flanders led to the exile of textile workers, but there has been no consensus on the extent of their influence.33 In 1331 John Kempe from Flanders was issued with letters of protection, and was asked to bring servants and apprentices with him, and collective grants were given to Fleming and Brabant textile workers in 1333.34 New research now suggests that alien clothmakers played an important contributory role to the rejuvenation of clothmaking. They came in two waves: after 1330 when Edward III first issued letters of protection, and then from 1350 when 1,364 were banished by Louis of Male from Flemish towns, mostly from Ghent, Bruges and Ypres, the majority of whom were clothworkers.35 Brabanters probably followed after 1356 when Louis of Male invaded the Duchy. The first wave of immigration seems to have been a trickle, the second a rush. While government policy was set down in the 1330s it is likely that most immigrants arrived after midcentury, and their impact was greater in the second half of the century. The government always argued that immigration was for ‘common profit’, necessary to develop industrial skills; and there was wide support for this as the Commons in parliament in 1333 petitioned Edward to protect immigrants from arrest and prosecution, so that they could ‘teach the people of this land to work the cloth’.36 That Edward never wavered

The Fourteenth-Century Urban Revival 117 from this policy throughout his reign, in spite of considerable anti-alien feeling that led in 1381 to the murder of approximately forty Flemings in London during the Peasants Revolt, suggests that he saw their value and that this was reinforced from experience with the passage of time. The overall numbers were far greater than has been previously suggested, certainly more than 1,000 and they can be found all over the country.37 It had been thought that at least 200 immigrated. We now know that in Colchester alone as many as 300 settled between 1351 and 1376.38 In London more than 330 Flemings and Brabanters appear in London records between 1351 and 1376, with approximately 150 definitely working in textiles.39 Immigrant clothworkers can be found in small numbers in many towns. Protections were given to artisans in York, Winchester, Huntingdonshire and Berkshire between 1336 and 1343.40 At York, for example, eight weavers, fullers and dyers became freemen from 1344 to 1360; there were several living in the West Riding later in the century, and alien clothmakers were working in Coventry in the 1350s and 1360s.41 Recent research has found significant numbers in Norfolk.42 The bestknown Fleming in Winchester was a dyer.43 There were Flemish weavers in Bristol in the 1360s, as they are recorded as breaching the Statute of Labourers, and they turn up in the poll tax returns for Bath and Suffolk.44 They even found their way to Kidderminster.45 In all these cases it would seem that they matched royal expectations, disseminating their skills and, because of their small numbers, were easily absorbed into the community. After the Black Death they were probably welcomed as they mitigated a skill shortage. They brought not only the skills to make the finest coloured woollens and rays, but also capital and the organisation of clothworkers required to make superior woollens. These weaver-drapers were able to attract fullers, dyers and spinsters. It is unsurprising that they dominated ray production in London, and it is intriguing to speculate that immigrant spinsters and weavers may have contributed to Salisbury’s specialisation in rays. Edward III’s 1350 letters of protection included Salisbury, and it would be unsurprising if some of those in London took their raymaking skills to Salisbury where they may have been more appreciated.46 Certainly no one has explained now Salisbury came to focus almost exclusively on rays, and how it became the leading cloth town by the end of the century. In two towns, Colchester and London, they came in large numbers but with contrasting results. In Colchester a case can be made that they developed the industry.47 Before the Black Death its reputation for clothmaking was unremarkable. Its subsequent success coincided with the Flemings’ arrival, and they were to account for an estimated 10 per cent of the population. There were other small towns like Wells and Canterbury that developed a strong textile industry, but none were able to develop an export market as did Colchester. There was no evidence of friction presumably because there were few native clothworkers, and the town immediately benefited from Flemish skills and leadership.

118  The Fourteenth-Century Urban Revival In London there was friction from the beginning between native and alien weavers. Anti-alien feeling was strong. Prosperous weaver-drapers from the leading Flemish cloth towns with their superior skills and capital contrasted with relatively poor, local, unskilled weavers.48 Several weavers and fullers had held high civic or guild office in Bruges and Ghent. Ghent weaver-drapers were skilled in producing rays and fine coloureds, and it is clear they continued to make these cloths after their arrival.49 Bruges clothworkers also made linings, but it is not known whether they continued to make them as these cheaper cloths would not have been taken to the alnager and therefore not appeared in the records.50 It is possible that this expertise with linings made some contribution to changes in English dress. Leading weaver-drapers had the skills to buy wools and even export them, distribute those wools to other immigrant weavers, and then supervise the complete production process.51 Foreign weavers were able to set up their own craft organisation and probably prevent diffusion of their skills, causing resentment. As a result, alien clothworkers were able to control the profitable high-quality long cloth and ray markets, leaving local weavers to fight it out with provincial suppliers to make cheaper woollens. We can see the impact of alien clothworkers from the London alnage particulars in the 1570s which show that London’s expertise lay in two cloths, luxury long cloths and rays, and it was Flemish fullers that were alnaging rays.52 In 1374–5 there were 973 long cloths, 205 short cloths and 515 rays which were alnaged: and in 1376–7 there were 752 long cloths, 210 short cloths and 1,020 rays.53 Native weavers received little support from drapers and cloth finishers who benefited from competition between London and provincial clothmakers, and they were further burdened with the annual farm. In a petition native weavers admitted in the 1370s that alien weavers were producing most Londonmade cloth.54 By 1337 there was already friction between alien and English weavers since Edward issued a proclamation to protect Flemings in the city.55 Three years later the mayor, aldermen and other men of the wards agreed to put the common seal to the grant of certain privileges to the Flemings. They were well established in the city by 1347 as, in that year, English weavers first tried to have them made subject to their ordinances and forced to contribute to the annual farm. Flemish weavers always responded that they were under the king’s protection with full rights and under no obligation to be governed by the weavers’ guild. Alien weavers in 1352 were allowed to set up their own guild on an equal footing with the English weavers, with both guilds contributing to the farm in line with the number of looms they possessed.56 The city attempted to put in place a mechanism to promote coordination between the two guilds, but it was fraught with problems since the English weavers believed they had a chartered right to manage all weaving in the city, while the alien

The Fourteenth-Century Urban Revival 119 weavers were guaranteed independence and protection by royal decree. Alien weavers, as a group, were likely to have been more skilled and enterprising, which can only have exacerbated this rivalry.

Rise of the Guilds The emergence of artisan guilds in the later-fourteenth century, with their control over apprenticeship, membership and search of members to check on performance, all contributed to raising the quality of urban luxury cloth. This was particularly important for cloth finishers: fullers, shearmen and piece-dyers. There had always been associations of artisan groups for specific purposes because members of each trade usually lived in the same area and close to other clothmaking crafts on which they depended, and they all had strong connections with local parish fraternities. In the twelfth century weavers and fullers formed associations to negotiate royal charters and raise money for the annual farm, but we have no evidence that would suggest that they were an organised guild. London weavers, among other crafts, were fined in 1180 because they had failed to pay the king for the right to associate.57 They were a poor craft as their fine was one mark compared with twenty marks that goldsmiths had to pay. Dyers and fullers in 1298 organised themselves to handle problems arising from fulling cloth at recently constructed fulling mills.58 Two prominent dyers, William Bernard and Adam Absolom, on behalf of the fullers and dyers, complained that John of Oxford, Henry atte Watergate and Elyas Shereman had taken cloths to the mill against the custom that all cloths were ‘to be fulled by the feet of men of the craft’.59 New ordinances to regulate fulling at the mills were drawn up by six weavers, four tailors, eight burellers and twelve dyers and fullers. These ordinances were to be enforced by twelve elected by the craft of dyers and fullers. No fuller, dyer or weaver was to send cloth out of the city to be fulled unless explicitly requested to do so by the owner of the cloth, and six people were appointed as searchers. Early in the fourteenth century the more careful registration of apprenticeships, the most popular route to the freedom, and recognition that crafts should be included in governance of the city, encouraged crafts to formalise their associations.60 In the first half of the fourteenth century clothworkers began to earn their freedom. The number of shearmen who were citizens at Norwich doubled from 1286–1305 to 1320–39, and the first dyers and shearmen became citizens at York in the 1320s.61 At Bristol Weavers’ and Fullers’ ordinances were first passed in the 1340s. Weavers set regulations for width, weft thread was not to be used for the warp, and no cloth was to be made from thrums. All weaving had to be visible to the public, there was to be no work at night, and cloth had to be woven with the weaver’s mark. Only citizens could weave, and cloth was not to be sent outside the

120  The Fourteenth-Century Urban Revival town until it was approved by aldermen.62 Fullers set wages for all fulling processes, restricted taking cloth to the mills and prohibited finishing cloth that had been mechanically fulled outside the town.63 The Black Death certainly encouraged the production of quality over coarse cloth, and therefore urban over rural production, as growing per capita wealth permitted survivors to buy better cloth, while overall demand declined dramatically. This can only have encouraged the organisation of textile crafts and their attempts to improve quality. The price of quality wools surprisingly rose more than 50 per cent from 1346–50 to 1376–80, reflecting strong demand.64 And it is reasonable to suppose that some of the money from wage increases was spent on clothing.65 Further, the increase in cloth exports would have stimulated urban production, especially because exported cloth was mostly dyed and finished in towns. Craft guilds were firmly established in the second half of the fourteenth century in London and large provincial towns.66 At London Shearmen ordinances were approved in 1350 and fullers were a separate craft with ordinances approved in 1363.67Alien weavers established a guild in 1352, and their ordinances were approved in 1363.68 The first recorded election of four dyers’ wardens was in 1376–7.69 At Winchester ordinances were imposed on weavers in 1364, and four searchers elected to search for faulty cloth.70 At York fullers registered their ordinances in the 1390s and shearmen in 1405.71 At Bristol weavers, dyers, and fullers all received ordinances during this period.72 Four crafts usually were involved in woollens’ manufacture: weavers, dyers, fullers and shearmen. At London weavers were usually organising yarn preparation, then selling cloth to fullers, who in turn sold the cloth to merchants who arranged for the final finishing and dyeing. The Colchester weaver, William Okle, made cloth for Matilda Westoneys in 1388. He had the wool spun and dyed, bought the list that was attached to the sides of the cloth and, once he had woven the cloth, had taken it to the fuller.73 Some of these guilds were set up by the artisans themselves, others at the instigation of the civic elite who wanted to control their activities.74 There were some trading opportunities. It is likely that many York dyers, far wealthier than those in London, may have been selling dyes throughout the north, trading the wool they dyed, and organising carders and spinners to make yarn. In 1466 the dyer, William Crosseby, remembered the carders and spinsters who worked for him, indicating that he was organising yarn preparation, as well as dyeing wool, yarn and cloth.75 The wealth and status of fullers in some towns improved as mill-fulling took over from foot-fulling, and fullers frequently became responsible for finishing cloth. At York a master fuller had to have property valued at four marks as insurance against spoilage of cloth at the mill.76 In towns a fuller, or a group of fullers, often took over grain mills after

The Fourteenth-Century Urban Revival 121 the Black Death, as the number of fulling mills rose around 50 per cent from 1350 to 1400.77 At Colchester there were at least four fulling mills in the 1390s, and three fulling mills at Exeter by 1420.78 In Winchester the Bishop of Winchester had three fulling mills in the town in 1450, and there was one constructed in 1402 by the fullers themselves. Fourteenth-century textile guilds contributed to quality standards as their leaders searched members’ work, although not perhaps with the rigour and consistency of the leading continental draperies.79 In London in 1365 two from the drapers, fullers and weavers were elected to present to the mayor any defects in weaving, fulling and sizing of cloths.80 In September 1366 this arrangement was formalised as city government passed an ordinance establishing a committee, including five of the six members who had been elected in the previous year. The searchers from each craft had the power to search their own craft and report infractions to the mayor.81 There are records of the appointment of these commissioners in 1371 and 1375.82 Offenders would be summoned to the Guildhall, the cloths examined and fines charged. That this initiative was aggressively pursued is indicated by a 1369 petition of fullers, in which they complained that repeated examinations at the Guildhall were so time consuming that it took them away from their work. They proposed that cloths need not be re-examined for defects if the purchaser of the cloth had already examined the cloth and had been satisfied.83 There were two cases about cloth defects that reached the court in 1367 but none after, so presumably a system was set up to handle these quality problems without involving the mayor’s court.84 The organisation of finishing differed by town since both fullers and shearmen had strong relationships with merchants. At Winchester fullers became the leading textile entrepreneurs in the late-fourteenth century, replacing dyers.85 They alnaged most of the cloth and managed the total finishing process, dry as well as wet shearing the cloth, and often sending cloth to the dyers. Similarly in Colchester it was the fullers who became the industry’s entrepreneurs, organising the finishing, and sometimes even other production processes.86 At Beverley shearmen were allowed to full cloth, and in York fullers could shear the cloth they had fulled.87 In most large towns there were separate Fullers’ and Shearmen’s guilds, but in Salisbury in the fifteenth and Northampton in the sixteenth centuries, shearmen were part of the Fullers’ guild.88 There was a separate Shearmen’s guild at Exeter in the fifteenth century, but they became amalgamated with weavers and tuckers (fullers) in 1479–80.89 In Shrewsbury there was a Shearmen’s guild, but no Fullers’ guild, probably because the town was a specialised finishing centre for Welsh cottons and frieze that had already been fulled.90 Worcester only had two clothmaking guilds, Weavers and Fullers.91 In Coventry shearmen were members of the Tailor’s guild, and in the sixteenth century some shearmen at London were Merchant Tailors rather than Clothworkers.92

122  The Fourteenth-Century Urban Revival

Industry Restructuring As on the continent, many urban draperies successfully restructured to satisfy the growing demand for domestically produced luxury broadcloth, and from the 1340s, to capitalise on the growth of an export market. Towns had plentiful labour to prepare the yarn, finishing and dyeing skills necessary for better-quality woollens, a developing craft organisation to regulate work practices, merchants and capital to manage cloth sale and distribution. Industry focus had moved from the East Midlands towns and international fairs to London, provincial capitals and regional fairs. Lincoln was one of the few thirteenth-century cloth towns that was able to resuscitate its cloth industry by mid-century, perhaps because its clothworkers had always specialised in finer cloths. Lincoln produced, on average, 975 cloths in the late 1350s, but this was well below the number produced in the area around Southampton which included Winchester and Salisbury which accounted for 3,400 cloths.93 Lincoln was to decline in the later-fourteenth century as York and Coventry emerged as the principal northern draperies. Towns made primarily broadcloth. There was some narrow cloth made in Bristol, called osetes, but it was obviously small production.94 This restructuring can be best documented for London. In the thirteenth century it was known for its inexpensive cloths, in the later fourteenth it made high-quality broadcloths for the Great Wardrobe. Its success, of course, had much to do with proximity to the largest quality market in the country and the decline of provincial fairs which forced aristocratic and royal households to buy more cloth in London, but it was also helped by the city’s independence and strengthened crafts’ organisation. In 1319 the city was granted a charter that restricted alien access to the freedom which was a prerequisite for trading within the city, and indirectly determined that apprenticeship to a craft was to become the primary route to citizenship.95 Further, in 1335 London was exempted from the Statute of York which guaranteed freedom of trade for both denizens and aliens throughout the country.96 The city’s merchants prospered from their monopoly of the city’s trade, drapers controlling the woollens, and mercers the worsted trade. Drapers changed their focus from imported cloth to the marketing of domestic cloth. Many prominent drapers lived in Candlewick ward, in close proximity to weavers, burellers, dyers and shearmen, encouraging them to produce superior cloth. They were particularly wealthy and influential in the city in the 1330s: Simon Swanland was mayor in 1329–30, followed next year by John Pulteney who was mayor three times in the 1330s. 97 Another draper, Henri Darci, was mayor for two years from 1337 to 1339.98 All three were major woollens suppliers to the king in the 1320s and 1330s.99 At York growth can be tracked through freedom registrations: the first weaver to become a freeman was in 1318, the next in 1324.100 Two

The Fourteenth-Century Urban Revival 123 Brabanters were given the king’s protection to settle in York in 1336.101 After 1327 textile craftsmen were regularly admitted; in the 1340s two weavers a year.102 At Canterbury there seems to have been a notable rise in textile trade admissions to the freedom in the 1340s compared with early in the century, and at Salisbury more weavers, fullers, dyers and drapers appeared in the records.103 An Exchequer investigation at Lincoln in 1348 revealed that there were weavers in the town and its hinterland, and that ‘very many citizens kept hired weavers in their houses working on cloth for sale’.104 One of the most important differences between fourteenth-century urban clothmaking in the Low Countries and England was that on the continent the total production process was usually carried out within the town and its immediate suburbs, while in England a considerable amount of cloth was woven in the countryside and finished in towns. Clothmaking in a few towns was totally integrated as seems to have been the case in Colchester and Coventry, but it was more typical that large towns made high-quality cloths while importing rural and small-town cloth for finishing, as at London, Bristol, Winchester, Salisbury and probably York. From 1350 to 1450 there was an interdependence between rural and urban clothmakers. The London draper, John Oliver’s 1406 cloth inventory was mostly provincial cloth, primarily from Essex and Guilford, terms used to describe cloth woven in surrounding counties, but also from Salisbury, Winchester, Reading and Colchester.105 Of his frieze inventory, London supplied thirteen and a half cloths and twelve rolls, but 143 cloths and ten rolls came from elsewhere. London-made cloths were generally higher-quality cloth such as blanket cloths worth £7 and green broadcloth priced at £5.106 Therefore, urban fullers and shearmen were finishing both local and country cloth. Although it is dangerous to generalise, there was probably one additional distinction between rural and urban cloth: rural cloth tended to be of coarser quality that was fulled at the mill, and urban cloth was of higher quality or ray cloth that continued to be fulled by foot. There were exceptions to this rule in those towns with fulling mills, as at Colchester and Winchester where most cloths were probably mill-fulled. After 1450 clothiers were increasingly able to finish their own cloths, often sending cloth to London and bypassing provincial towns. The organisation of finishing cloth differed from town to town, and could be managed either by drapers who had bought the cloth in the countryside or from local weavers, or by cloth finishers: fullers, shearmen or even dyers. Drapers usually subcontracted the work because they had less expertise and wished to allocate their time and capital to buying and selling cloth. York may have been an exception because it was predominantly merchants who were taking cloth to the alnager and paying the subsidy. Also it was rare for dyers to manage the whole process because of the capital, expertise and time it took to run the dyehouse. It was

124  The Fourteenth-Century Urban Revival usually therefore the role of shearmen or fullers to manage the finishing process, and in many towns fullers were the entrepreneurs. At Colchester the city’s leading fullers bought cloth from weavers and then managed its finishing.107 In contrast, at York and Coventry, where there were no fulling mills, fullers were usually poor.108 Fullers who were simply footfulling and tentering local cloth had limited opportunities as their work was unskilled and poorly paid. It was mechanical fulling and the finishing of provincial cloth that provided them with opportunity to expand their business. One Salisbury fuller, John Corscoumbe, who alnaged 307 cloths in 1394–5, was sourcing cloth from as far away as Wells, Somerset.109 Fullers often controlled cloth finishing because they came first in the finishing process. All cloth had to be fulled before it was taken to the alnager, and it was the fuller who tentered the cloth and determined its final length and width. Some fullers were capitalists who paid the lease for the fulling mill and owned tenters and tenter grounds and therefore had the resources to manage all the finishing. They had an interest in maximising the throughput at the mill which must have led them to buy rural cloth to keep their mills productive. Also some of the fullers’ work was to check and improve the quality of rural cloth. If cloth was millfulled it is unlikely that it was burled before fulling as was the practice when the cloth was fulled by foot (burling removed all the debris in the cloth). The fuller took the rural, mill-fulled cloth and stretched it over a perch by the waterside and carefully cleaned it. In addition it had to be checked that it had been evenly fulled across the whole cloth. Lastly the fuller was responsible for the first shearing of the wet cloth while it was stretched on the tenter, and it was usually the fuller who then delivered cloth to the shearmen for dry-finishing. In Winchester there was a complete reversal of fortune between dyers and fullers. In the thirteenth century dyers were merchants, with fullers working for them; in the laterfourteenth century leading fullers were employing dyers to colour their cloths, and even owned dyehouses themselves.110 The shearmen’s advantage was that he was responsible for the final product delivered to the merchant, its feel and finish, and the cloth was usually sent to the dyer before final finishing. Shearmen needed to have close connections with merchants to be successful, and in London drapers and tailors were frequently executors of leading shearmen’s wills. As a result they were retained by merchants to manage the complete finishing process, and some managed to leverage their skills and connections to become merchants themselves. The apparent success of urban clothmaking in the second half of the fourteenth century must be placed in perspective, especially since it was to decline in the fifteenth century. Clothmaking had been a catalyst for population growth in some large late-fourteenth century provincial towns even as the Black Death and the recurrent visitations of the plague halved the national population. York’s population rose from 8,000 in the

The Fourteenth-Century Urban Revival 125 early-fourteenth century to 12–14,000 by its end to become the country’s second largest city.111 Coventry, the country’s fourth largest city in 1377, had increased its population between 1334 and 1377.112 Yet in very few towns did the textile industry dominate as in the textile centres in the Low Countries.113 Even in Salisbury and Norwich the cloth trades only accounted for less than 40  per cent of occupations, and annual urban production rarely exceeded 5,000 cloths.114 Bristol was the leading cloth exporter at mid-century, shipping 2,800 cloths annually from 1355–6 to 1359–60. If exports were half production, then total production was less than 6,000 cloths, a modest number compared with leading Flemish cloth towns. The poll taxes of 1377, 1379 and 1381, where they record occupations, reveal that towns accounted for between 15 and 20  per cent of occupations (14.9 per cent at York in 1377; in 1379 21 per cent at Rothernam and Wakefield; in 1381 23.3  per cent at Northampton, 17.7 per cent at Worcester and 11.6 per cent at York).115 At York 13 per cent of the freemen in the second half of the fourteenth century were clothmakers; at London only around 5 per cent.116 A fifth of occupations at Bristol early in the fourteenth century were in cloth or clothing: and in the second quarter of the sixteenth century tailors, fullers, shearmen and weavers were the four leading trades taking on apprentices.117 Clothmaking was probably more important in Worcester and Reading in the sixteenth century than it was in any large town in the fourteenth century. Textile artisans in large clothmaking towns were always subservient to the merchant class that sought to structure and manage artisan trades. Clothmaking guilds had little power, its members limited capital, and almost no opportunity for even the most successful to make the transition from artisan to merchant. Even dyers, who in many towns had been part of the merchant oligarchy in the thirteenth century, were often treated no differently from weavers, fullers or shearmen. One exception seems to have been York where dyers were more numerous and accumulated greater wealth than London dyers from 1380 to 1420, suggesting that some were merchants, as distributors of wool and dyes, and a few may have traded cloth.118 At Leicester a few clothworkers were admitted to the merchant guild even though the town was no longer known for its clothmaking: from 1300 to 1350 there were ten dyers, one weaver, five fullers and six shearmen; from 1350 to 1380 seven dyers, six weavers, three fullers and five shearmen.119 In some of the smaller cloth towns there were greater opportunities for a successful artisan to move into the merchant class, as was revealed by the 1379 and 1381 poll tax returns.120 Canterbury appears to be very different from the largest cloth towns in that a few weavers and fullers were as rich as anyone else in the city. Among the ten people who paid the top rate of 9s in 1381, two were weavers and one was a fuller, and among the seven who paid 8s, there were two fullers, a draper and a hosier. There appears to have been no restriction on the sale of cloth, and no mercantile

126  The Fourteenth-Century Urban Revival aristocracy as most of the other rich inhabitants were either brewers or innkeepers. The Canterbury weaver, John Frythe, employed an apprentice and six servants in 1381, putting him among the leading taxpayers in the town.121 Bath also lacked the expected dichotomy between merchant and artisan. The two richest inhabitants were a dyer and a mercer, followed by a draper and a brewer, and the fifth wealthiest was a weaver. At Hadleigh some weavers, fullers and dyers were as wealthy as many drapers in 1381. On the other hand, in the very small Wiltshire towns and villages in 1379 such as Marlborough, Devizes and Bradford, clothworkers were among the poorest in the community. At Worcester in 1380, dyers and fullers were far more numerous and wealthier than shearmen, who seem to have been as poor as weavers.122

Notes 1. For a review of clothmaking in the first half of the century, see Miller and Hatcher, Medieval England: Towns, commerce and crafts 1086–1348 (London, 1995), 121–7. 2. J. Munro, ‘Medieval woollens: The western European woollen industries and their struggles for international markets, c.1000–1500’, in D. Jenkins, ed., The Cambridge history of western textiles, vol. 1 (Cambridge, 2003), 250. 3. E.M. Moore, The fairs of medieval England (Toronto, 1985), 215. 4. G.A. Williams, Medieval London: From commune to capital (London, 1961), 130–1, 320. 5. CCR, 1302–7, 134. 6. J. Munro, ‘The “industrial crisis” of the English textile towns, c.1290– c.1330’, in J. Prestwich, R. Britnell and R. Frame, eds., Thirteenth century England, vol. 7 (Woodbridge, 1999), 120–1. 7. F. Consitt, The London Weavers’ Company (London, 1933), 185. 8. D. Keene, Survey of medieval Winchester (Oxford, 1985), part I, 297. 9. A.R. Bridbury, Medieval English clothmaking (London, 1982), 27–35. 10. E.M. Carus-Wilson, ‘Bristol’, in M.D. Lobel, ed., The atlas of historic towns, vol. 2 (London, 1975), 10. 11. Bridbury, Clothmaking, 29; E.A. Fuller, ‘The tallage of 6 Edw. II and the Bristol rebellion’, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, 19 (1894–95), 209, 217–19. 12. F.B. Bickley, The little red book of Bristol, vol. 2 (London, 1900), 1–22. 13. W.J. Ashley, English economic history and theory: Part 2, the end of the Middle Ages (London, 1901), 203. 14. Bickley, Bristol, 10–14. 15. A. Sutton, ‘The early linen and worsted Industry of Norfolk and the evolution of the Mercers’ Company’, Norfolk Archaeology, 40 (1989), 204–5. 16. Munro, ‘Industrial crisis’, 140. 17. H. Sutermeister, ‘Merchant classes of Norwich and the city government 1350–1500’ (Unfinished thesis, University of London), Norfolk Record Office, MC 146/14, 624 X 4, ch.4, f. 28; P. Dunn, ‘After the Black Death: Society and economy in late-fourteenth century Norwich’ (Unpub. Ph.D. thesis, University of East Anglia, 2004), 221–7, 275. 18. E.M. Carus-Wilson, ‘Trends in the export of English woollens in the fourteenth century’, in Venturers, 224.

The Fourteenth-Century Urban Revival 127 19. In the first half of the fourteenth century the analysis of excavated cloths shows as many twill rays as tabby broadcloths. By the second half of the century the market had become dominated by tabby broadcloths; see E. Crowfoot, F. Pritchard and K. Staniland, Textiles and clothing c.1150–c.1450 (London, 1992), 27. 20. P. Chorley, ‘The cloth exports of Flanders and northern France during the thirteenth century: A luxury trade?’ EcHR, 3 (1987), 355, 367–8. 21. For the finishing of these cloths, see J. Munro, ‘The medieval scarlet and the economics of sartorial splendour’, in N. Harte and K. Ponting, eds., Cloth and clothing in medieval Europe (London, 1983), 33–57. 22. Munro, ‘Industrial crisis’, 132–4. 23. Ibid, 134–5. 24. Munro, ‘Industrial crisis’, 135; Oldland, ‘London clothmaking, c.1270– c.1550’ (Unpub. Ph.D. Thesis, University of London, 2003), 65. 25. TNA, E 356/7; H.L. Gray, ‘The production and exportation of English woollens in the fourteenth century’, EHR, 39 (1924), 21, 34. 26. E.M. Carus-Wilson and O. Colman, England’s export trade 1275–1547 (Oxford, 1965), 75–6. 27. J. Munro, ‘The late medieval decline of English demesne agriculture: Demographic, monetary, and political-fiscal factors’, in M. Bailey and S. Rigby, eds., Town and countryside in the age of the Black Death (Turnhout, 2012), 324. 28. Ibid, 327. 29. CPR, 1330–4, 363. 30. Statutes, 11 Edward III, c. 2, 3, 5. 31. D.M. Broome, ‘Exchequer migrations to York in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries’, in A.G. Little and F.M. Powicke, eds., Essays in medieval history presented to T.F. Tout (Manchester, 1923), 291–300; TNA, E 101/387/13. 32. Carus-Wilson, ‘Trends’, 243. 33. Munro, ‘Struggles’, 245; H.E. de Sagher, ‘L’immigration des tisserands Flamands et Brabançons en Angleterre sous Edouard III’, Mélanges d’Histoire offerts à Henri Pirenne par ses anciens élèves et ses amis à l’occasion de sa quarantième année d’ ensiegnement à l’université de Gand 1866–1926, vol. 1 (Brussels, 1926), 113. 34. CPR, 1330–1334, 161, 473, 533. 35. B. Lambert and M. Pajic, ‘Immigration and the common profit: Native clothworkers, Flemish exiles, and royal policy in fourteenth-century London’, Journal of British Studies, 55 (2016), 637–40. 36. Lambert and Pajic, ‘Immigration’, 637. 37. Carus-Wilson, ‘Trends’, 244. 38. B. Lambert and M. Pajic, ‘Drapery in exile: Edward III, Colchester and the Flemings, 1351–67’, History, 99 (2014), 741. 39. M. Pajic, ‘The migration of Flemish weavers to England in the fourteenth century: The economic influence and the transfer of skills 1331–1381’ (Unpub. Ph.D. thesis, Universities of Gent and Strasbourg, 2016), 91. 40. Lambert and Pajic, ‘Drapery in exile’, 734. 41. M. Sellars, ‘Social and economic history’, in W. Page, ed., VCH, County of York, vol.  3 (London, 1925), 438; H. Heaton, The Yorkshire woollen and worsted industries (Oxford, 2nd ed., 1965), 12–16; de Sagher, ‘L’immigration’, 8; E. Carus-Wilson, ‘The oversea trade of late medieval Coventry’, Economies et Societés au Moyen Age (1973), 372. 42. Pajic, ‘Migration’, 135–7. 43. D. Keene, Survey of medieval Winchester (Oxford, 1985), part 1, 301.

128  The Fourteenth-Century Urban Revival 44. N.R. Amor, From wool to cloth: The triumph of the Suffolk clothier (Bungay, 2016), 86. I am indebted to Milan Pajic for finding these West Country immigrants. 45. M.V. Taylor, ‘Cloth’, in W. Willis-Bund and W. Page, ed., VCH, Worcester, vol. 2 (London, 1971), 284. 46. Pajic, ‘Migration’, 142–3. 47. Lambert and Pajic, ‘Drapery in exile’, 733–52. 48. Pajic, ‘Migration’, 212. 49. Ibid, 231. 50. Ibid, 214. 51. Ibid, 224–8. 52. Lambert and Pajic, ‘Immigration’, 641. 53. Oldland, ‘Clothmaking’, 84; Lambert and Pajic, ‘Immigration’, 642. 54. Consitt, Weavers, 50. 55. Cal. LBF, 190. 56. Consitt, Weavers, 39–42, 190–1. The weavers were able to obtain a writ from the king in 1364 that ordered all weavers in the city and suburbs to contribute to the farm; see Cal. LBG, 173. Alien weavers remained independent from the English weavers until 1497. 57. Barron, London in the later Middle Ages: Government and people 1200– 1500 (Oxford, 2004), 200–1. 58. Williams, Medieval London, 172. 59. Cal. LBC, 51; Liber custumarum, vol. 1, 127–8. 60. G. Unwin, The guilds and companies of London (London, 1963), 68–71; E. Veale, ‘The “great twelve”: Mistery and fraternity in thirteenth-century London’, Historical Research, 64 (1991), 262–3. 61. F. Collins, ed., The register of the freemen of the city of York, vol. 1, 1272– 1558 (Surtees Society, 1896), 106; E. Routledge, ‘Norwich before the Black Death’, in C. Rawcliffe and R. Wilson, eds., Medieval Norwich (London, 2004), 166, 169. 62. Bickley, The little red book of Bristol, vol. 2 (London, 1900), 1–6. 63. Ibid, 10–16. 64. Munro, ‘Late-medieval decline’, 324. 65. Ibid, 314, 318. 66. The first surviving Coventry Weavers’ ordinances were in 1453; see H.M.H. Hulton, ‘ “Company and fellowship”: The medieval weavers of Coventry’, in Dugdale Society Occasional Papers, vol. 31 (Oxford, 1987), 2. 67. H.T. Riley’s, Memorials of London and London life in the XIIIth, XIVth, and XVth centuries (London, 1868), 256. 68. Consitt, Weavers, 39–42, 188–91. 69. Cal. LBH, 337. 70. Keene, Winchester, part I, 301. 71. H. Swanson, Medieval artisans (Oxford, 1989), 40. 72. Bickley, Bristol, 6–8, 10–14, 38–41, 59–61. 73. R.H. Britnell, Britnell, Growth and decline in Colchester 1200–1525 (Cambridge, 1986), 60. 74. Heaton, Yorkshire, 43; Swanson, Medieval Artisans, 107–26. 75. P.J.P. Goldberg, Women, work, and the life-cycle in a medieval economy: Women and work in Yorkshire c. 1300–1500 (Oxford, 1992), 119. 76. Heaton, Yorkshire, 36. 77. J. Langdon, Mills in the medieval economy (Oxford, 2002), 41. 78. Ibid, 229. 79. Heaton, Yorkshire, 42. 80. Cal. P&M, 1364–81, 36.

The Fourteenth-Century Urban Revival 129 81. Cal. LBG, 184. 82. Ibid, 284; Cal. LBH, 13. 83. Cal. LBG, 256; Riley’s, Memorials, 341. 84. In one case the cloth was poorly woven and, in the other, the yarn had been poorly spun; see Cal. P&M, 1364–81, 80, 86. 85. Keene, Winchester, part 1, 304–8; D. Keene, ‘Textile terms and occupations in medieval Winchester’, Ler Historia, 30 (1996), 141–2. 86. Britnell, Colchester, 76–7. 87. Swanson, Artisans, 40. 88. D. Carr, ed., The first general entry book of the city of Salisbury, 1378– 1452 (Wiltshire Record Society, 2001), 185; T.J. George, ‘Textiles and allied trades’, in R.M. Sarjeantson and W.R. Adkins, eds., VCH Northampton, vol. 2 (London, 1906), 336. 89. B.F. Cresswell, A short history of the worshipful company of Weavers, Fullers and Shearmen of the city and county of Exeter (Exeter, 1930), 7; M. Kowaleski, Local markets and regional trade in medieval Exeter (Cambridge, 1995), 25. 90. T. Mendenhall, The Shrewsbury drapers and the Welsh wool trade in the XVI and XVII Centuries (Oxford, 1953), 80–1. 91. M. Taylor, ‘Cloth’, in J.W. Willis-Bund, ed., VCH, Worcester, vol. 2 (London, 1906), 284. 92. C. Phythian-Adams, Desolation of a city: Coventry and the urban crisis of the late Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1979), 59; Oldland, ‘Clothmaking’, 241–2. 93. Gray, ‘Production and exportation’, 34; TNA, E 358/8, 9. 94. Bickley, Bristol, 1–6. 95. Barron, London, 204–6. 96. P. Nightingale, A medieval mercantile community: The Grocers’ company and the politics and trade of London 1000–1485 (New Haven, 1995), 167. 97. A.H. Johnson, The history of the worshipful company of the Drapers of London, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1914), 87–91. 98. Barron, London, 328–9. 99. TNA, E101/384/6, 385/1, 385/11, 386/5, 387/1, 387/13. 100. F. Collins, ed., Register of the freeman of the city of York, vol. 96 (Surtees Society, 1896), 1–44; Heaton, Yorkshire, 13–16. 101. Heaton, Yorkshire, 14. 102. Miller and Hatcher, Medieval England, 124. 103. S. Thrupp and H. Johnson, ‘The earliest Canterbury’s freemen’s rolls 1298– 1363’, in F.R. Du Boulay, ed., Medieval Kentish society, vol.  18 (Kent Archaeological Society, 1964), 176; E. Carus-Wilson, ‘The woollen industry before 1550’, in E. Crittall and R.D Pugh, eds., VCH, Wiltshire, vol. 4 (London, 1959), 121; Bridbury, Clothmaking, 31. 104. Miller and Hatcher, Medieval England, 121. 105. E. Quinton, ‘The drapers and the drapery trade of late medieval London, c.1300–c.1500’ (Unpub. Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 2000), 133–4. 106. Cal. P&M, vol. 4, 1413–1437, 2–3. 107. Britnell, Colchester, 76. 108. Swanson, Artisans, 157; Phythian Adams, Desolation, 49. 109. TNA, CP 40/552m. 343. I have to thank Milan Pajic for this reference. 110. Keene, Winchester, part 1, 305–6. 111. J.N. Bartlett, ‘The expansion and decline of York in the later Middle Ages’, EcHR, 2nd series, 12 (1959), 33; E. Miller, ‘Medieval York’, in P.M. Tillott, ed., VCH, City of York (Oxford, 1961), 84. A. Dyer estimated the population in 1377 to have been 13,770; see A. Dyer, “Urban decline” in England,

130  The Fourteenth-Century Urban Revival 1377–1525’, in T.R. Slater, ed., Towns in decline, AD 1000–1600 (Aldershot, 2000), 266–88. 112. Phythian-Adams, Desolation, 33–5. 113. Malines in 1333 was making 23,000 cloths; see W. Prevenier and W. Blockmans, Les Paye-Bas bourguignons (Anvers, 1983), 79. 114. Oldland, ‘Fyne worsted’, 182, 190; Bridbury, Clothmaking, 69. 115. P.J.P. Goldberg, ‘Urban identity and the poll taxes of 1377, 1379, and 1381’, in EcHR, 2nd series, 43 (1990), 211. 116. Bartlett, ‘Expansion and decline’, 22; Barron, London, 66–7. 117. Fuller, ‘Tallage’, 217–19; Calendar of the Bristol apprentice book, Bristol Record Society, vols. 14, 33 (1949, 1980), passim. 118. Oldland, ‘Clothmaking’, 92; Swanson, Artisans, 157. 119. M.K. Dale, ‘Social and economic history, 1066–1509’, in R.A. McKinley, ed., VCH Leicester, vol. 4 (London, 1958), 39. 120. C.C. Fenwick, ed., The poll taxes of 1377, 1379 and 1381, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1998, 2001, 2005). 121. Ibid, vol. 1, 420. 122. C. Barron, ‘The fourteenth-century poll tax returns for Worcester’, Midland History, 14 (1989), 28–9.

7 Revival of Exports, and an Assessment of Clothmaking at the End of the Fourteenth Century

The second half of the fourteenth century was bracketed between two crises: the Black Death and the bullion crisis and trade recession at the turn of the fifteenth century. The first contracted demand favouring quality cloth at the expense of coarse cloth; the second brought to an end the rapid rise in cloth exports.1 Exports were the growth opportunity and driver of demand as domestic consumption fell with population, even though by the end of the century the domestic market was perhaps still three times the size of cloth exports.2 The 1347 cloth custom placed a tax on exports of 14d for denizens, 12d for Hanseatic merchants and 21d for other aliens on standard broadcloth that provided a continuous data series from 1347 until 1543 and then sporadically after that. This has inevitably drawn historians’ attention to exports and away from the domestic market whose size and direction can only be vaguely estimated. Towns were the chief beneficiaries as they either made or finished most exported cloth. London had become the dominant port by the end of the century, beginning the process of transforming the cloth industry from a collection of regional markets to a national one. In the late 1350s Flanders placed a complete ban on English cloth, although restrictions preceded that date.3 This forced English merchants to divert cloth to Zeeland ports which was a far less satisfactory alternative to Bruges.4 By 1350 the large Flemish urban cloth towns had reconfigured their production to focus on exports of high-quality woollens, and Bruges was well established as the cloth trading centre for north-west Europe. The Flemish luxury cloth industry, which had been firmly centred in large towns, was, however, facing heavy competition from small towns that sought to imitate the finer cloths but used cheaper, but still high-quality wools, and less expensive labour and production processes.5 These cloths were priced between the luxury cloths from the traditional cloth towns of Bruges, Ghent and Ypres, and most English broadcloths, and served to keep the Flemish industry extremely competitive. The Low Countries’ woollen industry also continued to expand geographically, not just to the nouvelles draperies in south-west Flanders, but northwards to Holland, centred at Leiden. Any negative effect from the rising

132  Revival of Exports cost of English wools used by continental draperies was to some extent offset by distribution to new markets in northern Europe that counterbalanced those lost, as in England. It was social and political problems rather than the increasing price of English wools or any success on the part of English merchants that produced cracks in the Flemish cloth industry, and created opportunities for English expansion towards the end of the century, but mostly for cheaper cloths. A turning point was the six-year Ghent civil war (1379–85) that disrupted the Flemish textile industry. The wool staple was moved from Bruges to Middleburg from 1383 to 1388 (and again for a short time in 1392), where English merchants now found a market for their cloth. In 1388 Duke Philip gave permission for shipment of cloth to Middleburg, Zeeland, Brabant and Holland.6 Although the staple returned to Bruges after the war, new trading networks for cloth had been established, and Zeeland became an important source for madder, the essential red dye. The Ghent war had led to a conflict with the Hanseatic League, which placed an embargo against Bruges, cutting off their Flemish cloth trade from 1388 to 1392. Hanseatic merchants turned to England, where they enjoyed preferential duties on cloth exports. Hanseatic exports through London, which had been only 389 cloths in 1379–80, rose to 1,639 cloths a decade later, and had jumped to 3,359 cloths in the last year of the century.7 Avenues for trade with the northern Low Countries and the Baltic had now become established, and the axis of the English cloth trade moved northwards. Italians still preferred Flemish to English luxury cloths at this time, while Low Countries’ woollens continued to dominate many German and central European markets.8

Export Expansion The low cost of wools, minimal tax on cloth exports and improving quality made English cloth more competitive. By mid-century English merchants were selling a range of cloth, and these had expanded to Castile, Portugal, some northern ports like Danzig and Bergen, and to the Low Countries through Middelburg and Dordrecht by the end of the century. In the year that preceded the Black Death exports were approximately 6,000 cloths. Unsurprisingly, the market did not revive until the mid1350s, but had exploded to 14,527 cloths annually from 1366 to 1370, before falling back slightly in the 1370s. They were to rush forward after 1385, averaging 39,150 cloths in the 1390s, after which growth was halted by the recession of the first two decades of the fifteenth century.9 Exports became the driving force behind industry development. This initially favoured Bristol, but by the beginning of the fifteenth century London and Southampton between them accounted for 65 per cent of the cloth trade (Table 7.1). Alien trade reinforced the influence of these two ports, not only because most Hanse trade was primarily with London,

29.8 .8 9.2 4.3

13.7 .2

1.7 24.5 7.1

13, 260 358 4,065 1,908

6,085

77

745 10,884 3,150

44,405

Total

Source: Carus-Wilson and Coleman, Export, 76–7, 89–90.

100.0

8.7

3,874

Boston Bridgewater Bristol Chichester Exeter Hull Ipswich London Lynn Melcombe/Poole Newcastle Plymouth Sandwich Southampton Yarmouth 57,776

1,595 358 10,826 2 1,120 6,130 2,398 19,975 7,746 953 196 331 1,492 2,705 1,949

Denizen

Total

Percent of total

1406–11

1355–6010

Table 7.1 Comparison of cloth exports, 1355–60 and 1406–11

29,750

25 9 3,573

55

2,254 1,007 15,825

7,002

Hanse

59,848

98 5 162 6 220 220 261 31,818 60 48 118 25 96 26,465 246

Other alien

147,374

8,965 363 10,988 8 1,340 8,604 3,666 67,618 7,806 1,001 369 35611 1,613 29,179 5,768

Total

100.0

.9 5.8 2.5 45.9 5.3 .7 .2 .2 1.1 19.8 3.9

6.1 .2 7.5

Percent of total

134  Revival of Exports and Italian trade with Southampton, but also because these were the ports of entry for ashes, oil, mordants and dyes on which the industry depended. The principal destination for cloth in 1350 was Gascony.12 English cloth had been confiscated at Bruges as early as 1347–8, and was officially banned from Flanders in 1358, although in the following year Hanse merchants were allowed to transport cloth through Flanders as long as the packs remained unopened.13 London accounted for only 13.7  per cent of national exports in the late 1350s. In 1379–80, trade was more evenly distributed across the ports, with Bristol accounting for 30  per cent, London 20.5  per cent, and Southampton 8.3  per cent of exports. The Gascony market declined after warfare devastated the area in 1377, but was to revive slowly towards the end of the century.14 From the 1380s onwards Southampton carried most of the trade with the Mediterranean.15 In 1390–1 Bristol’s trade was 35 per cent with Gascony, 33 per cent with Portugal, and 22 per cent with Ireland.16 Customs accounts, from 1389 onwards, started to include narrow kerseys and straits, four straits deemed equivalent to broadcloth.17 Only in 1406 do the surviving accounts include Lynn and Ipswich, so the period 1406–11 is used for comparison purposes in Table 7.1. London had now achieved a dominant position, with 46 per cent of the market. Two thirds of all ships leaving London in the 1380s and 1390s were carrying English cloth.18 Export success had as much to do with alien merchants’ efforts as those of denizens. Aliens’ share of exports doubled from 20 per cent in the late 1350s to 40 per cent of exports at the end of the century, not much below the 45 per cent aliens held a century later. For the period 1406–11 other alien exports even exceeded those of denizens, and Hanse exports were more than half denizen exports, as English merchants faced greater difficulties with the recession. Hanse merchants were trading through Hull, Boston, Lynn, Yarmouth and London; Italians through London and Southampton. The Genoese started to trade extensively through Southampton in 1372, and came more frequently when the Ghent war interrupted trade through Bruges.19 The Venetians came to London annually after 1395, and the Florentines were shipping out of both London and Southampton.20 Cloths exported in the late-fourteenth century were mostly coloured and finished as price lists from as far apart as the Levant to Poland show.21 A  detailed examination of English cloths sold in Iberia at this period indicates that the cloth was dyed and finished, as was much of the cloth destined for the Mediterranean basin.22 In the 1392–3 Lynn poundage account white cloths were a separate category representing less than 7 per cent of exported cloth.23 Denizen merchants were primarily concerned with imports: fishmongers with fish, grocers with dyes and drugs, mercers with linen and silks, vintners with wine, ironmongers with iron. In most markets denizen cloth

Revival of Exports 135 exports helped finance these imports: wine from Gascony; oils, fruits and dyes from Spain; and ashes and furs from the Baltic. Consequently, merchants exported those cloths that were easiest to sell in each market. Most cloths exported from eastern ports, including London, in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries were priced below those of the small Flemish draperies, and there were significant exports of narrow cloths, straits and kerseys.24 In eastern ports cloth was secondary to wool. Cloth exports through Hull, for example, were only worth a quarter of wool exports.25 York merchants favoured wool over cloth when there was a cash crunch from the 1380s onwards, as longer credit terms were available on wool than on cloth.26 Hanseatic merchants were mainly looking for cheap cloth that they could trade for linen and raw materials from the Baltic and central Europe, while they continued to source much of their fine cloth from the Low Countries with its high reputation and long-standing trade networks. Italians also saw England as a source of cheap, quality cloth. Only in Spain and Portugal was England viewed as competitive for high-quality cloth.27 This haphazard pattern of exports contrasted dramatically with the highly focused, organised and aggressive national strategy that was to emerge in the later-fifteenth century, when it was cloth rather than wool that made fortunes. The average quality of exported broadcloth around 1380 was similar to coloured cloths purchased by the Great Wardrobe, but prices fell after 1385 as alien merchants bought cheaper cloths. Two poundage accounts from the 1370–80s, one from Bristol and the other from London, provide the earliest indication of the price range for exported cloths (Table 7.2).28 The average broadcloth price appears to have been around 46–47s. At Bristol all the cloths were standard broadcloths (except for a few Irish and Welsh cloths) worth, on average, 47s 10d, and ranging between 40s and 66s.29 The variety of cloths was far broader from London, where broadcloth was worth, on average, 46s 6d (20d a yard), but the cloths ranged from 20s to 100s each. Much export growth in the 1390s was in lower-quality broadcloths, and even cheaper, narrow straits and kerseys, as is illustrated by the London poundage account from March to November 1390 when only 4 per cent of cloths were worth more than £3, 48 per cent between 35s and 45s, and 33 per cent at less than 35s.30 Many of these cloths must have come from Somerset and Wiltshire since production figures revealed by the alnage from these counties vastly exceeded the broadcloths exported from Bristol and Southampton. In addition, and excluded from the summary in Table  7.2, were Coventry, Kentish, Guilford, Welsh and Irish cloths, with most valued at less than 25s. The Essex dozens purchased by Gilbert Maghfield from John Kempson of Hadleigh, Suffolk, for export to Spain in 1391–2 were of relatively high quality, 20s a dozen, equivalent to 40s for standard broadcloth.31 Factors of the Datini Company from Prato near Florence purchased mainly inexpensive Guilford cloth

Bristol, 1378–9 29s 5d 4s 2d

34s 7d 7s 5d 4s 2d

30s 5d 4s 3d

15s 4d 6d a goad35

27s33 38s 7d 4s 1d34 4s 3d 23s 5d

London, 1390

18s 10d

9s 4d

28s 2d

Bristol, 1403–4

5s 27s 36s 2d 35s 7d

45s 10d

Southampton, 140532

Source: E. Carus-Wilson, ed., The overseas trade of Bristol in the late Middle Ages, Bristol Record Society (1937), 180–89; S.H. Rigby, ed., The overseas trade of Boston in the reign of Richard II, Lincoln Record Society (2005), 84–112; TNA, E 122/17/10, 40/23, 59/19, 71/8, 71/13, 139/4, 7, 8, 159/11; Gras, Customs, 526–53.

37s 9d 5s 2d

London, Boston, Hull, Lynn, Exeter, Hull, 1384–5 1390 1391–2 1391–2 1398–9 1398–9

Broadcloths 47s 10d 46s 7d Straits 8s Kerseys 6s 7d Guilford broadcloth 31s Essex broadcloth Cotswolds broadcloth Welsh broad dozens Welsh straits (cottons) Frieze

Cloth types

Table 7.2 Average prices for cloths paying poundage, 1378–1403, in shillings and pence

Revival of Exports 137 worth 7½d a yard (equivalent to 15s a broadcloth) and Essex cloth at 12d a yard (24s a broadcloth).36 Kersey and straits were already an important London export in 1389–90, mostly by Hansards; 10,665.5 kerseys were shipped from September  1388 to May  1389, 6,022 from May  1389 to February  1390, and 8,466 from September 1390 to September 1391, averaging around 10,000 kerseys a year, and accounting for 12–15% of exports.37 These kerseys were generally a far cheaper product than the 18-yard quality kersey of the early-sixteenth century. Between March and November 1390 the Hanse exported 3,354 kerseys worth, on average, 51d each compared with 529 assize cloths worth 42s 4d each (508d); the broadcloths therefore were of good quality but the kerseys were cheap, a kersey worth a little more than a tenth of a broadcloth.38 Straits were the principal cloth exported from Exeter, Dartmouth and Bridgewater.39 The effective tax rate was higher for kerseys and straits than for broadcloth because of their low value, and this must have limited their appeal, as Hansards seem to have reduced their narrow cloth purchases around the turn of the century.40 London’s exported cloths were priced higher than for other east coast ports. The average price of assize cloth leaving Hull in 1391–2 was 29s 7d, and straits 14s.41 At Lynn in 1392–3, coloured broadcloths and dozens were worth, on average, between 34s and 35s for an assize cloth, but in equivalent cloths the straits (four straits to one broadcloth) were worth only 32s.42 Guilford cloths, the name given to Surrey and Sussex cloths, were also inexpensive, priced at only three quarters the price of cloths from Essex and the western counties, according to the Southampton poundage account for 1405.43

Range of Cloths Product change was evolutionary in the second half of the century. The change from serge to woollens continued and worsted exports declined.44 The decline in urban population and rising opportunities for women made it more difficult for urban weavers to prepare yarn. Urban weavers’ status was reduced as woollens’ simple tabby weave predominated, and it was finishing that became a more critical determinant of quality. More woollens were mechanically fulled, with an increase of approximately 50  per cent in the number of fulling mills from 1350 to 1400 as unused grain mills were converted.45 This was a major contrast with the continent where fulling mills could be found only in Normandy and Artois, and used only for the cheapest cloths.46 The fulling mill had been all but abandoned to produce luxury cloths on the basis that the minor reduction in cost that the mills offered was more than offset by the risk that cloth be damaged by the mill-hammers, and the superior reputation of Flemish cloth be sullied.47 Now that urban and rural cloth were

138  Revival of Exports almost exclusively woollens and the broadloom started to be adopted in the countryside, urban merchants increasingly bought rural cloth to be finished in towns. At the same time narrow cloths (straits and kersey 12 yards long) and broad dozens woven in the countryside became more important in some areas as they undercut urban cloth. Fullers, shearmen and dyers all benefited from the rising market for quality cloth, and also because exports were largely finished and dyed. By the end of the fourteenth century there survives a variety of records, from government and other institutional purchases, to alnagers’ forfeits and custom particulars that make it possible for the first time to describe the quality, price and range of cloths in some detail. There was an extremely wide price range for woollens purchased by the Great Wardrobe in the 1390s, from 18d to 144d a yard, and a clear distinction between luxury ‘long’ cloths, which included scarlets and half-grain cloths worn by the aristocracy, and standard broadcloth worn by servants.48 Fine cloths dyed in grain were priced around 144d a  yard, and half-grain cloths around 106d a  yard. Fine, luxury broadcloths using regular dyes were 64d a yard, and the standard, assize-length coloured broadcloths were worth just 26d a yard or 52s a cloth. In 1395 the London draper Thomas Hende, who was the primary cloth supplier to the Great Wardrobe, sold cloths for a determination feast at Merton College Oxford. The coloured cloth ranged from 20–25d a yard, prices just below the short broadcloths sold to the king. Ray cloth, woven with dyed wool to produce a striped effect, was priced lower, at 12–20d per yard.49 Two qualities of broadcloth were sold to Oxford and Cambridge colleges: superior cloth reserved for fellows and stewards, and lesser cloths given to the scholars and servants. First-quality cloth was superior in quality to the short broadcloths sold to the Great Wardrobe for the use of retainers and servants, 39d per yard in the 1390s, and second quality was 20d per yard.50 Although the coarse-cloth market declined, and woollens replaced serge and worsteds, there was a broad range of cheap woollen cloth available. Coarse cloth was purchased not only by agricultural labourers and artisans, but also by the wealthy for their servants and children, for lining outerwear, and many other purposes.51 It was used more broadly for non-clothing purposes than quality broadcloth: for covering horses, placing under saddles, for packing more expensive cloth, for alms and other miscellaneous purposes such as a carpet for the coronation of Edward III, or covering Henry VII’s barge in 1498.52 Gregory King estimated in 1688 that consumption of woollens, for industrial and home furnishing uses, was a third of clothing use.53 Coarse cloth came in three distinct widths by the close of the fourteenth century: broadcloth 1¾ yards wide, straits and kersey a yard in width, and cottons, frieze, cogware and kendals ¾ yard wide.54 Twenty pence a yard (20d/yd.) might be considered the ceiling for coarse coloured

Revival of Exports 139 broadcloth, 11d for straits and kerseys, and 8–9d for cottons and frieze.55 Cloth was purchased for servants at Heyford Warren for 19–20d/yd. in 1392, and at New College, Oxford for 18d/yd. in 1394.56 Narrow cloths were usually cheaper cloths, using poorer-quality wools and woven with lower warp counts.57 In 1389 two cloths, cogware and Kendal, that were only ¾  yard in width were specifically excluded from the cloth assize and could be made to any length: it was sold at between 40d and 60d a 12-yard cloth ‘to cogmen out of the realm and also to poor and mean people . . . of which cloths a great part is made of the worst wool of the realm’.58 In a 1400 cloth act, cloths ¾ yard wide, Kendal cloth, Coventry frieze and cogware, and dozens and Welsh cloth that was worth less than 13s 4d a dozen (13.3d/yard) did not need to be taken to the alnager to pay the subsidy or be sealed.59 Devon straits were probably of similar quality, 15 yards in length and 1 1/8 yards wide on-the-loom, but of similar width to Kendal cloth after fulling.60 In towns people were wearing colourful cloth by the end of the fourteenth century. York 1394–5 alnage particulars record 1,044 blue/plunket cloths, 777 red/crimson, 337 green, 169 russet (grey-brown), 78 black and 60 murrey (mulberry) cloths.61

Geographic Distribution Clothmaking’s geographic spread is known thanks to the tax on production, the alnage (Table 7.3). In 1353, parliament authorised the collection of an annual subsidy of 4d for each standard broadcloth and ray for sale, 5d for a half-grained cloth (partially dyed with the kermes dye), and 6d for a full-grained cloth (cloth dyed exclusively with kermes).62 The collectors of the alnage received a fee of a halfpenny a full cloth and a farthing a half-cloth for checking that each cloth met the dimension requirements of the assize, and then sealing each cloth. The alnager negotiated a percentage of the value from the forfeitures of unsealed cloth.63 There was no charge for less than half a cloth, and narrow straits and kerseys were exempt. Many must have made shorter cloths to avoid the subsidy. This act was passed to correct a controversial act of three years before when the alnager was authorised to seize and claim forfeit any cloths that did not conform to statute length.64 This appears to have been designed as a poorly disguised tax on alien cloth imports. Unfortunately, many English merchants importing cloth were caught in the alnagers’ net. It also ran contrary to the government’s traditional encouragement of alien merchants to freely trade. So a compromise was negotiated to replace the revenue from these forfeits by a small tax on both alien and domestic cloths for sale, and at the same time to remove the inconvenient restrictions on the mandated length of cloth. It is to this compromise that we owe the illuminating production statistics for the late medieval period. In 1361 the alnage was put out to farm as it proved difficult to administer.65 We have the alnage regional totals from 1355 to 1359 but they

Table 7.3 Cloths paying the alnage subsidy, 1354–8 and 1394–1401, from the enrolled accounts66

South-East London Middlesex Kent Surrey Sussex Surrey/Sussex Berkshire/Oxfordshire Berkshire Oxford Rest of Oxfordshire Eastern Cambridgeshire/Huntingdonshire Cambridgeshire Huntingdonshire Norfolk Suffolk Essex/Hertfordshire Essex Hertfordshire Bedfordshire Buckinghamshire Bedfordshire/Buckinghamshire South-West Hampshire Winchester Wiltshire Rest of Hampshire Salisbury Rest of Wiltshire Somerset Dorset Somerset/Dorset Devon/Cornwall Exeter Rest of Devon Cornwall West Bristol Gloucestershire Worcestershire Hereford

1354–867

1394–1401

1394–1401

Annual average, number of cloths

Annual average, number of cloths

Months analysed

1,304 1,080 157 122 218

47 190 499 94

13 3,424 199

972 93

2,08768 436 54

1,313 46 908

70 63 78

884

47

852 183 103

57 61 59

242 80 903 2,557

24 63 54 45

1,922 126 67 55

61 58 46 64

2,098

52

517 5,734 390 11,862 736

58 63 52 53 60

458 1,660 43

63 63 51

4,424 1,076 447 89

60 60 48 46

Revival of Exports 141

Herefordshire Shropshire/Staffordshire Shropshire Staffordshire Midlands Northamptonshire and Rutland Warwickshire Leicestershire Warwickshire/Leicestershire Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire Nottinghamshire Derbyshire North Lincolnshire York County Yorkshire East Riding West Riding North Riding Northumberland Newcastle Westmoreland Total

1354–867

1394–1401

1394–1401

Annual average, number of cloths

Annual average, number of cloths

Months analysed

140

185 471

51 52

193 2,609 99

64 58 52

214 93

55 70

47169 2,761

63 63

603 344 84 95

60 60 29 42

127 4 136 126 12

975 381 421

59 3 13,373

47,997

Sources: Gray, ‘Production and exportation’, 34; TNA, E 358/8, 9.

are almost hidden from view in the customs accounts.70 Fortunately for historians the government had second thoughts thirty years later and took over direct management between 1394 and 1401. The cloth act of 1393 extended the alnage to include straits, kerseys and cloths less than half a cloth in length, but specifically excluded the small pieces of cloth woven for local consumption. And some cheap cloths were exempted, as were cogware and Kendal cloths in 1389–90.71 The government must have thought that this was an opportunity to significantly raise the alnage subsidy revenue at a time when cloth exports were rapidly expanding. Nevertheless, the alnage was once again put out to farm in 1402.72 Most of the detailed evidence comes therefore from the 1390s when we have particulars for most areas of the country. In some cases these are extremely detailed. For York in 1394–5 we have the alnager’s day books for a year which show us the number of cloths taken to the alnager each day, and the colour, type and length of those cloths. We can, for example,

142  Revival of Exports appreciate the involvement of women in clothmaking as the accounts show 180 women alnaging cloth.73 And in some counties such as Somerset we have the amounts for many towns and villages. Forfeitures provide us with information on types of cloth, colours and prices. The alnage shows production of 13,373 cloths for sale in the late 1350s which was to rise to 47,997 cloths forty years later. The 1350s statistics in Table 7.3 were collected at the ports and by sheriffs in the counties, and exclude imports which also paid the subsidy. Southampton included Winchester, Salisbury and cloths from other areas that were being sent overseas from that port. Similarly the Bristol figures include cloths made in Bath, Wells and Bridgewater, and the Yarmouth alnage was included with Suffolk cloths. At mid-century clothmaking appears to have been more urban than it was at the end of the century, although York and Coventry had yet to reach their peaks as major clothmaking centres. It is possible that, at this early stage of the alnage subsidy, the collectors simply did not assess clothmakers in smaller centres, and that this resulted in an urban bias. Also, those counties such as Devon, Essex and Suffolk that specialised in narrow cloths would obviously be underestimated in the 1350s figures. The subsidy accounts are more detailed for London, as from October 1355 to September 1357 the accounts are broken down by denizen and alien cloths, and whether the cloths were imported or produced in London. Over those twenty-three months, 6,885 cloths were imported by aliens, 2,391 by denizens for a total of 9,276 cloths: so there was still around 4,600 imported cloths coming into London each year, and another 1,037 from other ports.74 The accounts also tell us that London specialised in superior long cloths, replacing those that were formerly imported. Over three years, 1355–8, London produced 1,493.5 standard cloths and 2,351.5 long cloths.75 The 1390s figures, which differ in length of time from 1394 to 1401, have to be estimated from averaging the monthly totals. While almost all areas showed significant increases in the late-fourteenth century, there were exceptions: Lincoln significantly declined, and London, Canterbury and Beverley showed no growth. At the end of the fourteenth century the leading cloth towns were Bristol, Salisbury, York and Coventry. Winchester and London were still significant producers. But we can also see commercial clothmaking in small towns and villages in Somerset, Devon and Gloucestershire in the west; Surrey, Berkshire, all the East Anglian counties and Yorkshire’s West Riding. Somerset was now by far the largest clothmaking county, producing 11,382 cloths annually. The alnage particulars identify no fewer than forty-two places where cloth was made.76 One village, Pensford, accounted for more than 2,500 broadcloths, submitted by sixty-one people, including Thomas and John Prysshton, with 795 and 570 cloths, respectively. Obviously, some of the larger dealers were clothiers, organising and assembling cloth from rural

Revival of Exports 143 clothmakers.77 We can only assume that Somerset’s development was due to the prominence of Bristol in the export trade in the twenty years after the Black Death, Bristol merchants drawing much of their cloth from the surrounding countryside. The West Country industry was so well developed that, when London became a more important cloth port towards the end of the century, its merchants turned to the West Country for some of the quality cloth it needed. Alnage particulars clearly indicate that the principal product of most counties was not the full-length short broadcloth, but the half-cloth, the duodenum or dozen.78 In Somerset from December 1396 to October 1397 no full cloths were alnaged, only 19,411 half-cloths and 4,461 narrow straits.79 In Kent from July 1394 to November 1395, dozens were equivalent to 1,385.5 assize cloths, far more than the 456 full-size broadcloths recorded.80 In adjacent Surrey and Sussex all the cloths were dozens. In Warwickshire, in 1397–8, in terms of equivalent cloths, production was almost equally divided between full and half-cloths, with a few straits.81 It seems that production of full-length broadcloth was concentrated in a few towns: London, York, Salisbury and Bristol where the finest cloths were made. London made the expensive long cloths that feature in the Great Wardrobe accounts; the long blanket cloths may have come from Oxford as these were specifically mentioned in the 1397–8 alnage account.82 In the York day book for 1394–5 many small lengths of cloth were alnaged, but the large producers were presenting whole cloths.83 Of the larger cloth towns only Coventry made many half-cloths. Narrow cloths that could be woven by one person, and were cheaper to buy and easy to transport, must have been ubiquitous; but only a small fraction of them would have been presented to the alnager because it was mostly homespun and domestically consumed. We find the subsidy being paid on straits in most counties, but only in Devon, and parts of Suffolk and Essex, was it the dominant cloth.84 In 1397–8, 7,319 straits were the only cloths alnaged in Devon outside Exeter, and at Exeter there were 1,070 straits, equivalent to 266.5 broadcloths, as well as an additional 269 assize cloths.85 Inexpensive straits were exported in significant quantities from a few ports. It was the principal cloth exported from Exeter, Bridgewater and Dartmouth in the 1400s; and in 1404–5, 1,079 Devon straits were exported from Bristol.86 Devon straits were being sold for 4d a yard or 4s a cloth, and with four to a broadcloth, an equivalent assize cloth would be worth only 16s.87 Kerseys appear to have been mainly made in Suffolk and Berkshire, and they were the only product made on the Isle of Wight.

Bristol, Somerset, Gloucestershire and Wales The location of commercial clothmaking across the country was largely set by the end of the fourteenth century. BristoI’s clothmaking was more

144  Revival of Exports developed and regulated than any other region of the country in 1350, for there we discover the competitive mix of a highly structured and regulated urban industry combined with a complementary and productive rural industry, and an entrepreneurial merchant class that aggressively developed an overseas cloth market. Bristol was blessed with good local wools and plentiful supplies of fullers’ earth nearby. Its earlier development may have been because it was less influenced by imported cloth in the thirteenth century, and it may well have developed an export market in Gascony at an earlier date than other ports. As a result it seems probable that Bristol may have avoided the decline that befell so many other cloth towns in the late-thirteenth and early-fourteenth centuries because a fifth of the population was then working in the cloth industry.88 When for the first time comprehensive export figures become available in 1347, Bristol controlled more than half the national export trade. Almost all Bristol’s trade was conducted by its merchants in English ships, and its development was not affected by Hanseatic or Italian competition as was the case at other ports. Bristol sold, on average, better-quality cloth than those shipped from eastern ports, and comparable to those purchased at Southampton for the Italian market. In 1378–9, 1,234.5 assize cloths shipped from Bristol were worth 48s each, on average, and they were priced in a relatively narrow range from 40s to 76s.89 It is only at Bristol that we see a thicket of cloth regulations in the fourteenth century that are reminiscent of the way that Flemish towns set about setting standards that underpinned their international reputations for superior cloth. The earliest English evidence for marking cloths to establish quality levels was the requirement in the 1346 Bristol weavers’ ordinance that each weaver mark his cloths.90 There were ordinances regulating fullers’ work and wages, and for handling woad at mid-century, not seen elsewhere in the country.91 Additional ordinances regulated the passage of oiled or dyed wool, thread and unfulled cloth as it was transported outside the town. No cloth fulled outside the town could then be finished in the city.92 It also carefully supervised the manufacture of narrow straits called osettes (a contraction of ‘one man seat’). In 1346 osette looms had to be in full view, and the thread had to be produced in the household.93 A later ordinance decreed that there were to be only five osette looms in the town.94 At the same time a complementary rural industry, particularly in Somerset, developed from a combination of factors: pastoral farming that provided part time labour, and the natural spread of industry from Bristol and the smaller towns of Wells and Bath to the surrounding countryside.95 These country clothmakers were making broad rather than the narrow cloths that most rural artisans made. Later in the century merchants from Southampton and London naturally looked to Somerset for the extra quality broadcloth they needed. In the 1390s Pensford, Frome, Wells and Bath sold 1–2,000 cloths, while 200 to 800 cloths were

Revival of Exports 145 manufactured at Corscombe, Taunton, Bruton, Bridgewater, Beckington, Shepton, Mells, Badcombe and Reed.96 At Wells more than a quarter of the population was engaged in clothmaking in the later Middle Ages; it was the eighth largest centre for cloth production in the country in the 1350s and from the 1380s a fifth of those admitted to the freedom were cloth artisans.97 Gloucestershire was a secondary but expanding catchment area for Bristol. Gloucester was a mid-sized cloth town at mid-century, alnaging 436 cloths in the 1350s. In 1363 forty-seven weavers were prosecuted for over-charging, with many cloths sent out of the town for fulling and finishing.98 By the end of the century county production had risen to 1,076 cloths, approximately half of which were alnaged in Gloucester.99 It would appear that production at Gloucester had stalled but that rural production was increasing, but not to the same extent as in Somerset. Wiltshire, except for Salisbury, was a minor producer at this time. The Welsh industry was concentrated in its southern counties in the fourteenth century, centred on Pembroke, Camarthen and Monmouth, and therefore fell within the orbit of Bristol’s trade networks. Aliens were exporting large quantities of Welsh cloth from London in 1390: there were 240 broad dozens, 516 narrow dozens and 4,579 yards of cottons at 4.3d/yd.100 Perhaps we should not be surprised to find thirty-one Welsh cloths being shipped from Lynn in 1392–3.101We see Welsh cloth as it was landed at Bristol from South Wales’ seaports, and then re-exported.102 In 1403–4 aliens exported 580 Welsh dozens from Bristol, as well as 1,399 broadcloths and 341 other dozens.103 We have no idea of the size or importance of Welsh cloth since it was never alnaged. There is evidence for more than 200 Welsh fulling mills before 1547, thirty-nine of them first recorded between 1350 and 1400.104

North and Midlands The development of the northern textile industry was quite different from that at Bristol. York grew at the expense of Lincoln and Beverley to become by far the largest northern clothmaking town as its merchants had come to dominate the import and export trade at Hull. Also, rural industry grew more slowly than in the south. As early as 1164 York, Beverley and a few other small royal boroughs were given a county monopoly to make rays and fine ‘coloured’ broadcloth which firmly established quality woollens’ production in towns.105 The 1346 Weavers’ ordinances reconfirmed that production of these cloths were restricted to the same few boroughs as before, and York’s charter was confirmed with each successive reign. The 1400 Weavers’ ordinances took care to record the various charters that maintained this urban monopoly.106 It was therefore not until the fifteenth century that West Riding textiles began to challenge those of York. For York’s richer merchants cloth was an important

146  Revival of Exports adjunct to their wool trade with the Low Countries, and its growth compensated for any weakness in wool exports. For the lesser merchants that dabbled in overseas trade, cloth helped finance their imports. York merchants were bringing back raw materials for the cloth industry: ashes from the Baltic, dyestuffs, alum and oil from the Low Countries and Gascony.107 Cloth exports were therefore spread widely among overseas merchants rather than being dominated by a few, as was the case with wool. There were only three merchants who alnaged more than 100 cloths at York in 1394–5.108 For Richard II’s reign, Jennifer Kermode identified 113 cloth merchants trading at Hull that came from York, forty-three from Hull and only twenty-six from Beverley.109 York controlled two thirds of the wool trade, and more than half of the cloth trade through Hull at the end of the century.110 York artisans would have woven a broad range of broadcloths and straits even though its competitive advantage lay with more expensive broadcloth. A  sixth of cloth exports in 1391–2 were straits.111 A  total of 880 straits were alnaged in 1393–4, suggesting that the York region was still making these relatively coarse, narrow cloths, but they were equivalent only to 7 per cent of York’s cloth.112 The average value of cloth forfeited by the alnagers was about 40s which suggests that the quality of the cloths made for the domestic market were usually superior to those exported. In the 1413 inventory of the York weaver, Thomas Catton, there was a white cloth worth 53s 4d, a russet cloth worth 26s 8d and two blue cloths worth 43s 4d.113 It appears that most of the cloth was dyed and finished: in the 1394–5 York alnage only 12.9 per cent of the broadcloths were undyed, and some of the white cloths may have been dyed after they had been alnaged.114 York dominated Yorkshire production by the end of the century. York and the Ainsty (the adjacent wapentake it controlled) production had dramatically increased from 400 cloths in the 1350s to more than 2,700 cloths in the late 1390s. Beverley, which had probably been the dominant Yorkshire clothmaking town in the thirteenth century, was still a significant producer. Three-month alnage particulars for East Riding in 1378–9 showed that 504½ cloths were made for sale, and most of these were probably from Beverley.115 By the late 1390s East Riding production was only 603 cloths annually. West Riding towns at that time, especially Ripon, Leeds, Pontefract and Wakefield, were now as important as East Riding, and cloth production was growing faster than at York.116 Hull cloth exports peaked in the 1390s, at approximately 3,500 cloths annually compared with 4,200 cloths alnaged in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, clearly showing the critical importance of the export market. Lincoln, renowned for its fine cloths in the thirteenth century, and still alnaging 846 cloths annually in 1356–8, declined dramatically as it produced only 249 cloths annually in the late 1390s.

Revival of Exports 147 At York there were fifty master weavers, fifty-eight tapiters (weavers of worsteds used mainly for coverlets, wall and bed hangings), thirty fullers and fifty-nine dyers, based on signatures to late-fourteenth century ordinances.117 The large number of dyers suggests that, in addition to dyeing, they may have been trading wool and dyes or acting as clothiers, since there appears to have been more dyers in York than London, even though London would have probably been a larger centre for dyeing.118 Five dyers became mayor between 1364 and 1500, an unusual number for an artisan trade.119 York dyers were wealthier than the other textile trades in York by far, and wealthier than London dyers.120 Dyers seem not to have been cloth merchants in the fourteenth century since there were very few dyers in the late-fourteenth century alnage accounts, and only the occasional dyer turns up in the customs accounts.121 The only significant Midlands textile industry was at Coventry, whose merchants appear to have been among the most enterprising in the country, as its cloth industry grew dramatically. They had strong commercial links with Chester, Bristol, Boston and London which were all about eighty miles away, and with Southampton which was even farther afield. As a result its merchants were trading everywhere, to Ireland, Iceland in the fifteenth century, the Baltic, Low Countries and southern Europe. Its great economic success in the fourteenth century was based on its cloth trade but it was also selling wool and wheat, as well as manufactured goods like wool cards.122 Coventry was well known for its blues and frieze cloth. To make Coventry blues it needed the woad and spinning oil from southern Europe that Coventry drapers exchanged for cloth and wool at Bristol and Southampton. Wool was imported from Ireland and employment given to Irish artisans to make frieze. There were Coventry merchants and their servants among the English community at Danzig in the fourteenth century, trading through Boston.123 In 1397–8, 187 people took cloth to the alnage, including nine who would be mayor between 1392 and 1416.124 It has been estimated that 25–40 per cent of the population worked in the textile trades between 1350 and 1450, and Coventry may not have declined as did most towns after the Black Death.125 Clothmaking never took hold in rural areas in spite of the region’s proximity to fine Lincolnshire and Leicestershire wools as most Midlands peasants were arable farmers with yardlands or half-yardlands that allowed them to make a living.126

Home Counties The leading East Anglian cloth towns were Norwich, Hadleigh and Colchester. Colchester built its reputation on grey russets, inexpensive broadcloth, typically 12  yards in length, mechanically fulled and used for cloaks by both ordinary people and religious orders.127 Colchester

148  Revival of Exports merchants found markets for its cloth mostly in Gascony and secondarily in the Baltic, so export markets became far more important than domestic sales. The Datini Company from Prato near Florence was buying Essex dark grey cloths, suggesting that some Colchester cloth was going to London to be sold in the Italian market.128 Russets’ success seems to have been dependant on efficient production and merchant enterprise. In this case, low-cost fulling and inexpensive water transportation were probably factors that enabled these cheaper cloths to remain competitive in European markets. It meant that a woollen industry could develop even in areas with lower-quality wools, as it did in East Anglia, the southeast counties and Devon. East Anglia made mostly cheap cloths. A 1376 petition to parliament by the commons of Suffolk and Essex requested that straits called cogwares and kerseys be excluded from the act that set cloth dimensions.129 Hadleigh, close to Ipswich, was the most important Suffolk cloth town, where approximately a fifth of households was involved in clothmaking.130 It was renowned for its brightly coloured straits, especially violet.131 The many clothiers and drapers at Hadleigh in 1381 indicate that it was the marketing centre for cloth from the surrounding countryside. It was from Hadleigh that the London ironmonger, Gilbert Maghfield, bought his half-cloths in the early 1390s. As in Somerset, clothmaking was spreading from the Suffolk urban centres of Bury St. Edmunds, Sudbury and Clare to small industrialising villages. Narrow straits were the main product made by many south Suffolk and northern Essex villages close to the Stour, marketing many of their cloths through Colchester and Hadleigh.132 In Suffolk Lavenham was growing, and Kersey had a cloth market by the end of the century. In Essex the alnage was collected at Braintree, Coggeshall and Dedham, whose combined production in 1394–5 was 40 per cent greater than Colchester.133 There was already a concentration of fulling mills and clothworkers in northern Essex.134 In 1393 a petition from Essex and other East Anglian clothmakers stated that ‘many and the greater part of the people of the said districts . . . do nothing but work in that craft’.135 The stage was set for the great expansion of clothmaking in this area in the later fifteenth century. Although Norfolk made far more worsteds than woollens, there was a vibrant woollens industry at Norwich in the late-fourteenth century, and the city finished country woollens.136 Eighteen per cent of Norwich occupations were clothworkers in 1377–9; almost half were weavers, the rest cloth finishers. Few Norwich woollens were exported, so it must have been a regional marketing centre for quality broadcloth.137 Berkshire, Surrey and Kent were recognised centres for clothmaking, if not as large as those of Suffolk and Essex. Guilford cloths were a recognised brand, inexpensive broadcloths made across Surrey and Sussex, regularly purchased by Italians.138 In 1391 clothmakers from Southampton, Sussex and Surrey complained to parliament that fullers from outside

Revival of Exports 149 these counties were buying Guilford cloths off the looms.139 Canterbury’s main industry was textiles as admissions to the freedom from 1357 to 1363 and the poll tax returns indicate.140 In the 1350s Canterbury alnaged 950 cloths which made it one of the largest clothmaking towns at mid-century. Thirty-three per cent of the freedom admissions between 1344 and 1363 were in the textile crafts.141 Three weavers, three fullers, a hosier and a draper were among the richest citizens in 1381. Yet by the end of the century production had fallen to 750 cloths.142 There is little evidence of a significant Wealden cloth industry at this time although, interestingly, the alnager for Kent in 1393 was from Cranbrook.143 The alnage indicates that cloth production was distributed widely in Berkshire which produced both broadcloths and kerseys, and was therefore the probable source for the large number of kerseys purchased by Hanse merchants in the 1380s and 1390s. There was a growing industry at Wallingford and Abingdon making broadcloth and kerseys that was to decline in the fifteenth century.144

Hampshire, Wiltshire and Devon Salisbury made more cloths than any other town at the end of the fourteenth century, alnaging 5,700 cloths, almost three times that of nearby Winchester with 2,000 cloths. Both were close to Southampton which had become the country’s second cloth port. Salisbury is an exception to the rule that fourteenth-century clothmaking was a collection of regional industries, since Salisbury must have enjoyed a wide market for its rays. It was there in 1409 that the alnagers confiscated rays because they were too narrow, since new assize legislation stated that rays and broadcloths should be the same width.145 In 1421 it was forbidden to take ray cloth out of the city before it was sealed, unless it was going to Westminster Fair.146 Raymaking was a specialised industry requiring a wide range of dyed wools in contrast to broadcloths that were usually dyed in-the-piece. Rays were traditionally 5 quarters in width, narrower than 6 required for broadcloth. Wools were prepared and cloth woven to emphasise the weft and compress the warp threads; the cloth was only lightly foot-fulled so as not to obscure the pattern, and it required specialised finishing.147 Salisbury made little else but rays, since approximately 500 raymakers met in 1421 to discuss their grievances, about 25 per cent of the population over the age of 14.148 Clothmaking was more concentrated in the hands of a few citizens than at Winchester, suggesting that the merchants were accumulating large numbers of cloth for export. Between 1394 and 1398, 158 persons presented 19,000 cloths at Salisbury compared with 221 persons presenting 4,400 cloths at Winchester.149 Salisbury raymakers primarily served a domestic market, although some must have been exported through Southampton, London and even Bristol. In addition, Salisbury would have been a distribution centre for western cloth

150  Revival of Exports exported by Italians from Southampton. Some of this cloth came from villages along the Wylie valley in south-western Wiltshire, but most must have come from Somerset. Winchester’s industry thrived in the second half of the fourteenth century, making mechanically fulled broadcloth; Romsey was making dozens, and the Isle of Wight kerseys. Aliens were also using Romsey as a finishing centre for some of their cloth shipped from Southampton.150 Isle of Wight kerseys paid a subsidy equal to half a broadcloth, so these kerseys may well have been longer than the usual kersey. At Winchester fulling mills were built both within the city as well as just outside the walls, and much Hampshire cloth was finished there.151 Winchester cloth was alnaged by a broad range of merchants, many of whom were not directly involved in the cloth and clothing trades. A biographical study concluded that those alnaging large amounts of cloth were among the civic elite: 53 per cent were involved in textiles, 23 per cent in victualling, 5 per cent in building and 19 per cent in other occupations.152 Winchester merchants accounted for only a small percentage of the cloths exported through Southampton, so most of the cloths must have been sold locally, at Salisbury and possibly London.153 A  single merchant and six-time mayor, Mark le Fayre, among his many business activities, organised some cloth production and dominated Winchester’s cloth exports at the turn of the fifteenth century. An occasional dyer and fuller exported cloth showing that there was no clear distinction between artisan and merchant in Winchester at this time. In southern Devon, Exeter, like Bristol, had prospered from serving the Gascony market in the 1350s and 1360s, and was the fourth cloth port in the country; but by the end of the century it had been surpassed by both Dartmouth and Plymouth, which were drawing much of their cloth from Totnes and east Devon. In the north, Barnstaple was the main port, close to the most important clothmaking area in the county.154 Local cloth was inexpensive straits, made with poor Devon wools mixed with flocks and lamb’s wool to sell for about 4d a yard.155 Barnstaple and Exeter were the major commercial centres, with Exeter having a cloth-finishing industry, but there already seems to have been expanding production in eastern Devon’s small towns and villages that were to become known for their Devonshire dozens a century later.

London The growth of London, not as a producer but as an exporter, was an indication of what was to come. Early in the fourteenth century London had been a major textiles manufacturer; by the end it was only a mid-size cloth town with an important dyeing and finishing industry, but it was by far the largest cloth port. To meet burgeoning export demand, merchants became increasingly dependent on provincial cloth. In 1380 all cloths

Revival of Exports 151 made in ‘Essex, Shropshire or elsewhere beyond the liberties of the city’ could only be sold at the Stocks or at the Guildhall. In 1387 regulations were drawn up for the sale of foreign cloth in the city, restricting sales to three specific places and requiring that ‘no one bring into the city any cloth except whole and half cloths with lists at both ends’.156 In 1396 all cloth was to be sold at the covered market Blackwell Hall, open from midday Thursday until midday Saturday. Towards the end of the century other towns found it necessary to organise cloth markets to manage the trade in rural cloth that was finished and traded in towns.157 London’s native clothmakers must have produced some of the cloth requirements of the city’s large population, but it was its alien weavers who seem to have been making the luxury long cloths for drapers who then sold them to the Great Wardrobe and other aristocratic households.158 To maintain the reputation of London cloth in 1380, all cloths made in London had to be sealed with a special lead seal by the city sarjeant and pay a fee of 2d, although this was reduced to a halfpenny in 1385.159 A 1402 statute required that London cloths be sealed.160London had only been exceeded by Salisbury and Bristol for cloths alnaged in the 1350s but cloth production played only a minor role in the city’s economy at the century’s end, and it is likely that little London-woven cloth was exported.161 London production grew marginally from about 1,300 cloths in the late 1350s to approximately 1,500 cloths in the 1370s, only to fall back to 1,300 cloths in the 1390s.162 In 1351 London’s exemption from the 1535 Statute of York, which allowed free merchant access to all markets, came to an end, opening up the market to provincial drapers who would have been a catalyst for bringing rural cloth into the city.163 The city started to regulate cloth markets in the city as soon as London regained privileges of citizenship, temporarily in 1377, and more permanently in 1383. No attempt was made by the civic government or London’s drapers to protect the textile crafts from accelerating provincial competition. Several factors made the weavers and fullers uncompetitive in the production of all but the finest cloths. Weavers were burdened with payment of an annual farm and the ongoing friction between alien and native weavers. Fulling mills were on the Lea near Stratford, a considerable distance from the city. In 1401 the fullers’ own ordinance required that cloths had to be washed and cleaned in the city before they were taken to the mills which was probably inefficient.164 At mid-century, London vintners controlled the city’s cloth trade because of their commanding position in the Gascony wine trade (Table  7.4). They were able in their 1364 charter to briefly obtain a monopoly of the denizen wine trade with Gascony, and were given a licence to trade cloth equal to the value of wine imports so that bullion would not leave the country, thus effectively excluding other merchants from trading cloth in the region.165 By the end of the century, as northern

179.5

Total number of cloths

Source: TNA, E 101/457/19, 20, 22; 122/71/16; 122/72/4.

0 138 41.5

3 15 7 26 0 87 0 0 0 0

1348–9, 1350–1 and 1351–2 (36 months)

Mercers Grocers Drapers Fishmongers Ironmongers Vintners Goldsmiths Haberdashers Tailors Clothworkers (dyers, fullers and shearmen) Leather/fell merchants Other denizens Known denizens Unknown denizens

Companies

5,379.5

939 (20.1) 1,132 (24.2) 288.5 (6.2) 1,413 (30.2) 293 (6.3) 126.5 (2.7) 20.5 (.4) 41 (.9) 30.5 (.7) 21 (.5) 6.5 (.1) 360 (7.7) 4,671.5 (100.0) 708

Oct. 1390– Sept. 1391 (12 months)

2,419.5

306.5 (14.0) 861.5 (39.3) 267.5 (12.2) 197.5 (9.0) 308.5 (14.1) 27 (1.2) 5 (.2) 0 59 (2.7) 0 .5 156.5 (7.2) 2,189.5 (100.0) 230

Nov. 1400– April 1401 (6 months)

Table 7.4 Number of cloths exported by denizens from London, 1348–1410 (per cent with known trade designation)

3,476

285 (9.5) 599 (19.8) 169 (5.6) 678.5 (22.5) 280.5 (9.3) 427 (14.1) 52 (1.6) 0 75.5 (2.5) 48 (1.6) 85 (2.8) 324.5 (10.7) 3,024 (100.0) 452

March 27– Sept. 27, 1410 (6 months)

Revival of Exports 153 European markets opened up, fishmongers, grocers and mercers became increasingly interested in trading cloth. Fishmongers had significant trade with the Baltic and Low Countries, although dwarfed by the volume of trade in Hanseatic hands. They were the most prominent of the London merchants who colonised ports such as Danzig in this period.166 London grocers’ developing interest in the cloth trade has been linked to the scarcity of coinage in the 1380s, which encouraged payment in kind by the English clothworkers whom they supplied with imported dyestuffs and alum.167 Mercers’ growing participation in the trade complemented their trade in linens which was stimulated by the movement of the wool staple to Middelburg from 1383 to 1388.168 Their early involvement in the distribution and export of worsted cloths and piece goods may naturally have evolved into an interest in the woollens trade as worsted exports had declined dramatically since the mid-fourteenth century.169 Ironmongers were exchanging cloth for Basque iron.170 The accounts of the ironmonger, Gilbert Maghfield, sheriff in 1392–3, show that he was shipping grain and cloth in exchange for iron, woad and alum from Bayonne and Bilbao, and often bartering woad and alum for cloth.171

Woollens at the End of the Century Much had changed in the second half of the fourteenth century. The growth of exports in the 1390s capped an astonishing half-century expansion: exports having more than tripled from the late 1350s to the late 1400s. Worsted exports, which had been around a quarter of broadcloth sales, had fallen to approximately 1  per cent by the end of the century.172 English cloth could be found in many new markets across the continent, and alien merchants were coming to England in increasing numbers as its cloth became more competitive. The English industry had once again become driven by exports which offered greater opportunities for growth, but at the end of the century it was coarser rather than high-quality cloth that predominated. Merchants from a number of ports were fanning out to find new markets and to trade cloth for the imports that primarily interested them. The cloth industry was still regional rather than national in nature, although merchants trading at London and Southampton were sourcing their cloth from greater distances and Coventry merchants were feeding cloth to all the major ports. There was therefore no concerted national effort to penetrate the continental market and no concentration of capital to develop the industry. Local merchants from each cloth town set out to find outlets for local cloth in the overseas markets they traditionally served. The domestic market had softened but not anywhere to the extent that population decline might have suggested, and imported woollens had disappeared from the market. It seemed that a balance had been found between towns and the countryside, with towns making better-quality

154  Revival of Exports cloth while at the same time finishing country cloth. Draperies across the continent had also restructured and many continued to prosper. English cloth was banned in Flanders and critically excluded from the continentwide trading networks that operated from Bruges. English urban draperies were still small by continental standards, and only a few such as Salisbury and Colchester had developed a specialist reputation. For the leading merchants in eastern ports, cloth usually played second fiddle to wool. In contrast to the wool trade that was well capitalised and highly organised, the cloth trade was opportunistic and uncoordinated. The interplay between urban and rural cloth was inherently unstable as merchants frequently undermined their towns’ weavers as they searched for cheaper cloth in the countryside. The establishment of cloth halls made it easier to sell rural cloth. The seeds had been planted for a national strategy to grow, focused on exporting through London, or by Londoners and alien merchants living in London shipping through Southampton. By 1400 West Country cloth was being sold at London as well as at Bristol and Salisbury, and the Suffolk and Essex industries were expanding based on London exports. This was made possible because there were few restrictions on inland trade: industry was free to migrate to those areas where clothmaking was most competitive. London’s weavers had already felt the impact of Surrey and Essex competition, and chinks appeared in the armour of other provincial cloth towns, as weavers in York, Bristol and Winchester faced increased competitive pressure from small-town and village weavers. The domestic market remained far larger than exports even as it declined after the Black Death. Both consumption and production must have fallen in the second half of the century as population continued to decline. Home demand in the early-fourteenth century might have been equivalent to 150,000 to 200,000 cloths.173 It is not unreasonable to suppose that the domestic market fell from 160,000 cloths at the beginning of the fourteenth century, although this might be conservative; remained at that level until the Black Death; and then fell to 120,000 cloths at the end, perhaps a 25 per cent reduction over the century.174 Population has recently been estimated to have fallen from 4.81 million in 1348 to 2.08 million in 1400, a drop of 57 per cent.175 Exports rose from approximately 6,000 cloths just before the Black Death to close to 40,000 cloths at the end of the century. The domestic market was therefore remarkably resilient as it declined from ninety-six to three quarters of the country’s total production. As woollens replaced worsteds, and as the cost of producing weft wool fell by carding and spinning it on the wheel, the amount of weft increased, producing a heavier, warmer, more durable cloth. It has been estimated that the amount of wool to make broadcloth rose from 50lb to 54lb over the fourteenth century.176 Clothing became more fashionable and showed status even in villages where there was a greater contrast in incomes after

Revival of Exports 155 the Black Death, and it also became more colourful. Household income undoubtedly rose, but there is no agreement by how much. Agricultural day wages doubled from 1.46d in the 1340s to 2.97d fifty years later, but it is far more difficult to assess the rise in average household income; however, it is unlikely to have been as high.177 There would have been more work for unskilled men, women and children, but wages outside the peak seasons may not have risen nearly as much as at harvest time, if at all. Landlords continued to insist, whenever they could, on contractual services owed by peasants living on the manor. In towns there were wider work opportunities, and many must have had part-time jobs to supplement income from their craft, but again it would have been at a lower wage level. John Hatcher has pointed out that farmers simply could not have afforded to pay harvest rates in the face of falling prices. He estimated that the net income on an 18–20 acre farm, from just before the Black Death to the third quarter of the fifteenth century, and paying an average wage rate of 2.7–2.8d per day, hardly changed.178 Any extra family income must have come from secondary occupations, changes in farm use and improved productivity. Even if wages and household incomes rose dramatically, would households have spent their income on clothing? Clothing consumption rises as a percentage of income when societies become richer, and then falls once basic needs have been met.179 Cloth consumption by the average peasant household was extremely low in the early-fourteenth century, perhaps less than ¾ yard per person.180 How was it even possible for a family to keep clothed and warm using only 3 yards of cloth a year? It took approximately 2¼–2½ yards of cloth to produce a tunic, 3 yards for a coat and possibly twice that if it was lined.181 In 1269–70 Beaulieu Abbey produced an average of 10  yards of equivalent broadcloth for each of its monks, and a little less for lay brothers.182 It took 20–25 yards of cloth of various kinds to provide a complete wardrobe for a monk at Westminster Abbey.183 It is not difficult to understand that, with a little extra income, households would have wished to clothe themselves better; and that consumption per capita might have risen to something close to a yard of cloth each year by the end of the fourteenth century.184 Changes in the domestic market strengthened the industry. English luxury cloth now replaced imported cloth so there was a larger market for luxury cloth, the best English cloth comparable to that made on the continent; and as a result of rising wool duties English quality cloth could potentially undercut the price of those continental cloths that were dependant on superior English wools. Improved living standards gradually favoured quality over coarse cloth; and better employment prospects in the countryside favoured commercially made cloth over homespun. Further, the move from worsted and serge to woollens which were more difficult to make and needed considerable expert finishing must have induced those with means to buy rather than make their own cloth. So

156  Revival of Exports although the size of the domestic market was lower, the demand for commercially made cloth may not have declined, and the range of cloth made in the countryside broadened. And as more rural cloth was taken to towns to be finished, the quality of that cloth would have steadily improved to meet merchants’ standards. Fashion played an important role. Around 1340 tunics became shorter and clothing started to hug the human form rather than drop straight from the shoulders to the ankles, sometimes drawn in by a belt. Within a generation or so changes in fashion had spread down to the peasantry.185 Richer villagers, whose wealth would have improved after the Black Death as they increased their holdings, would have wanted to show their rising status, and others would have followed as they could afford it. A petition to the king in 1362 complained that labourers use the apparel of craftsmen, and craftsmen of valets, and valets the apparel of squires, and squires the apparel of knights.186 In 1363 sumptuary legislation forced yeomen and handicraftsmen to wear broadcloth under 40s, and grooms and servants under 26s 8d, an obvious effort to put brakes on the lower classes wearing apparel above their status in society.187 By the end of the fourteenth century there was widespread criticism of fancy peasant dress.188 We can faintly detect rural clothmaking across the country as a few villagers chose to become clothmakers. The 1377–81 poll tax returns sometimes indicate occupations. In Wiltshire there were weavers and fullers in almost every village.189 In Essex’s Hinckford Hundred 5 per cent of those giving occupational designations were clothmakers.190 A 1393 East Anglian petition claimed that, ‘la substance et greindre partie des gentz des ditz’ (a substantial part of the population) were clothmakers, but this was a region becoming well known for its clothmaking.191 At York much cloth was woven in the adjacent Ainsty wapentake, over which the city had administrative control, and where 20 per cent of occupations recorded in the 1379 poll tax were textile related.192 In West Riding, more than 20 per cent at Rotherham and Wakefield paying the 1377 poll tax were engaged in the textile industry.193 Ian Blanchard has described the emergence of contract clothmaking in Derbyshire from 1365 to 1380 around newly constructed fulling mills, but weavers were eventually put out of business by more sophisticated clothmakers in Nottingham, Derby and Chesterfield. This was an area which never had a noted cloth industry, but obviously for a short time it was of some regional importance. Of the great contract weaving enterprises, two were headed by women.194 Bartholomew the Tailor was able to give employment to one third of the villagers at Rowsley in Derbyshire between 1379 and 1381.195 Even as late as the 1560s, a quarter to a third of all Derbyshire inventories included clothmaking equipment, usually spinning wheels or looms.196 Even in towns we see households turning to clothmaking as a secondary occupation. The proclamation of the 1394 act concerned with the

Revival of Exports 157 alnage stated that ‘it was not the king’s intent that poor folk may not sell little pieces of cloth and expose them for sale’, but a few overzealous alnagers charged the subsidy on these fragments.197 At York, of the 797 presentations to the alnager, 132 were of 8  yards or less, and some as little as 3 yards.198 Women presented one quarter of the cloths.199 In Middlesex in the same year, 105 people, twenty of them women, alnaged an average of five cloths; several brought as little as 2 yards on which they paid the subsidy. Only a few alnaged more than one piece of cloth, and none took cloth to the alnager more than four times during the year. Only Nicholas Tailor, probably a fuller, who alnaged fifty-four cloths, seems to have been making his living entirely from clothmaking. Forfeits probably provide a good sample of the cloths made. They were all inexpensive but there was a surprising variety, ranging from extremely cheap wadmal to cheap blanket, some red cloth and russets.200

Notes 1. J. Day, The medieval market economy (Oxford, 1987), 1–54. 2. J. Oldland, ‘Wool and cloth production in late medieval and early Tudor England’, EcHR, 67 (2014), 29. 3. J. Munro, ‘Industrial protectionism in medieval Flanders: Urban or national?’ in H. Miskimin, D. Herlihy and A.L. Udovich, eds., The medieval city (New Haven, 1977), 234–5. 4. Ibid, 246. 5. J. Munro, ‘Struggles Medieval woollens: The western European woollen industries and their struggles for international markets, c.1000–1500’, in D. Jenkins, ed., The Cambridge history of western textiles, vol.  1 (Cambridge, 2003), 249–62. 6. N.J.M. Kerling, Commercial relations of Holland and Zeeland with England from the late 13th century to the close of the Middle Ages (Leiden, 1954), 77. 7. E.M. Carus-Wilson and O. Coleman, England’s export trade 1275–1547 (Oxford, 1965), 80–8. 8. Munro, ‘Struggles’, 260–1, 282. 9. For the ups and downs of overseas trade in the second half of the century, see E.M. Carus-Wilson, ‘Trends in the export of English woollens in the fourteenth century’, in Venturers, 239–63. 10. Lynn cloths were included with Boston, Ipswich with Yarmouth, Melcombe/ Poole with Southampton and Plymouth with Exeter. No Exeter cloths were recorded for 1358–9. 11. Plymouth was included with Exeter until November 1408. 12. Carus-Wilson, ‘Trends’, 246; E. Quinton and J. Oldland, ‘London mer chants’ cloth exports, 1350–1500’, in R. Netherton and G. Owen-Crocker, Medieval clothing and textiles, vol. 7 (Woodbridge, 2011), 120. 13. Munro, ‘Industrial protectionism’, 234–5. 14. Carus-Wilson, ‘Trends’, 254–7. 15. E. Fryde, ‘The English cloth industry and trade with the Mediterranean c.1370–c.1480’, in M. Spallanzani, ed., Produzione commercio e consumo dei panni di lana, vol. 2 (Florence, 1976), 346. 16. E.M. Carus-Wilson, ed., The overseas trade of Bristol in the later Middle Ages (Bristol Record Society, 1937), 190–203.

158  Revival of Exports 17. H.L. Gray, ‘The production and exportation of English woollens in the fourteenth century’, EHR, 39 (1924), 27. 18. V. Harding, ‘Cross-channel trade and cultural contacts: London and the Low Countries in the later fourteenth century’, in C. Barron and N. Saul, eds., England and the Low Countries in the late Middle Ages (New York, 1995), 157. 19. Fryde, ‘Trade with the Mediterranean’, 346. 20. Ibid, 348, 356–7; G.A. Holmes, ‘Florentine merchants in England, 1346– 1436’, EcHR, 2nd series, 13 (1960), 195–6. 21. TNA, E 122/185/3, 185/19; Munro, ‘Struggles’, 322–3. An exception may have been London mercers’ sale of unfinished cloth to the Low Countries; see A.F. Sutton, The Mercery of London: Trade, goods and people, 1130–1578 (Aldershot, 2005), 149. 22. W.R. Childs, Anglo-Castilian trade in the later Middle Ages (Manchester, 1978), 79–83. 23. N.S.B. Gras, The early English customs system (Cambridge, 1918), 526–53. 24. Munro, ‘Struggles’, 260; H.L. Gray, ‘English foreign trade from 1446 to 1482’, in E. Power and M. Postan, eds. Studies in the history of English trade in the fifteenth century (New York, 1966), 7, 362; Wendy Childs, ‘The English export trade in cloth in the fourteenth century’, in R. Britnell and J. Hatcher, eds., Progress and problems in medieval England (Cambridge, 1996), 143. 25. J.N. Bartlett, ‘Some aspects of the economy of York in the later Middle Ages, 1300–1550’ (Unpub. Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1958), 132–3. 26. P. Nightingale, ‘The rise and decline of medieval York: A reassessment’, P&P, 206 (2010), 29–30. 27. Childs, Anglo-Castilian, 83. 28. Carus-Wilson, Overseas trade of Bristol, 180–9; TNA, E 122/71/8. 29. Broadcloths shipped from Southampton also tended to be of higher quality, around 55s in the mid-fifteenth century. 30. TNA, E 122/71/13. 31. TNA, E 101/509/19. 32. These prices have been taken from the large shipments for the last day in November 1405, when all cloths were specifically priced. 33. In 1430–1 the average broadcloth price was about the same, 26s. 8d; see Bartlett, ‘Economy of York’, 79. 34. This estimate is based on an analysis of shipments of 24 May. 35. Cottons were always sold by the goad rather than by the  yard or piece. A goad was 1½ yards. 36. H. Bradley, ‘The Datini factors in London, 1380–1410’, in D. Clayton, R. Davies and P. Niven, eds., Trade, devotion and governance (Stroud, 1994), 61. 37. S. Jenks, The enrolled customs accounts (TNA, E356, E272, E364) 1279-801508/09 (1523/24), Parts 1–12, List & Index society (2004–14), Part 5, 1, 216–17; W.M. Ormrod, ‘Finance and trade under Richard II’, in A. Goodman and J. Gillespie, eds., Richard II: The art of kingship (Oxford, 1999), 171. Hanse merchants claimed in 1390 that they were exporting 10,000 straits and kerseys a year; see T.H. Lloyd, England and the German Hanse, 1157–1611: A study of their trade and commercial diplomacy (Cambridge, 1991), 70. 38. Lloyd, Hanse, 77; Gras, Customs, 526–53. 39. For example, at Exeter, 1,048 straits and 83 broadcloths were exported from March to December 1404; see Jenks, Customs, part 5, 1, 379. 40. Ormrod, ‘Finance and trade’, 171. 41. Bartlett, ‘Economy of York’, 77–8. 42. Gras, Customs, 526–53. 43. TNA, E 122/139/4, 7, 8.

Revival of Exports 159 4. Coleman and Carus-Wilson, Export, 199–200. 4 45. J. Langdon, Mills in the medieval economy: England 1300–1540 (Oxford, 2004), 40–1. 46. Munro, ‘Struggles’, 278. 47. J. Munro, ‘Industrial energy from water-mills in the European economy, 5th to 18th centuries: The limitations of power’, in S. Cavaciocchi, ed., Economica e energia, secoli XIII-XVIII, vol. 34 (Florence, 2003), 259–62. 48. TNA, E 101/402/13. 49. J.E. Thorold-Rogers, A history of agriculture and prices in England from the year after the Oxford parliament (1259) to the commencement of the continental war (1793), 7 vols., vol. 2 (Oxford, 1866–1902), 643–4; J. Oldland, ‘The Variety and quality of English woollen cloth exported in the late Middle Ages’, Journal of European Economic History, 39 (2010), 245. 50. T. Rogers, Prices, vol. 1, 592. 51. For example, coats issued to officers of the privy chamber were often lined with frieze or cotton; see M. Hayward, ed., Dress at the court of king Henry VIII (Leeds, 2007), 249. 52. L. Monnas, ‘Textiles for the coronation of Edward III’, TH, 12 (2001), 19; M. Hayward, ed., The great wardrobe accounts of Henry VII and Henry VIII, LRS (2012), 27. 53. C. Muldrew, ‘ “Th’ancient distaff” and “whirling spindle”: Measuring the contribution of spinning to household earnings and the national economy in England, 1550–1770’, EcHR, 65 (2012), 514. 54. Statutes, 13 Richard II, c. 10. 55. Prices rose with inflation from 1520, and Gregory Clark’s broadcloth prices rose from 33d/yd. in 1500 to 50d/yd. in 1550; see G. Clark, ‘The macroeconomic aggregates for England, 1209–2008’, Research in Economic History, 27 (2010), Table A1. It is likely that coarse-cloth prices rose far more slowly than finer cloth, as coarse-wool prices remained low and competition remained intense. 56. T. Rogers, Prices, ii, 542. 57. F. Consitt, The London Weavers’ Company (London, 1933), 204–5. 58. Statutes, 13 Richard III, c. 10. 59. Statutes, 2 Henry IV, c. 20. 60. Statutes, 5 Henry VIII, c.2. This was re-stated in Statutes, 6 Henry VIII, c. 9, with the addition that Devonshire whites and russets had to weigh at least 14lb. 61. J. Lister, ed., The early Yorkshire woollen trade: Extracts from the Hull customs’ rolls, and complete transcripts of the alnagers’ rolls (Yorkshire Archaeological Society, 1924), 35–107. 62. Statutes, 27 Edward III, c. 4. 63. For the constantly changing regulations of the cloth assize, see A.R. Bridbury, Medieval English clothmaking (London, 1982), 106–11. 64. Statutes, 25 Edward III, c. 1; Parl. Rolls, vol. 5, 21–3. 65. CCR, 1354–60, 535–6; CCR, 1360–4, 187; CCR, 1364–8, 349. 66. There was no consistency in the time periods for each alnage report from the 1390s. 67. Gray, ‘Production and exportation’, 20–1. 68. From 27 Dec.  1353 to 29 Sept. 1354 Bristol alnage, 1, 446.5 cloths were from Bristol, 289.5 from Bath, 366 from Wells and 15.5 from Bridgewater. 69. Lincoln recorded 249 cloths annually. 70. These are summarised in Gray, ‘Production and exportation’, 34. 71. Statutes, 13 Richard II, c.10; Rot. Parl., vol.  3, 437. Kendal cloths were again excluded in 1407, Statutes, 4 Henry IV, c. 2.

160  Revival of Exports 72. Statutes, 4 Henry IV, c. 24. 73. H. Swanson, Medieval artisans (Oxford, 1989), 35. 74. Jenks, Customs, part 2, 587–92; Gray, ‘Production and exportation’, 21. 75. Jenks, Customs, part 2, 587–95. 76. Gray, ‘Production and exportation’, 30–1. 77. J. Hare, ‘Pensford and the growth of the cloth industry in medieval Somerset’, Somerset Archaeology and Natural History, 147 (2003), 174. 78. In 1388 the assize cloth was ruled to be only 6 quarters and ray cloths to be 5 quarters, but from 1393–4 to 1405–6 it was free trade. The alnager measured the cloths but no law could be broken on account of size; see Bridbury, Clothmaking, 108–9. 79. TNA, E 358/8, rot. 4. 80. TNA, E 358/8, rot. 2. 81. TNA, E 101/344/25; R.A. Pelham, ‘The cloth markets of Warwickshire during the later Middle Ages’, Transactions of the Birmingham Archaeological Society, 66 (1950), 133. 82. TNA, E 101/343/24. 83. Lister, Yorkshire woollen trade, 35–77. 84. Britnell, Colchester, 60. 85. TNA, E 358/8, rots. 6, 7. 86. Jenks, Customs, part 5, 1, 361, 1, 379–81. 87. M. Kowaleski, Local markets and regional trade in medieval Exeter (Cambridge, 1995), 20. 88. E. Lipson, An introduction to the economic history of England, vol. 1, the Middle Ages (London, 1915), 393. 89. Carus-Wilson, ‘Trends’, 246–9; Carus-Wilson, Overseas trade of Bristol, 180–9. 90. Bickley, Bristol, 1–6. 91. Ibid, 10–14, 15–16, 16–22. 92. Ibid, 1–9, 10–14, 29–30, 228. 93. Ibid, 1–6. 94. Ibid, 40–1. Osettes also turned up in the Wiltshire alnage accounts; see Carus-Wilson, ‘Woollen industry before 1550’, in E. Crittall and R.D. Pugh, eds., VCH, Wiltshire, vol. 4 (London, 1959), 125–6. 95. Hare, ‘Pensford’, 177. 96. Gray, ‘Production and exportation’, 30. 97. D.G. Shaw, The creation of a community: The city of Wells in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1993), 6, 76–8. 98. R. Holt, ‘Gloucester in the century after the Black Death’, in R. Holt and G. Rosser, eds., The English medieval town: A reader in English urban history 1200–1540 (London, 1990), 148. 99. TNA, E 358/7. From 1397 onwards separate accounts were drawn up for Gloucester and the rest of Gloucestershire, but the periods do not match exactly. 100. TNA, E 122/71/13, ff. 23–31. 101. Gras, Customs, 435–52. 102. J.G. Jenkins, The Welsh woollen industry (Cardiff, 1969), 99. 103. TNA, E 122/17/10. 104. R.I. Jack, ‘The cloth industry in medieval Wales’, Welsh History Review, 10 (1981), 447–9. 105. Farrar, W., ed., ‘Ita quid nullus preter eas faciat pannos, tinctos vel reatos’, Early Yorkshire Charters, vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1914), 263. 106. M. Sellars, ed., York memorandum book, vol. 120 (Surtees Society, 1911), 240–2.

Revival of Exports 161 107. Bartlett, ‘Economy of York’, 88; K.J. Allison, ‘Medieval Hull’, in K.J. Allison, ed., VCH, County of York, East Riding, I (Oxford, 1969), 61–7. 108. The draper, John Thornton, alnaged 190¼ cloths; John Braithwaite, who became mayor, 148½ cloths; and the mercer, Thomas Gare, 110½ cloths. 109. J. Kermode, Medieval merchants: York, Beverley and Hull in the later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1998), 204. 110. E. Miller, ‘Medieval York’, in P.M. Tillott, ed., VCH city of York, I (Oxford, 1961), 102; J.N. Bartlett, ‘The expansion and decline of York in the later Middle Ages’, EcHR, 2nd series, 12 (1959), 26. 111. Kermode, Medieval merchants, 174. 112. Lister, Early Yorkshire woollen trade, 47–95. 113. P.M. Stell and L. Hampson, eds., York inventories of the York diocese, 1350–1500 (York, 2006), 68–70. 114. Bartlett, ‘Economy of York’, 84. 115. Lister, Early Yorkshire woollen trade, 35–7. 116. Ibid, 95–100; Nightingale, ‘Rise and decline’, 19, 20, 27. 117. Sellars, York memorandum book, vol. 120, 70–1, 84, 112, 238–9. 118. E.M. Carus-Wilson, ‘The English cloth industry in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries’, MMV, 234; Swanson, Artisans (Oxford, 1989), 157; Oldland, ‘Clothmaking’, 120. 119. Swanson, Artisans, 124. 120. Ibid, 157; Oldland, ‘Clothmaking’, 92. 121. Swanson, Artisans, 132. 122. E.M. Carus-Wilson, ‘The oversea trade of late medieval Coventry’, in Économies et Sociétés au Moyen Age: Mélanges offerts à Edouard Perroy (Paris, 1973), 372, 375. 123. Ibid, 376. 124. Pelham, ‘Cloth markets’, 138–9. 125. R. Goddard, Commercial contraction and urban decline in fifteenthcentury Coventry, Dugdale Society Occasional Papers, vol. 46 (2006), 2–3. 126. J. Laughton and C. Dyer, ‘Small towns in the east and west Midlands in the later Middle Ages: A  comparison’, Midland History, 24 (1999), 43; Pelham, ‘Cloth markets’, 133. 127. Britnell, Colchester, 57. 128. Ibid, 63–6. 129. G. Unwin, Studies in economic history: The collected papers of George Unwin (London, 1966), 264. 130. R. Britnell, ‘The woollen textile industry of Suffolk in the later Middle Ages’, Ricardian, 13 (2003), 87–8. 131. M. Bailey, Medieval Suffolk: An economic and social history 1200–1500 (Woodbridge. 2007), 271. 132. L. Poos, Rural society after the Black Death: Essex 1350–1525 (Cambridge, 1991), 58–70; Britnell, ‘Suffolk’, 86–8. 133. Britnell, ‘Suffolk’, 86; Britnell, Colchester, 79–80. 134. Poos, Rural, 60. 135. Rot. Parl., vol. 3, 320. 136. P. Dunn, ‘Trade’, in C. Rawciffe and R. Wilson, eds., Medieval Norwich (Cambridge, 2004), 216; H. Sutermeister, ‘Merchant classes of Norwich and the city government 1350–1500’ (incomplete thesis, Norfolk Record Office, MC 146/14, 624x4, 1979), chapter 4, 16–20. 137. P. Dunn, ‘After the Black Death: Society and economy in late fourteenthcentury Norwich’ (Unpub. PhD. thesis, University of East Anglia, 2003), 154–63, 226.

162  Revival of Exports 38. Bradley, ‘Datini Factors’, 60; Fryde, ‘Trade with the Mediterranean’, 357. 1 139. Rot. Parl. 3, 294. 140. A.F. Butcher, ‘Canterbury’s earliest rolls of freemen admissions, 1297–1363: A reconsideration’, in F. Hull, ed., A Kentish Miscellany (London, 1979), 9. 141. S.L. Thrupp, ‘The earliest Canterbury freemen’s rolls 1298–1363’, in F.R. Du Boulay, ed., Medieval Kentish society, vol.  18 (Kent Archaeological Society, 1964), 176. 142. Gray, ‘Production and exportation’, 22. 143. E.M. Hewitt, ‘Industries’, in W. Page, ed., VCH, Kent, vol.  3 (London, 1932), 404. 144. C.A. Jackson, ‘The Berkshire woollen industry, 1500–1650’ (Unpub. Ph.D. thesis, University of Reading, 1993), 14–16. 145. Bridbury, Clothmaking, 68–70, 74–5. 146. Carus-Wilson, ‘The woollen industry before 1550’, 125. 147. Bridbury, Clothmaking, 79–81. Some evidence suggests that fulling and shearing rays was less costly than broadcloths; see Crowfoot, Textiles, 52. However, in London shearing ordinances for both 1350 and 1408, the cost of shearing a ray was 24d, equal to an ultra-luxury long cloth, but much higher than the standard broadcloth which cost 12d in 1350 and 16d in 1408; see Riley’s Memorials, 256; LMA, LBI, ff. 176–77. 148. Bridbury, Clothmaking, 69. 149. Keene, Winchester, part I, 316. 150. Ibid, 315. 151. Ibid, 306–7, 310. 152. P. Merrick, ‘The administration of the aulnage and subsidy on woollen cloth between 1394 and 1485, with a case study of Hampshire’ (Unpub. M.Phil. thesis, University of Southampton, 1997), 174, 188. 153. Keene, Winchester, part I, 311. 154. M. Kowaleski, ‘The port towns of fourteenth-century Devon’, in M. Duffy, S. Fisher, D. Greenhill and D.J. Starkey, eds., The new maritime history of Devon, vol. I (Exeter, 1992), 62–72; Kowaleski, Local markets, 20. 155. Ibid, 22. 156. Cal. LBH, 145, 301. 157. At Colchester it was at the Moothall, at Bury St. Edmunds it was at the Risbygate market, at Coventry it was at a house called the Drapery; see Britnell, Colchester, 80; R. Gottfried, Bury St. Edmunds and the urban crisis (Princeton, 1982), 98; R. Goddard, Lordship and medieval urbanisation: Coventry 1043–1355 (Woodbridge, 2004), 231. At Bristol all foreign cloth was to be taken to Thomas Danyell’s house to be sold on Wednesdays and Fridays; see Bickley, Bristol, 51–5. At Norwich a worsted seld was established in 1388 to seal and sell country worsted; see W. Hudson and C.J. Tingay, eds., The records of the city of Norwich, vol. 2 (Norwich, 1906–10), 50, 90, 92. 158. Oldland, ‘Clothmaking’, 67–102. 159. Cal. LBH, 145, 282. 160. Statutes, 4 Henry 1V, c. 6. 161. Textiles only accounted for approximately 5 per cent of the city’s occupations; see C. Barron, London in the later Middle Ages: Government and people 1200–1500 (Oxford, 2004), 66. 162. Oldland, ‘Clothmaking’, 65, 84; Gray, ‘Production and exportation’, 13–35; TNA, E 358/8. 163. J. Oldland, ‘Making and marketing woollen cloth in late-medieval London’, London Journal, 36 (2011), 95. 164. Cal. LBI, 11.

Revival of Exports 163 165. G. Unwin, ‘The estate of merchants, 1336–1365’, in George Unwin, ed., Finance and trade under Edward III (Manchester, 1918), 251. Within eighteen months this monopoly was cancelled as the 1365 statute allowed all enfranchised Londoners to trade wholesale in any commodity they wished. 166. M.M. Postan, ‘The economic and political relations of England and the Hanse from 1400 to 1475’, in Power and Postan, Studies in English trade, 152. 167. Nightingale, Grocers, 299, 323. 168. Sutton, Mercery, 148–52. In the customs account of 1384–5, mercers appear 101 times; 18 mercers appear 26 times in the cloth account of 1390– 1, handling 939 cloths. 169. Ibid, 148–9. 170. W. Childs, ‘England’s iron trade in the fifteenth century’, EcHR, 2nd series, 34 (1981), 40. 171. M. James, ‘A London merchant of the fourteenth century’, EcHR, 2nd series, 8 (1955–56), 366–7; P. Nightingale, ‘Money and credit in the economy of late medieval England’, in D. Wood, ed., Medieval money matters (Oxford, 2004), 56–9. 172. Carus-Wilson, Export, App. 5. 173. E. Miller and J. Hatcher, Medieval England: Towns, commerce and crafts 1086–1500 (London, 1995), 126. 174. Oldland, ‘Wool and cloth’, 29. 175. Broadberry et al, Economic Growth, 30. 176. Oldland, ‘Wool and cloth’, 29. 177. G. Clark, ‘The long march of history: Farm wages, population and economic growth, England 1209–1869’, EcHR, 60 (2007), 99–100; C. Dyer, ‘A golden age rediscovered: Labourers’ wages in the fifteenth century’, in M. Allen and D. Coffman, eds., Money, prices and wages (Basingstoke, 2015), 10–95. 178. J. Hatcher, ‘Unreal wages: Long-run living standards and the “golden age” of the fifteenth century’, in B. Dodds and C.D. Liddy, eds., Commercial activity, markets and entrepreneurs in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2011), 19. 179. N.B. Harte, ‘The economics of clothing in the late-seventeenth century’, TH, 22 (1991), 291. 180. Oldland, ‘Wool and cloth’, 39. 181. C. Dyer, Standards of living in the later Middle Ages: Social change in England c.1200–1520 (Cambridge, 1989), 78. 182. J. Oldland, ‘Cistercian clothing and its production at Beaulieu Abbey, 1269–70’, in R. Netherton and G. Owen-Crocker, eds., Medieval clothing and textiles, vol. 9 (Woodbridge, 2013), 79–80. 183. B.F. Harvey, Monastic dress in the Middle Ages: Precept and practice (Oxford, 1988), 17. 184. Oldland, ‘Wool and cloth’, 39. 185. Dyer, Standards, 175–7. 186. F.E. Baldwin, Sumptuary legislation and personal regulation in England (Baltimore, 1926), 46. 187. Ibid, 47. 188. Ibid, 67–9. 189. Carus-Wilson, ‘Woollen Industry before 1550’, 122–3. 190. Poos, Rural society, 59. 191. Rot. Parl., vol. 3, 320. 192. P.J.P. Goldberg, Women, work, and life cycle in a medieval economy: Women in York and Yorkshire c.1300–1520 (Oxford, 1992), 46; P.M. Tillott, ‘The boundaries of the city’, in P.M. Tillott, ed., VCH, City of York, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1961), 318.

164  Revival of Exports 193. Goldberg, Women, 46. 194. Blanchard, ‘Industrial employment’, 231. 195. Blanchard, ‘Industrial employment’, 229–31, 270–1. 196. C. Muldrew, The economy of obligation: The culture of credit and social relations in early modern England (Basingstoke, 1998), 23. 197. CCR, 1392–96, 257. 198. Lister, Early Yorkshire woollen trade, 35–107. 199. Heaton, Yorkshire, 38. 200. TNA, E 101/340/26, 27. Forfeited cloth in 1394–5 was 5 yards of russet, 11d a  yard; 8  yards of blanket stricti (straits), 4.5d a  yard; 5.5  yards of cloth, 10d a  yard; 8  yards of cloth, worth 16d; 2.5  yards of red medley (woven with multi-coloured wools), worth 16d; 3 quarters of a  yard of red cloth worth 12d; 12d from pieces of russet wall stricti (wadmal, a very coarse, cheap worsted cloth); 8 yards of narrow frieze, worth 6d a yard; 2.5 yards of red cloth, worth 16d; 7¾ yards that produced a forfeit of 11s 7d; 4 yards of blanket, worth 10d a yard; and 15 yards of narrow wall cloth worth 4d.

8 Working Conditions in Towns

One of the central themes of this book was the growing strength of rural clothmaking in the fifteenth century. The other side of that coin was the advantages and disadvantages of urban clothmaking. To what extent was clothiers’ success simply a reflection of the weakness of clothmaking in towns? This chapter considers the increased structuring of work in towns and then considers problems both urban merchants and clothworkers faced as they competed with an industrialising countryside. To generalise is hazardous as every town had clothworkers, and many had their time in the sun when clothmaking was more than locally significant, then usually followed by decline: Beverley, Lincoln, Leicester, Northampton and Stamford in the thirteenth century; Bristol, Colchester, York, Coventry, Wells, Bath and Salisbury in the fourteenth; Norwich and Salisbury in the fifteenth; and Reading and Worcester in the sixteenth. London, as usual, was unique, making cheap cloth in the thirteenth, the finest cloth in the fourteenth, finishing rural cloth in the fifteenth, and its leading artisans becoming merchants in the sixteenth. This suggests that urban clothmaking was inherently unstable, that in success lay the seeds of its decline. High artisan skills, guild supervision, economies of scale in dyeing and working cheek-by-jowl with merchants made it easier for towns to produce high-quality cloth. Yet none of these advantages ensured that a town’s cloth industry would flourish over time. As the export market changed many urban draperies were unable to adjust and find new markets. Rarely did city government protect or adapt its cloth industry when it started to decline. Urban clothworkers always had to compete with country cloth that had access to towns, even if that access was controlled. Making truly differentiated cloth, and concentrating single-mindedly on it, was the best protection against rural competition: examples were Norwich double worsteds, Salisbury rays, Shrewsbury finishing of cottons and frieze, Worcester fine whites and Reading fine coloureds. Artisans always clustered to form close-knit communities, often gathering in a single parish or ward: they lived, worked and socialised together. London weavers and burellers, for example, were concentrated in Walbrook and Candlewick wards, and chaloners in the adjacent Langbourn

166  Working Conditions in Towns ward. Dyers and fullers needed to be close to water, and shearmen were often closely associated with them as cloth passed from one to another tradesman as they were finishing cloth. Some fullers and shearmen lived close to their customers, drapers and tailors, who were frequently executors of cloth finishers’ wills.1 Alien communities in particular kept close together, but in proximity to native textile workers with whom they had to establish trading relationships.2 Court cases in Colchester and Yarmouth reflect the close collaboration between the various clothworkers who depended on one another. Alien and native clothworkers were better integrated in Colchester than in London where aliens made bequests almost exclusively to other aliens, assisting new arrivals in the 1350s and 1360s. London’s alien weavers needed the guild structure to give them security, and a common voice.

Guilds Under Pressure After the Black Death artisans were organised into guilds in many large towns. It was a world of small independent masters, journeymen (those who had completed their apprenticeship and often became citizens, but without the capital to set up as independent householders and hire apprentices), and apprentices that made up the clothmaking household, rather than the family and its servants around which clothmaking was organised in the countryside. The London dyer, William Mitchell at his death in 1500, provided bequests for thirteen employees.3 At Norwich dornix (mixed linen and woollen cloth) weavers could have six looms, which may have led to a sizeable workforce.4 To some extent size was dependant on the nature of the trade. Broadcloth weavers required at least two people to work the broadloom, but more were required to run a large dyehouse. Sometimes the number of looms was regulated as at York, where in 1561 coverlet weavers were limited to a single loom.5 On the other hand Bury St. Edmunds weavers could have no more than four looms in operation at any one time.6 Fullers, who were responsible for several distinct processes (cleaning, fulling, tentering), often conducted at different locations, needed several employees. Bristol fullers in the fourteenth century had different rates of pay for those who were trampling cloth; those working on land to clean, tenter and shear the cloths; while women cleaning cloth were paid only a penny a day.7 The process of dye preparation, dyeing and then drying the cloth required even more employees, especially if several vats were in operation at any one time. A  study of London wills from 1385 to 1550 revealed that dyers had, on average, 3.4 apprentices, fullers 1.9, shearmen 1.4 and weavers 1.0; while the average number of servants was 3.2 for dyers, 2.0 for fullers, 1.1 for shearmen and 1.2 for weavers.8 While guilds promoted specialisation and quality control in the fourteenth century, they also created some rigidity and resistance to change

Working Conditions in Towns 167 in the fifteenth.9 As rural cloth improved, higher urban costs from dues, fines, farms, taxes, living costs and other civic charges made it more difficult to compete. It was not easy to specialise in higher-quality cloth when it meant that the size of the market was reduced. Guilds tended to try and protect what they had rather than adapt to reach new markets. Regulation discouraged innovation; and guilds imposed work restrictions and set wages and prices which often proved to be counter-productive, especially when many urban textile industries began to decline in the early fifteenth century. For example, at Beverley civic government placed a tax on weavers of a farthing for every four cloths, and fullers a farthing for every two cloths.10 Guilds perpetuated a system whereby the weaver sold cloth to the fuller, who then sold it to the shearmen who finally delivered it to the merchant; or the weaver sold it to the merchant who then had the cloth fulled and sheared. In large towns merchants tended to allocate their time and money to trade, while pressuring artisan guilds to produce the desired cloth for the least cost. They were slow to respond to the laissezfaire conditions that fertilised the clothiers’ rise. Guilds frequently regulated the numbers of apprentices and servants as smaller masters wanted to limit the growth of their more successful members, and journeymen to limit the number of apprentices in order to make their own employment more secure. London’s small dyers in the sixteenth century were concerned that their wealthy members would become so dominant that they would corner the market, taking advantage of economies of scale to force smaller dyers out of business. In the 1520s small London dyers wanted to limit production to fourteen cloths a week.11 The number of apprentices and servants differed in each trade and town, and according to economic circumstances. Shrewsbury weavers in 1448 allowed only one apprentice except in the last year of apprenticeship.12 Norwich worsted weavers on the other hand were allowed four apprentices in 1512.13 Guilds became more restrictive when business was soft. At York in 1404 shearmen passed ordinances that set prices for journeymen, prohibited shearmen working for those who were un-enfranchised, and placed restrictions on foreigners joining the craft; and twenty years later fullers passed rules for searching cloth entering the city.14 At Colchester in 1418 fullers forbade journeymen to full cloth themselves, forcing them into wage dependence on masters, and requiring all fullers to be apprenticed.15 At Coventry journeymen weavers were not permitted to pass along their skills to untrained workmen, and would be blacklisted from the craft if they did.16 In 1514 Coventry cloth had to be burled and dressed before being taken to fulling mills outside the city.17 London’s Dyers’, Fullers’ and Shearmen’s guilds struggled to control their journeymen from the mid-fifteenth century onwards. Fullers’, Shearmen’s and Clothworkers’ (shearmen and fullers amalgamated to become the Clothworkers Company in 1528) ordinances always stipulated the number of

168  Working Conditions in Towns servants and apprentices. In 1452 shearmen were allowed four apprentices and three journeymen, in 1483 two apprentices and four journeymen.18 Fullers were allowed four apprentices in 1487 and no more than six workers in 1488.19 In 1519 journeymen fullers petitioned London’s court of aldermen that there be no more than three apprentices at any one time. Clothworkers in 1531 were allowed three apprentices; in 1552 it was reduced to two.20 Of particular concern was the employment of aliens and unfree artisans from outside the town, called foreigns. London’s weavers prevented four foreign weavers from working in 1300 because they were not members of the craft, and its shearmen prohibited employment of foreigns as early as 1350.21 York weavers, dyers, shearmen and coverlet makers all sought to limit the number of foreigners accepted into the trade in the fifteenth century.22 Foreigns were the focus of a successful petition by journeymen fullers to London’s court of aldermen in 1483, requesting that that none be hired unless journeymen were unavailable as so many had been forced out of work.23 Aliens were sometimes explicitly excluded, but rarely was this a major problem in provincial towns. It was, however, an ongoing challenge for London’s native weavers throughout the late-medieval period because alien weavers were recognised as a separate craft under the crown’s protection. Conflict was only truly resolved in 1497 when the now impoverished alien and native weavers amalgamated. In 1488 London Fullers’ ordinances declared that no aliens were to be hired either as an apprentice or servant.24 Merchants and artisans in some towns showed far greater flexibility in the way they operated in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as they began to emulate clothiers’ success. At Colchester by the end of the fifteenth century production was in the hands of a few clothmakers who appeared to be involved at all stages of the production process.25 At York there are references to mercers and drapers who left money to their dyers, fullers, spinners and weavers.26 Some of Salisbury’s continued success in the sixteenth century may have been that its drapers managed the production of cloth, with no strict barrier existing between merchant and artisan.27 The Salisbury weaver and merchant, William Cuff, in 1500, had £7 in wool, £11 in yarn, wool oil and equipment in his spinning and yarn houses, five looms worth £5, 30 ray cloths worth £44, and broadcloths and kerseys, equal to 89 broadcloths, finished and unfinished, amounting to £153 10s, and debts he hoped to collect of £82 10s.28 It appeared that he spun his own yarn and wove some cloth, but also bought cloths from other weavers to sell. As is discussed later, part of the success at Coventry, Norwich, Worcester and Reading was because merchants and the artisan trades cooperated and the barriers between merchants and artisans were lowered. London’s guild experience in the later fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was exceptional as the city became the centre for finishing cloth for both

Working Conditions in Towns 169 the nation’s export and domestic cloth markets. In combination with London’s cloth merchants, its cloth finishers secured passage of the 1484 cloth act that mirrored their own ordinances setting quality standards.29 They pursued an ongoing struggle with mercers to force cloth exporters to sell some finished cloth.30 Fullers and shearmen were allowed to amalgamate in 1528, as clothworkers, reflecting the reality that they worked together to finish cloth, and that merchants would often rely either on a fuller or a shearman to organise the total cloth-finishing process.31 Amalgamation gave it greater wealth and a larger merchant elite so that they could successfully claim a decade later to be accepted as a merchant company and its leading members therefore available to be selected as aldermen. Perhaps their greatest success was in 1565 when parliament required all Suffolk and Kent cloth to be dyed and finished.32 At London the relationship of the master craftsman with his craft organisation undoubtedly strengthened from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries. Textile crafts developed a uniform structure of master, court of assistants, wardens, livery, other householders, journeymen and apprentices, following the lead of merchant companies. They incorporated in order to accept benefactions and they built halls—weavers, dyers, shearmen and fullers all having acquired them by 1500.33 Clothworkers were determined to make their hall reflective of their new status as one of the ‘great misteries’. John Tollous gave £30 to the rebuilding of the hall in 1547 and Ralph Hammersley’s widow, Alice, gave 40s to its building, and a damask tablecloth worth 8s.34 Among dyers, Thomas Nicolson, in 1493, gave 10 marks for the repairing of their hall and John Lewes 40s ‘towards thye repair of the tenements belonging to the fellowship’ in 1496.35

How Much Work? There was considerable underemployment even though the Black Death had tightened the labour market, especially during recessionary periods. A large number of saints’ days further reduced incomes for day labourers. Holy days were reduced from forty-six to twenty-seven in 1552.36 In many occupations work was rarely continuous. There are records for the number of cloths brought daily to the alnager at London in 1374–5, at York in 1394–5 and at Bristol in 1467–8. In London four times as many cloths were alnaged in September as in December, February or March. At York very few cloths were alnaged in June, December and January, and they were a quarter of the number processed in March and August. At Bristol the busy months were February/March and August/September, and there was very little work in December/January.37 Restrictions on the number of apprentices and journeymen were, in part, because there was no guarantee of continuous work. Actual cloths produced were frequently far below work capacity. It has been estimated

170  Working Conditions in Towns that a weaver and his assistant could produce as many as forty broadcloths a year under ideal conditions. A  fuller and two assistants could clean, foot-full and tenter a cloth in five days, or around thirty cloths a year; or if mechanically fulled, three days or fifty cloths a year.38 Armentières’ notebooks for 1592–3 showed a maximum of twenty-six to twenty-eight cloths annually per loom, and this seems to be similar to the average production of the Datini business at Prato at the end of the fourteenth century.39 In 1544 a Gloucestershire weaver with two broadlooms wove sixty cloths, thirty for each loom, but we are not told the number of employees.40 Of the forty-five fullers who alnaged cloths in London in 1374–5, thirteen alnaged fewer than ten cloths, nineteen between ten and twenty, nine between twenty and fifty, and only four more than fifty. At Bristol in 1483–4, of the 219 people alnaging cloth, seventeen alnaged one to five cloths; thirty-four, six to ten cloths; fourteen, eleven to fifteen cloths; seven, sixteen to twenty cloths; six, twenty-one to thirty cloths; seven, thirty-one to fifty cloths; and four, more than fifty.41 These figures have to be treated with caution since weavers could be avoiding the alnage and those who alnaged large quantities were merchants assembling cloth, but they do suggest that the average weaver was weaving well below his capacity. When there was work, days were long. For the apprentice and journeyman under contract the length of the working day was up to the master; no ordinances expressly dictated it. However, they were probably the same as for the journeyman who was hired daily or on short-term contract. In 1563 the statute of artificers required that those hired for wages, daily or weekly, from mid-March to mid-September start at, or before, five in the morning, and work until between seven and eight at night, with a two-and-a-half-hour break during the day for breakfast, dinner and rest periods.42 This was an eleven-and-a-half to twelve-anda-half-hour working day. From mid-September to mid-March work was from daylight to dusk, with an hour and a half off for breakfast and dinner.43 It was a six-day work week, but there were forty-six holidays which led to a 267-day working year. There was some flexibility on Saturday. At Coventry the master weaver could not work his broadloom on Saturday afternoons, or his narrow loom after 3pm in the afternoon, although journeymen seem to have been expected to work for most of the day.44 London weavers in 1407 stipulated that in winter work was not to begin before 5 in the morning, and finish before 8 at night.45 Surprisingly, journeymen working for London Clothworkers’ Company were expected to work the same long hours in winter as summer, from 4 in the morning to 7 at night, although it is unlikely that artisans regularly worked in the dark.46 In spite of these long hours some artisans wanted, on occasion, to work even longer hours. London fullers repeatedly insisted that no cloth be placed on the tenters on Sundays and saints’ days.47 A  clothworker

Working Conditions in Towns 171 in 1542 was fined 5s 4d for hanging fourteen kerseys on his tenters on the Sunday after Michaelmas.48 Weavers often expressly forbade night work. The 1300 London Weavers’ ordinances prohibited night work and this was repeated in 1321.49 At Winchester it was the custom that tapeners (worsted weavers) could not work by night, except between the feast of Saint Thomas the Apostle (December  21) and Christmas, and burellers except between Saint Nicholas (December 6) and Christmas.50 Night work was forbidden by the Bristol weavers in 1346 and by York coverlet weavers in the sixteenth century.51 Agricultural work disrupted the industry, especially in rural areas. From 1562 justices of the peace could force artificers to bring in the harvest.52 At Norwich weavers had to down tools for a month from the 15 August to help in the fields.53 From the Kendrick Newbury workhouse accounts from the early seventeenth century it can be seen that little yarn was spun in late August and early September while spinsters were in the fields.54 Even after work apprentices and servants might be supervised in large towns. London shearmen in 1445 were forbidden to ‘wander about at night, or frequent suspicious places by day or night’.55 Fullers’ servants in 1487 could not ‘haunt the stews side, not the “kayles”, nor indulge in any other riotous game or play’.56 In 1549 in response to the mayor’s order, clothworkers’ servants had to be within doors between 10 at night and 4 in the morning.57 In large towns some jobs in the textile industry were reserved for the un-enfranchised. London’s clothworkers were not allowed to move cloth from place to place as, for example, fullers taking cloth to the fullers’ stairs on the Thames to be cleaned, to the tenters to dry and then to the shearmen’s houses, and perhaps lastly to Blackwell Hall for sale, as this work was reserved for porters and waterbearers.58 In 1543 the clothworker, Thomas Smyth, was fined 5s for taking cloth to Blackwell Hall.59 In Bristol in 1351 only porters could break up and then turn the woad.60 Terms of payment was a contentious issue in the fifteenth century. In 1460 the Norwich city assembly declared that all clothworkers be paid in money. Clothiers, in the 1464 cloth act, were expected to pay their carders and spinners with ready money, as many of them were given wages in ‘pins, girdles and other unprofitable merchandise’.61 In 1487 London fullers thought it necessary to include in their ordinances that no member was ‘to take any “chaffer” or ware for his workmanship’. The Coventry Clothmakers’ ordinance of 1518 required that spinners be paid with ‘redy money’, rather than by ‘cloth or any other chaffur’.62 There were strict rules for terms of apprenticeship and these were extended to the countryside in the 1550s and 1560s. The 1555 Weavers’ act allowed a master weaver to employ two apprentices who were expected to serve a seven-year term, and this was reinforced in 1557 when only those who had served a seven-year apprenticeship could weave or shear either woollen cloth or kerseys.63 In 1563 textile masters

172  Working Conditions in Towns were required to employ one journeyman for the first three apprentices, and then one journeyman for each apprentice after that.64 In fifteenthcentury London, apprenticeship generally started at the age of 14 to 16 in the leading companies, and the age of entry was probably rising.65 A few must have started much earlier because clothworkers in 1552 decided that anybody put to work over the age of 12 had to be bound as an apprentice within a month.66 It seems that apprenticeship in the industry was normally for seven years, but in reality many were bound for more years.67 The average for later-sixteenth century London clothworkers was 7.6 years.68 In London in the second half of the sixteenth century only 41 per cent of apprentices finished their terms, some dying before completion; and once an apprentice had served his term, he often had to prove his capabilities to the wardens before he could apply to the city for his freedom.69 At this point there was a wide divergence in careers. The most successful became householders once they had amassed the necessary capital, and then could hire apprentices and progress through company ranks to wear the livery, become an assistant, warden and master. Fifty-six per cent of clothworkers on completion of their apprenticeships made the transition to householder in the late-sixteenth century. For London’s fullers, and later clothworkers, £10 in capital was required to become a householder.70 For those who remained journeymen, many left for greener pastures elsewhere, some contracted themselves to masters on an annual basis, while others either set up their own small businesses or earned wages on a daily or weekly basis. At Coventry in 1522–3, when its weaving industry was in decline, there were forty-five master weavers and thirty-seven journeymen.71 A few journeymen achieved some prosperity. Masters who managed a complex operation needed a trusted second in command, and some became their masters’ executors. A large dyer’s operation required a manager, and perhaps also a senior woad dyer, while presumably the master purchased raw materials and managed customers. When journeymen’s annual wages were set in 1564 at £6 13s 4d, exceptions were made for dyers’ foremen and woadmen who were to be paid £10.72 In Kent in 1563 ordinary journeymen were to be paid £2 10s, but a clothier’s foreman received £3 6s 8d, weaver’s foreman £3, clothiers’ servants £2 13s 4d, the fullers’ ‘millman’ £4, and the best shearman £3.73 Most journeymen under contract had a reasonably secure, but poor living. It was customary for a weaver in Bristol and Coventry to give his servant a third of the total charge for weaving.74 London dyers capped journeymen wages at £1 a year plus food and clothing in 1433; the same wage as a chief shepherd or carter received in 1444, and 4s in clothing.75 Whenever the daily wage is mentioned in London cloth finishers’ ordinances it was 4d a day, even in the sixteenth century. The 1407 Weavers’ ordinances set a rate of 5d a day both in winter and summer.76 At

Working Conditions in Towns 173 Bristol in 1381 foot-fullers were paid 4d, those cleaning and rowing cloth 3d.77 Those depending on short-term wages must have been the last hired and first dismissed. In 1368 we hear about the hiring of London’s alien weavers at 4 each morning, Flemings in the churchyard of St. Lawrence Pountenay, and Brabanters in the churchyard of St.  Mary Somerset.78 According to the 1456 London Weavers’ ordinances, journeymen had to go to St. Thomas Acres between 4 and 6 in the morning where they might be hired.79 In some towns journeymen could not work independently, as at Colchester in 1418, when the fullers could only full cloth when employed by a master fuller.80 Restrictions often were placed on journeymen who wanted to change masters, and on masters who wanted to poach workers.81 Since journeymen often accounted for a substantial percentage of total guild membership, they attempted to negotiate better working conditions. Some journeymen wanted short-term work to be converted into long-term contracts during recessionary periods. Bristol’s 1389 Weavers’ ordinances required journeymen to be hired for a year, and fullers in the fifteenth century forced masters to employ servants for a year once they had worked for fifteen days.82 At Worcester and its suburbs there had to be at least one journeyman working each loom.83 Management often tried to control journeymen’s right of assembly. Bristol journeymen could not meet communally without their masters’ approval.84 London weavers in 1407 forbade journeymen assemblies, and if members were rebellious they could be taken to the mayor’s court, and if convicted, imprisoned for ten days.85 London’s journeymen fullers could only meet at the hall, and only with the knowledge of the wardens; and the dyers made the same ruling a few years later.86 The 1507–8 London Shearmen’s ordinances stated that journeymen ‘shall not make any unlawful assemblies, brodrehods, congregacions or flocking togiddres within the citie’.87 London journeymen shearmen and dyers were able to set up their own separate organisation within the craft by the early sixteenth century, but the company always sought to limit their activities.88 Conflict between journeymen and masters in London became so intense in the early-sixteenth century that sometimes companies were unable to resolve disputes, and they spilled over to the mayor’s court. Perhaps with the growing wealth of many householders, journeymen believed that they should also enjoy some prosperity. In 1519 London’s journeymen fullers were complaining to the mayor’s court that householders were hiring too many apprentices, forcing them to ‘seek a living among foreigns in the country’.89 Many clothworkers’ journeymen felt that the company was not doing enough to insist that cloth be finished before it was shipped to Antwerp.90 Dyer’s yeomanry (journeymen) had a protracted dispute with the leading dyers in the 1520s which was eventually brought before the mayor’s court, and led in 1531 to the disbandment of the yeomanry

174  Working Conditions in Towns organisation.91 Clothworkers’ fraternity of journeymen was eventually disbanded in 1549 after an extended period of conflict, but it was revived in 1553.92

Quality Control In the fifteenth century, as the overall quality of English cloth was improving, it is difficult to see that urban quality control kept pace. Guilds continued to search members’ cloth, weavers to mark them, and some towns to seal their cloth in the fifteenth century. Bristol fullers in 1406 were given the right to search twice a week, while London weavers expected to be searched every six weeks.93 Usually it was left to the wardens’ discretion, and search was far less frequent. In the event that crafts failed to institute a search process, some towns made that obligatory, as at Norwich in 1415, where the mayor appointed two searchers for each craft, and fines were levied against those who failed to perform.94 At Coventry in 1518 six drapers oversaw two searchers of both fullers and shearmen, and at Worcester in 1522 the cloth was searched by a weaver, fuller and two town chamberlains.95 Fines were levied for fraudulent and poor-quality work. In some cases more drastic action was threatened. York’s coverlet weavers could have their cloth confiscated for the initial offence, but continued infractions might lead to loss of their looms or being expelled from the craft.96 In 1552 all towns were authorised to appoint two searchers to investigate finishing and dyeing, and then seal all cloths.97 Several towns sought to mark cloth in order to build cloth reputations. Regulations have survived at Bristol, Coventry, Worcester and York for placing seals on town cloths.98 Some guilds were frustrated by artisans who located just outside their area of jurisdiction. Through a number of parliamentary acts Norwich worsted weavers were able to extend their control throughout Norfolk, and even Cambridgeshire.99 Search in Norfolk was to be carried out by six weavers from Norwich and six from the rest of the county.100 London’s weavers had to raise money for its annual farm, and this led many to leave the city. Of the seventy weavers who signed an agreement on wages in 1456, only thirty-three lived in the city.101 London dyers were less successful in controlling dyeing in and around London, particularly at Southwark, and there is little evidence that they actively searched their own members.102 A  consortium of London haberdashers, drapers and tailors believed it was necessary to intervene and set up quality controls in 1500 and 1501. Dyers had to mark their cloths, and a sample set of woaded cloth, hats and caps were distributed to establish a standard, and fines levied for ‘fugitive dyeing’.103 Searching worked to supervise faulty manufacture if it was visible, but some defects were hard to check. Cloth dimensions, much workmanship, warp and weft counts, burling and quality of shearing were easy to detect,

Working Conditions in Towns 175 but fastness in dyeing and shrinkage after tentering were more difficult to observe. Most of the fines levied by Norfolk worsted weavers were for improper cloth dimensions for double worsteds, poor weaving and working in August when the weavers should have been in the fields.104 From the mid-fifteenth century merchants and others had to turn to parliament to address the most intractable quality problems, and it took an additional century to develop the will and executional mechanics to manage cloth shrinkage. For example, no fullers’ ordinances attempted to supervise the illegal stretching of cloth on the tenter. It was almost impossible to set standards when towns were finishing rural cloth as it no longer controlled yarn preparation, weaving and fulling. It was the urban fuller who exercised some quality control over rural cloth. Drapers were typically purchasing rural cloth that had been mechanically fulled, tentered and taken to the alnager to pay the subsidy, but not burled (impurities in the cloth removed), wet sheared, dry sheared or in-the-piece dyed.105 The merchant therefore often gave the cloth to the urban fuller to check quality and start the finishing process. The fuller placed it over a perch close to the waterfront and inspected that the cloth had been evenly fulled, beat the cloth again if necessary, burled and wet-sheared the cloth, and re-tentered the cloth to dry it.106 It was then given to the shearmen and dyer to colour and finish the cloth. Urban finishing was inefficient as cloth had to be moved from place to place in towns, and the urban fullers’ work included additional work that arose from fixing quality problems that the rural clothier might avoid if he had studiously supervised the process.

Women’s Work Women were hidden from view because their lower paid and unregulated work in yarn preparation went unrecorded, as did work beside their husbands or servants at the loom. Single women so frequently turned to clothmaking that they came to be known as spinsters. Only in the few instances when women were working as femme sole (a married women was allowed to trade independently of her husband), or as a widow continuing her husband’s business, did their work sometimes come before the courts. At Exeter in the late-fourteenth century most women in trade were in food retailing or brewing, but women participated in cloth manufacture more than any other industry.107 Three identifiable female cloth merchants were widows, and there were some weavers and hosiers. We can occasionally identify women from their wills. Leonissa Frost, London citizen and coarseweaver, was only able to leave her apprentice, Isabelle Church, a set of bedding in 1430.108 But the London weaver Margaret Brere was far better off when she died in 1438.109 She left some clothing and bedding to her sister, but most of her possessions went to her servant, Agnes Fulk, in 1438. She received two looms, a complete set of bedding

176  Working Conditions in Towns and all the household articles, including some silver-plated and pewter dishes and basins. Most women were relegated to lower-paid wool sorting, combing and spinning. Carding the wool, however, was often men’s work. In a study of legal records in fourteenth-century Shrewsbury all the five carders were male, while combers were women.110 Women were involved in fulling cloth at Bristol, but they were only paid a penny a day.111 York dyers were using women to wash cloth before it was dyed.112 Women were sometimes forced to turn their hand to multiple occupations to make a living. At Exeter Emma Hosiere made not only stockings but also retailed dairy products and fashioned leather, while Matilda Monioun brewed ale; sold eggs, butter and cheese; and made cloth.113 Shrewsbury weavers’ wives were also brewing and selling ale.114 Yarn preparation remained mostly in women’s hands, while weaving, dyeing and finishing had been taken over almost exclusively by men. The introduction of the broadloom and the development of craft structures in towns usually excluded women from weaving broadcloth.115 Lincoln’s fullers in 1297 were not to work with a woman unless it was his wife or handmaid when the cloth was placed over the bar (perch).116 However, shortage of labour after the Black Death saw an increase in women weaving. In 1395 one quarter of the cloths were presented to the alnager at York by women.117 Six female weavers were discovered in a 1399 inquisition into infringements of York Weavers’ charter, compared with only three male weavers.118 The 1381 poll tax returns reveal that there were plenty of women servants working for weavers and fullers at smaller towns such as Canterbury and Bath.119 Shrewsbury weavers were employing female servants, women were involved in fulling, and even one was illegally shearing cloth.120 In 1395–6 Emma Earle presented 48 cloths to the alnager at Wakefield, more than any man in the small town, seemingly both a weaver and a merchant.121 One Londoner, Isabelle Yerdele, trading in her own right in 1382, made and sold woollen cloth, and there was the occasional female apprentice weaver.122 London Weavers’ ordinances refer to brothers and sisters with equal rights and obligations, most of the sisters undoubtedly weavers’ wives.123 Chaucer’s wife of Bath was a clothmaker of some substance: Of cloth making sche hadde such an haunt, Sche passeth hem of Ypres and of Gaunt . . . Her headkerchiefs were of the finest weave, Ten pounds or more they weighed, I do believe, Those that she wore on Sundays on her head. Her stockings were of the finest red.124 As soon as the economy turned down in the early-fifteenth century, crafts turned against women.125 At York in 1400 women were only

Working Conditions in Towns 177 allowed into the Weavers’ craft if they were approved by craft officials because they were criticised for poor work.126 There was no mention of ‘sisters’ in the London Weavers’ 1407 ordinances, and no women listed as guild members in 1456.127 At Bristol in 1448 wives, daughters and maidens were no longer allowed to weave as they were taking work away from men.128 Hull women were prevented from weaving in 1490.129 At Norwich in 1512 worsted weavers agreed that no woman or maiden could weave stamins or says as they were not strong enough.130 In 1548 London clothworkers ‘agreed that whosoever from henceforth suffer either his wife or any of his maiden servants to work openly either in his shop or at his tenters, or else suffer any of them to carry other kersey or broad cloth through the streets, or shears to grinding, upon the pain of every time of offending 20d to be paid without any favour’.131 In many towns women had the right to continue their husband’s profession after his death.132 But even here steps were often taken to limit this right. Dyers’ widows at York could only manage the dyehouse for a year after which time she had either to pay an entrance fee, or pass the business on to the leading servant.133 Only one woman became free at York, Isabella Nonhouse, who was granted her freedom in 1441, two years after her husband’s death.134 At Shrewsbury in 1448 the widow could only carry on her husband’s weaving for three months after his passing.135

Strengths and Weaknesses of Urban Clothmaking Urban clothworkers lived in an increasingly structured environment from 1350 onwards. This led guilds to try and match the supply of workers to the demand for their services. This was difficult because there were wide demand fluctuations as exports levelled off in the 1370s and early in the fifteenth century, and then declined dramatically with the midcentury depression. And it was aggravated by fluctuations in seasonal work that created significant underemployment. It is probable that much of the increase in urban labour costs can be attributed to the low level of hours worked, and this required higher wages to sustain a living. Guild supervision of work contributed to consistent quality standards, but this was complicated by problems coordinating work among trades, and from purchasing unstandardised rural cloth. Limited capital invested in production made it difficult to achieve efficiencies that might come from inventorying wool, yarn or cloth. Weavers needed to sell their cloths immediately to make money and buy more wool and were therefore reluctant to produce cloth they had to store. The tightening labour market after 1350 had multiple effects. Labour became more expensive and for some processes more difficult to find skilled craftsmen as both men and women had improved occupational opportunities. The higher cost of labour was clearly a problem for weavers making cheaper cloths if comparable cloth could be purchased in the

178  Working Conditions in Towns countryside. The rising price of urban labour was undoubtedly matched in the later-fourteenth century by the higher level of skills and rising prices for cloth as towns focused on making better quality and improving their reputations. In the later-fourteenth century much urban cloth continued to be foot-fulled although grain mill conversions were slowly reducing the  percentage of cloth that was foot-fulled. Dyers and cloth finishers benefited from the increase in rural cloth coming to the city for finishing. After 1350 rural clothworkers were able to become more efficient as farmers and their wives intertwined agricultural and industrial employment, and their cost of living was undoubtedly lower. There are no direct cost comparisons between the cost of urban and rural cloth, so the differential in labour costs should not be over-emphasised. Apprenticeship kept costs down, journeymen could be hired on long-term contract, and some fullers chose to buy or lease converted grain mills to remain competitive. Not all urban clothmaking was less efficient. Colchester, Salisbury and Coventry were all able to successfully produce cloth that seems to have been of average price. Only in the sixteenth century were cloth towns forced to make high-quality cloth if they hoped to flourish. The guild organisation of urban clothmaking may well have been an advantage in the fourteenth century as many towns sought to produce better cloth, but could lead to inefficiencies in the later-fifteenth century when faced with intensified rural competition. In the thirteenth century urban clothiers had organised both production and the sale of cloth, as did dyers at Leicester and burellers in London and Winchester.136 The emergence of trade guilds in the fourteenth century had in most cases lowered dyers’ status as drapers; mercers and others had taken over the marketing of cloth and forced clothmaking artisans to sell their cloth to them. The merchant bought cloth, either off the loom or after it had been fulled, and then commissioned its finishing; and he bought either provincial or urban cloth, depending on his needs. Merchants’ capital was allocated to marketing the cloth and sometimes its finishing, leaving cloth artisans to finance their own production. The great achievement of late-fifteenth century clothiers was to re-combine management of both production and marketing.137 And in the sixteenth century many towns came full circle with urban clothiers once again managing the total production process. At Worcester in 1522 weavers, walkers (fullers) and clothiers became a single organisation.138 Weavers were the main losers, especially if they wove cheaper cloth. The move from serge to woollens with its simple tabby weave made weaving less important as shearing and piece-dyeing came to determine the cloth’s quality. Weavers and fullers felt the brunt of rural competition. Weavers concentrated on making cloth with higher thread counts that required them to organise preparation of better yarn, but it meant forgoing making coarse cloth that was usually a larger market. Fullers had greater flexibility. They could reduce costs by managing urban fulling

Working Conditions in Towns 179 mills and although they were fulling less urban cloth, they benefited from the finishing of rural cloth as they became responsible for checking its quality and participated in its finishing. The rapid decline of urban weaving, and slower downturn in the finishing trades as some cloth continued to be finished in towns, was also occurring in Flemish towns. At Bruges the number of woollen weavers steadily declined in the fifteenth century, while those fulling, dyeing and shearing cloth actually increased.139 The fifteenth century was a less hospitable business environment because exports grew only modestly in the 1430s and 1440s and did not regain these levels until the 1490s, and rural competition intensified. Provincial towns’ clothmaking suffered from the concentration of trade at London, and the subsequent decline of other ports except for Exeter and Chester.140 Much of the decline of clothmaking at Coventry and York was that it lost its export market while at the same time London’s drapers and others were finding northern markets for southern cloth that they were re-distributing across the country. As unfinished broadcloth came to dominate exports, urban dyeing and finishing became less valued. Given the rigid structure of guilds and oligarchic control it was difficult for towns to coordinate an effective response to rural clothmaking once clothiers had improved rural skills. Guilds often managed decline by placing restrictions on hiring apprentices and journeymen and on wage controls, rather than finding new ways to expand their market. The course of decline differed by town and by trade. Weavers were in trouble at London, Beverley and Lincoln by the end of the fourteenth century. Winchester’s textile industry had shrunk by perhaps a half from the 1390s to the 1470s.141 Fullers were having difficulty raising money to pay their £10 farm in the 1430s, and the industry had declined even further by the 1460s if the distribution of woad from Southampton to Winchester can be seen as a proxy of the industry’s health, and its fulling mills closed.142 Norwich wisely shifted production from broadcloth to worsteds in the fifteenth century. York and Bristol found it difficult to rebound from the fifteenth-century depression, and Coventry was in difficulty by the 1520s. Colchester managed to survive by turning to higherquality cloth in the fifteenth century. Salisbury tied its fortune to rays, but they were in decline at the end of the fifteenth century, although it continued to produce some broadcloth throughout the sixteenth century. Of the major fourteenth-century cloth towns only Exeter and London might be said to have had a larger sixteenth-century industry than it had in the fourteenth, and this was a function of finishing cloth woven elsewhere. Merchants in large provincial towns were always the centre of a distribution network that attracted cloth from elsewhere and then r­ e-distributed it. As a result they were increasingly finishing rural cloth which to some extent sustained their woollen industries: they lost their weavers but their fullers, shearmen and dyers continued to finish cloth. Dyers even became mayors of York, Coventry and Norwich in the fifteenth century. At

180  Working Conditions in Towns Northampton in 1524 there were ten dyers, seven shearmen and thirteen fullers, and only twenty-one weavers.143 Bristol enrolled 134 shearmen, 134 fullers and sixty-two dyers as apprentices between 1532 and 1552, while only 122 weavers.144 A few cloth finishers might even leverage their skills to become merchants. Two London shearmen, William Heriot and William Bayley, became successful merchants, were elected to the court of aldermen in the late-fifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries as drapers, and both became mayors.145 Many London clothworkers elected to the livery were merchants by the mid-sixteenth century. The most successful provincial clothmaking towns were those that maintained an integrated industry making specialised cloth: Norwich, Salisbury and Colchester in the fifteenth century; Reading and Worcester in the sixteenth. Guilds might to some extent offset low wages by controlling membership, the numbers of masters, journeymen and apprentices; but ultimately rules were set by the merchant oligarchy that controlled artisan crafts. Long-distance trade was unregulated. Overseas buyers were to some extent dependant on a cloth merchant’s or town’s reputation, and they were often prepared to pay a premium for consistent cloth quality and a trustworthy relationship. The long-distance merchant needed considerable capital to prosper and had to accept the considerable risks associated with international trade, and this limited the number of competitors, and favoured leading merchants who could survive downturns and develop a reputation. The result was that, for the successful, long-distance trade could be very profitable while it was very difficult for clothmakers to build up capital as they sold their labour cloth by cloth. Their entrepreneurial opportunities were limited. Weavers might gain some advantage and wealth through buying wool judiciously, organising spinners and selling yarn; fullers by managing a mill or tenter yards, and fullers and shearmen from buying rural cloth efficiently and then finishing it. Dyers were half merchant, half artisan because they traded dyes, and needed substantial capital to finance dyehouses: and merchants were prepared to pay more for the high skills required to consistently produce colour to order. Poor dyers were often just woad dyers; wealthier dyers were mordant dyers. A few merchants and artisans were able to act like clothiers as they organised production. The Colchester weaver William Okle made cloth for Matilda Westoneys in 1388. He had the wool spun and dyed, bought the list that was attached to the sides of the cloth and, once he had woven the cloth, had taken it to the fuller.146 In 1466 the York dyer William Crosseby remembered the carders and spinsters who worked for him, indicating that he was organising yarn preparation, as well as dyeing wool, yarn and cloth.147 The Winchester vintner Mark le Feyre had a variety of interests: he had investments in a tavern and inn, and was lessor of a dyehouse, while also organising weaving cloth, and its export.148 The success of the sixteenth-century cloth towns Reading and Worcester

Working Conditions in Towns 181 in part lay in their occupational structure and this was because as many as 40 per cent of households were involved in clothmaking. At Reading, clothiers, dyers, weavers and shearmen were one of five occupational groupings that belonged to the merchant guild.149

Lessons from Coventry and York The two northern cloth towns, Coventry and York, are worth examining for their differences and similarities. Both flourished with the growth of exports in the late-fourteenth century. While both industries had problems by the late-fifteenth century, Coventry’s decline was slower, and this was offset to some extent by a developing capping industry. In the early 1520s there were eighty-four cappers compared with forty-five weavers, forty-eight shearmen and thirty-three dyers.150 Coventry’s woollens industry is intriguing because it seemed to have come out of nowhere, with little activity in the 1350s, and yet by the 1390s, production was as great as York and only exceeded by Salisbury and Bristol: it remained healthy through the 1440s, and declined at a slower rate than York after the mid-fifteenth century depression.151 In the mid-sixteenth century it still retained a reputation for its finest cloths, mentioned in the same clauses as Worcester in the 1552 cloth act.152 Unfortunately, late-fourteenth century records for Coventry are limited, and while its historians have charted the town’s fortunes, they have not fully explained the reasons either for its great initial success, or for its long-term resilience. Its entrepreneurial merchants, mostly drapers and dyers, traded at Chester and Bristol to reach Ireland, at Southampton to tap into the Italian trade, at London to reach the Low Countries, and at Boston for the Baltic, and even sent cloth to Iceland from several ports.153 This gave them access to imported dyes and mordants that was the basis for their extremely successful dyeing industry. They imported Irish wool and encouraged Irish immigrants to develop a frieze business.154 The extent of the trade from distant ports is well documented, but we are not told why Coventry cloth was so competitive. What follows is a possible explanation based on fifteenth- and sixteenth-century sources. The town had access to fine Lincolnshire wools and at least one fulling mill, and as the largest town in the West Midlands it supplied the local region with cloth.155 Markets were developed for three quality broadcloths as well as for frieze and Welsh cloth.156 The lowest priced of these broadcloths would have been dozens, which in the mid-fifteenth century had to weigh at least 30lb.157 In 1437, dozens 12 yards fulled could be stretched on the tenter to 15  yards.158 Most clothmakers made dozens while a few organised production of heavier, full broadcloth which was made in both standard and fine qualities, standard cloth using between 88–96lb of wool in the early-sixteenth century.159 The number and wealth of dyers suggests that almost all cloth was dyed in-the-wool with woad,

182  Working Conditions in Towns and then some of it was re-dyed in-the-piece. The town’s reputation was based on its blues, and this was probably a direct reflection of merchants’ diverse trading strategy. Specialisation on woad would have brought efficiencies, and a wide range of blues for the market; but most importantly it could be sold everywhere as it was a base for many colours, whereas it was difficult to predict demand for final colours in faraway ports. There was almost no rural cloth industry in the Midlands, so Coventry’s merchants were forced to develop and look after its own clothmakers. Cloth and clothing came to dominate the town, accounting for more than a third of occupations from 1360 to 1460 and as much as 45 per cent in the later-fifteenth century.160 Of the 603 providing armour in 1449–50, 40 per cent were from the cloth and clothing trades: fifty-nine were drapers, fifty-seven weavers, sixty-four tailors and shearmen, thirtyseven dyers and twenty-seven fullers.161 Twelve drapers and five dyers were mayor between 1481 and 1530, and clothworkers still accounted for 37 per cent of occupations in 1522.162 The town seems to have struck a balance between setting high standards and encouraging good production practices, while allowing unfettered competition and organisational flexibility. The centrality of clothmaking to the Coventry economy can only have led civic authority to encourage the development of the capping industry in the earlysixteenth century as woollens production declined. The cappers only registered as a guild in 1496, the year a capper became mayor, and yet by 1522 there were far more cappers than weavers.163 Records show that Coventry set standards and prices to a greater degree than any other fifteenth-century town. Sale of cloth was centralised at the drapery. All Irish, Devon and Cornish cloth had to be sold there in 1355, and all foreign cloth there from 1425, if not before.164 In 1495 it was again regulated that all foreign cloth be sold at the drapery.165 Draper clothiers were organised as a confraternity in 1468 and by the early-sixteenth century were clearly controlling the industry, supervising searchers of weavers’ and fullers’ cloth.166 The early-sixteenth century ordinances are unlike those recorded in any other town. They cover all clothmaking processes, enumerating many of the possible faults that needed to be examined, setting prices for spinning, weaving and fulling, and detailing practices for searching and sealing cloths. A house was to be provided for the searchers where the cloth was placed over the perch, measured, weighed, checked and then sealed. From the mid-fifteenth century fullers had to mark their cloths.167 There was regulation for woad production as early as 1415. The dyers had summarily raised prices for dyeing wool, thread and cloth that resulted in two drapers, a woader and a dyer appointed to supervise the trade.168 The weight of wool given to spinsters was set on a number of occasions.169 Spinsters were to be paid with ‘ready’ money.170 Weaving journeymen were to receive a third of the weaving price in 1424.171

Working Conditions in Towns 183 While there was regulation of both quality and wages, artisans had considerable independence, and it appears to have been possible for artisans to become merchants. There was no limit to the number of looms or apprentices which allowed master weavers to build up a considerable business.172 Weavers remained reasonably prosperous in the fifteenth century as they were ranked tenth out of twenty crafts contributing to the 1445 pageant.173 The mayor in 1526, Henry Wall, was a weaver who had presumably become a clothier; he employed seven servants and was worth £100 in 1522.174 Dyers felt strong enough to challenge the authorities. Their wealth and large numbers—one of them becoming mayor and two becoming bailiffs in the fifteenth century—suggested that they had considerable influence. Unlike in other towns, dyers continued to be merchants and could rise to the highest office in the town. In addition to dyeing they were merchants trading cloth for dyes in distant markets, and they may have been involved in yarn preparation and selling blue yarn to other markets.175 The town had to cancel Dyers’ ordinances in 1475 because they had not received civic approval and had been enforced by oath; and this was probably because they intended to limit journeymen preparing the woad, as this was to become a cause for friction in 1529.176 There seems to have been no restriction to drapers becoming clothiers, and by the early-sixteenth century this seems to have become general practice. The 1397–8 alnage shows four clothmakers taking more than 80 cloths to the alnager, including Alice Lodyngton; and Robert Kotener alnaged 182 cloths in 1405–6, indicating that a few were either assembling or organising production of large quantities.177 In summary, the importance of clothmaking to the Coventry economy forced civic leaders to set high standards but at the same time allow considerable freedoms to operate and for enterprising artisans to improve their status. The rise and decline at York and its cloth industry has been well documented.178 The York industry flourished, while Lincoln and Beverley declined, because its merchants controlled the export trade through Hull, and it became the centre of commerce in the north.179 However, cloth was secondary to wool, and it was the decline in the wool trade that reduced merchants’ credit in the fifteenth century.180 York tradesmen had to shoulder civic and guild costs that included the Corpus Christi pageants, quarterage, and in the case of the Weavers, their annual £10 farm. In times of industry recession, weavers could not meet these payments, and many left the city to avoid this financial burden. In 1399 York weavers complained that they were unable to pay the farm because there were at least 200 weavers in the surrounding countryside making dyed and rayed cloth.181 The following year York weavers forced those living outside the authority of the city to pay 12d in place of guild membership, and charged weavers adding a loom fee of 20s, more than the usual cost of the loom. They attempted to control journeymen wages which may have forced some out of the city.182 Yet 111 broadlooms were still owned by

184  Working Conditions in Towns guild members in the 1450s, reflecting a still buoyant industry.183 There is no surviving record of any fulling mill at York, and nothing in the fourteenth-century fulling ordinances that would suggest that merchants or fullers (or walkers as they were called in York), were taking cloths to the mills. A late-fourteenth century ordinance specified that a fuller be paid a penny an ell, and 2d an ell for fulling and burling which suggests that cloth was fulled by foot.184 In 1460 the fullers complained that little cloth from outside the city now came to be fulled in the city, presumably because it was taken to mills elsewhere.185 We cannot be sure that all the cloth of York was fulled by foot, but it is unlikely that York fullers had easy access to fulling mills. The agrarian crisis of the late 1440s in the north was a blow to York’s economy.186 Hull’s declining cloth exports and growing competitiveness of the West Riding industry prevented any revival after the mid-fifteenth century depression. The decline in the quality of northern wools forced clothmakers to look to Lincolnshire for quality wools.187 When York made some effort to revive its industry in the late-fifteenth century, it was too little, too late. It seems that by 1484 York was restricting itself to weaving two cloths: high-quality broadcloths using 72lb of Cotswolds or Lincolnshire wool which was given a civic seal, and coarse cloth called packware.188 In 1478 northern cloth was clearly uncompetitive at Antwerp, as it was displayed in secondary locations and sold poorly, causing northern merchants to complain that they faced discrimination.189 In 1481 the York council restricted London merchants to selling their cloth only to wholesale merchants in an attempt to manage the tide of southern cloth entering the city.190 From 1500 onwards there were more tapiters enrolled as freemen than woollen weavers, and they were richer than woollen craftsmen by 1524.191 York’s industry never revived after the mid-century depression. Its poorly capitalised merchants lost market position to merchants from Hull and Newcastle, even as Hull’s woollen trade declined. York’s merchants never developed strong relationships with West Riding clothiers to sell unfinished broadcloth at Antwerp, and their quality cloth was probably uncompetitive with coloured Suffolk cloth, or rural cloth finished in London. The York industry was less important to its economy than at Coventry, it organised its industry less effectively, was dependant on a single port, Hull, and faced competition from both the West and East Riding clothmakers, and even from Hull in the late-fifteenth century.192

Notes 1. J.R. Oldland, ‘London clothmaking, c.1270–c.1550’ (Unpub. Ph.D. Thesis, University of London, 2003), 131. 2. M. Pajic, ‘The migration of Flemish weavers to England in the fourteenth century: The economic influence and the transfer of skills 1331–1381’ (Unpub. Ph.D. thesis, Universities of Strasbourg and Ghent, 2016), 147–76.

Working Conditions in Towns 185 3. TNA, PCC 11/12/f. 24v. 4. K.J. Allison, ‘The wool supply and the worsted cloth industry in Norfolk in the sixteenth and seventeenth century’ (Unpub. Ph.D. thesis, University of Leeds, 1955), 419. 5. H. Heaton, The Yorkshire woollen and worsted industries (Oxford, 2nd ed., 1965), 51. 6. R.S. Gottfried, Bury St. Edmunds and the urban crisis: 1290–1539 (Princeton, 1982), 104. 7. F.B. Bickley, The little red book of Bristol, vol. 2 (London, 1900), 10–14. 8. Oldland, ‘Clothmaking’, 124–6. 9. For an introduction to late-medieval textile and clothing guilds, see J. Oldland, ‘Guilds: London’ and ‘Guilds: Provincial towns’, in G.R. OwenCrocker, E. Coatsworth and M. Hayward, eds., Encyclopedia of dress and textiles in the British Isles c.450–1450 (Leiden, 2012), 248–55. 10. R.E. Horrox, ‘Medieval Beverley’, in K.J. Allison, ed., VCH Yorkshire East Riding, vol. 6 (Oxford, 1989), 4. 11. Oldland, ‘Clothmaking’, 177–8. 12. A.R. Myers, ed., English historical documents 1327–1485 (London, 1969), 1094. 13. Norfolk Record Office, Second book of worsted weavers, NCR, MF/RO, 29/3. 14. York Memorandum Book, vols. 1, 120 (Surtees Society, 1911), 106–8; M. Sellars, ed., York memorandum book, vols. 2, 125 (Surtees Society, 1915), 159–60. 15. R.H. Britnell, Growth and decline in Colchester 1200–1525 (Cambridge, 1986), 186. 16. C. Phythian-Adams, Desolation of a city: Coventry and the urban crisis of the late Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1979), 109. 17. M. Dormer Harris, ed., Coventry leet book (Oxford, 1909), 639. 18. J.C. Coote, ‘The ordinances of some secular guilds of London 1354–1496’, Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, 4 (1871), 43; Cal. LBL, 205. 19. Cal. LBL, 242, 261. 20. The Ordinances of the Clothworkers’ Company together with those of the ancient guilds or fraternities of the Fullers and Shearmen of the City of London (London, 1881), 27; Cl. Courts, f.242v. 21. A.H. Thomas, ed., Calendar of early Mayors’ rolls, 1298–1307 (Cambridge, 1924), 73; Riley’s, Memorials of London and London life in the XIIIth, XIVth, and XVth centuries (London, 1868), 247. 22. Heaton, Yorkshire, 34. 23. Cal. LBL, 210. 24. Cal. LBL, 261. 25. Britnell, Colchester, 184–5. 26. D.M. Palliser, Tudor York (Oxford, 1979), 149; H. Swanson, Medieval Artisans (Oxford, 1989), 31. 27. E. Carus-Wilson, ‘Woollen industry before 1550’, in E. Crittall and R.D. Pugh, eds., VCH, Wiltshire, vol. 4 (London, 1959), 127–8. 28. TNA, PCC, Prob. 2/174. 29. J. Oldland, ‘London’s trade in the time of Richard III’, The Ricardian, 23 (2014), 5–8. 30. A.F. Sutton, The Mercery of London: Trade, goods and people, 1130–1578 (Aldershot, 2005), 335–40; Oldland, ‘Clothmaking’, 193–200. 31. J. Oldland, ‘The London fullers and shearmen, and their merger to become the Clothworkers’ Company’, TH, 39 (2008), 172–92.

186  Working Conditions in Towns 32. G.D. Ramsay, ‘Industrial discontent in early Elizabethan London: Clothworkers and merchants in conflict’, London Journal, 1 (1975), 227–39. 33. C. Barron, London in the later Middle Ages: Government and people 1200– 1500 (Oxford, 2004), 206–34. Unfortunately, we do not have exact dates for the earliest halls. The first dyers’ hall was in existence around 1475. There were two fullers’ halls in the fifteenth century, but we cannot date their acquisition. Shearmen bought land from fullers for a hall, and one was in existence around 1475. The weavers acquired two tenements for a hall in 1498. The clothworkers used the shearmen’s hall. 34. TNA, PCC, 11/32/f. 147; GL, CC, Reg. 11, f.197v. 35. TNA, PCC 11/10/f. 47v, 11/11/f. 69v. 36. Statutes, 5&6 Edward VI, c. 3. 37. TNA, E 101/340/22, 339/11; J. Lister, ed., The early Yorkshire woollen trade, vol.  44 (Yorkshire Archaeological Society, 1925), 47–95; Oldland, ‘Economic impact of clothmaking on rural society, 1300–1550’, in M. Allen and M. Davies, eds., Medieval merchants and money: Essays in honour of James L. Bolton (London, 2016), 237–8. 38. W. Endrei, ‘The productivity of weaving in late medieval Flanders’, in N.B. Harte and K.G. Ponting, eds., Cloth and clothing in medieval Europe (London, 1983), 108–19, W. Endrei, ‘Manufacturing a piece of woollen cloth in medieval Flanders: How many work hours?’ in E. Aerts and J. Munro, eds., Textiles of the Low Countries in European economic history (Leuven, 1990), 17–18. 39. Endrei, ‘Productivity’, 118. 40. J. De la Mann, The cloth industry in the west of England from 1640–1880 (Oxford, 1971), 323. 41. TNA, E101/339/12. 42. Statutes, 5 Eliz. c.4; D. Knoop and G.P. Jones, ‘Overtime in the age of Henry VIII’, Economic History, 4 (1938–40), 13. 43. Endrei assumed a ten- to twelve-hour day in the late-sixteenth century Armentières cloth industry; see Endrei, ‘Manufacturing’, 20; and Endrei, ‘Productivity’, 113. 44. Phythian-Adams, Desolation, 78. 45. F. Consitt, The London Weavers’ Company (London, 1933), 79. 46. Ordinances of the Clothworkers, 29. 47. Cal. LBL, 262; LMA, Journal, 9, f.179; Cl. Courts, f. 149v. 48. Cl. Courts, 155v. 49. H.T. Riley, ed. and trans., Munimenta gildehalle londoniensis: Liber custumarum, 2 vols. (London, 1860), 549; Consitt, Weavers, 183. 50. A. Woodger, ‘The eclipse of the burel weaver: Some technological developments in the thirteenth Century’, TH, 12 (1981), 74. 51. Bickley, Bristol, 2, 1–6; Heaton, Yorkshire, 39. 52. Statutes, 4 Eliz. c. 4. 53. W. Hudson and C.J. Tingay, eds., The records of the city of Norwich, vol. 2 (Norwich, 1906–10), 377. 54. C. Jackson, ed., Newbury Kendrick workhouse records 1627–1641, vol. 8 (Berkshire Record Society, 2004), xxix. 55. Cal. P&M, 1437–57, 65. 56. LMA, Journal, 9, f.179; Cal. LBL, 262. 57. Cl. Courts, f.210. 58. Ordinances of the Clothworkers, 27. 59. Cl. Courts, f. 160. 60. Bickley, Bristol, 16–22. 61. Parl. Rolls, vol. 13, 104; Statutes, 4 Edward IV, c.1.

Working Conditions in Towns 187 62. M. Dormer-Harris, Coventry leet book, Early English Text Society (1907– 1913), 658. 63. Statutes, 2&3 Ph. & Mary, c.11; 4&5 Ph. & Mary, c. 5. 64. Statutes, 5 Eliz. c. 4. 65. S.R. Hovland, ‘Apprenticeship in later medieval London, c.1300–c.1530’ (Unpub. PhD. Thesis, University of London, 2006), 53–4. 66. Cl. Courts, f. 242v. 67. Liber Custumarum, 548; Riley’s Memorials, 247; W. Hudson and C.J. Tingay, The records of the city of Norwich, vol. 2 (Norwich, 1906–10), 376; Bickley, Bristol, 141–43; Consitt, Weavers, 74. In Colchester a minimum of five years was set for fullers and weavers in 1418; see Britnell, Colchester, 186. 68. S. Rappaport, Worlds within worlds: Structure of life in sixteenth-century London (Cambridge, 1989), 316–20. 69. Rappaport, Worlds, 311–12; Cal. LBL, 242. John Hatcher suggests that less than half of the pewterers successfully completed their term; see J. Hatcher and T.C. Barker, A history of British pewter (London, 1974), 273. 70. LMA, Letter Book N, f. 156; Ordinances of the Clothworkers, 26. 71. Phythian-Adams, Desolation, 104. 72. P.L. Hughes and J.F. Larkin, eds., Tudor royal proclamations, vol. 2 (London, 1964), 256. 73. Ibid, 217. 74. Swanson, Artisans (Oxford, 1989), 34; Dormer Harris, Coventry, 94. 75. Cal. LBK, 173; Statutes, 23 Henry VI, c. 13. 76. Consitt, Weavers, 77. 77. Bickley, Bristol, 15–16. 78. Riley’s Memorials, 346. 79. Consitt, Weavers, 216. 80. Britnell, Colchester, 186. 81. Gottfried, Bury St. Edmunds, 104. 82. Bickley, Bristol, 59–61, 141–3. 83. M.V. Taylor, ‘Cloth’, in W. Willis-Bund, ed., VCH, Worcester, vol. 2 (London, 1906), 284. 84. Swanson, Artisans, 114–15. 85. Consitt, Weavers, 79–80. 86. LMA, Reps, 1, f.136; Reps, 8, f.234. 87. Ordinances of the Clothworkers, 12. For criticism of unruly journeymen and apprentices, and the punishments they should receive, see Cl. Courts, f.71. 88. LMA, Reps, 1, ff. 135v-136; Oldland, ‘Clothmaking’, 205–10; Barron, London, 211–4. 89. LMA, Letter Book N, f. 156. 90. The clothworker, John Draper, accused the court of assistants in 1538 of failure to press for the execution of the act that required cloths of a certain value to be finished; see Cl. Courts, f. 132. 91. Oldland, ‘Clothmaking’, 175–9. 92. Cl. Courts, ff. 241, 242v. 93. Bickley, Bristol, 75–80; Cal. LBL, 290. 94. Swanson, Artisans, 116. 95. Ibid, 117; Taylor, ‘Cloth’, 285. 96. Heaton, Yorkshire, 42. 97. Statutes, 4&5 Edward VI, c. 6. 98. L. Attreed, ed., York house books, vol.  1, 1461–1490 (Stroud, 1991), 313–14; Dormer Harris, Coventry, 656; Taylor, ‘Cloth’, 285; Bickley, Bristol, 8–9. 99. Statutes, 20 Henry VI c.10; 7 Edward IV, c.1; 14&15 Henry VIII c. 3.

188  Working Conditions in Towns 100. Norfolk Record Office (NRO), Second Book of Worsted Weavers, NCR, MF/RO, 28/3. 101. Consitt, Weavers, 105. 102. The dyers were rarely successful in exerting any control over Southwark dyers who they continually blamed for deceitful practices. The costs associated with clothworkers searching Southwark tenters in 1540–1 are recorded in, Cl. Accounts, Reg. 29. 103. LMA, Letter Book M, ff. 25v-26, 71–2; Journal 10, ff. 274, 277–9; Reps, 1, f.99v. 104. NRO, Worsted Weavers Books. NCR, Case 17d, MF/RO, f.90v. 105. If the cloth was foot-fulled, burling was carried out after the cloth had been cleansed but before it was fulled. Mechanical fulling both cleansed and compressed the cloth, but it was burled after fulling. 106. The perch was a wooden bar, or frame of two parallel bars. If there was any unevenness in the fulling, then the cloth was probably beaten while on the perch. Wet shearing with teasels could probably be done either over the perch or when the cloth was on the tenter. 107. M. Kowaleski, ‘Women’s work in a market town: Exeter in the late fourteenth century’, in B.A. Hanawalt, ed., Women and work in pre-industrial Europe (Bloomington, 1986), 152. 108. GL, CC, Reg. 3, f. 234. 109. GL, CC, Reg. 3, f. 517v. 110. D. Hutton, ‘Women in fourteenth century Shrewsbury’, in L. Charles and L. Duffy, eds., Women and work in pre-industrial England (London, 1985), 90. 111. Bickley, Bristol, 10–14. 112. P.J. Goldberg, ‘Female labour, service and marriage in the late medieval urban north’, Northern History, 22 (1986), 25. 113. Kowaleski, ‘Women’s work’, 157. 114. Hutton, ‘Women’, 91. 115. J. Munro, ‘Medieval woollens: Textiles, textile technology and industrial organisation, c.800–1500’, in D. Jenkins, ed., The Cambridge history of western textiles (Cambridge, 2003), 127–8. 116. J.T. Toulmin Smith, ed., English gilds, vol. 40 (Oxford: Early English Text Society, 1870), 180. 117. Heaton, Yorkshire, 38. 118. Goldberg, ‘Female labour’, 30. 119. In 1381 at Canterbury, of the twenty-nine weavers’ apprentices and servants, six were women, and among the twenty-four fullers’ servants and apprentices, nine were women. At Bath there were four female servants and only three male weavers’ servants, and a fuller’s maidservant. 120. Hutton, ‘Women’, 91–2. 121. J. Lister, ed., The early Yorkshire woollen trade, vol. 44 (Yorkshire Archaeological Society, 1923), 96. 122. C. Barron, ‘The “golden age” of women in medieval London’, Reading Medieval Studies, 15 (1989), 40, 53; Consitt, Weavers, 90. 123. Consitt, Weavers, 191–5; M.A. Kowaleski and J.M. Bennett, ‘Crafts, gilds and women in the Middle Ages’, in J.M. Bennett et al., Sisters and workers in the Middle Ages (Chicago, 1989), 14–15. 124. G. Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, trans. and ed. D. Wright (Oxford, 1985), 12. 125. Ibid, 35. 126. Heaton, Yorkshire, 38. 127. Consitt, Weavers, 90, 196–8.

Working Conditions in Towns 189 128. Bickley, Bristol, 127–9. 129. Goldberg, ‘Female labour’, 36. 130. Norfolk Record Office (NRO), NCR, MF/RO 29/3, f. 94–7. 131. Cl. Courts, f. 204. 132. C. Barron, ‘The “golden age” of women in medieval London’, Reading Medieval Studies, 15 (1989), 45–6. 133. Heaton, Yorkshire, 38. 134. Swanson, Artisans, 35. 135. P.J.P. Goldberg, ed., Women in England c.1275–1525 (Manchester, 1995), 204. 136. E.M. Carus-Wilson, ‘The English cloth industry in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries’, in Venturers, 232–5. 137. J. Oldland, ‘Making and marketing woollen cloth in late-medieval London’, London Journal, 36 (2011), 89–108. 138. Taylor, ‘Cloth’, 284. 139. A. Brown and J. Dumolyn, Medieval Bruges, c.850–1550 (Cambridge, 2018), 250–3. 140. E.M. Carus-Wilson, The expansion of Exeter at the close of the Middle Ages (Exeter, 1963); J. Kermode, ‘The trade of medieval Chester, 1500–1550’, in R. Britnell and J. Hatcher, eds., Progress and problems in medieval England (Cambridge, 1996), 286–307; J. Oldland, ‘ “Fyne worsted which is almost like silke”: Norwich’s double worsted’, TH, 42 (2011), 181–99. 141. D. Keene, Survey of medieval Winchester (Oxford, 1985), part 1, 316–8. 142. Ibid, 307–8, 316–8. 143. A. Dyer, ‘Northampton in 1524’, Northamptonshire Past and Present, 6 (1979), 73–80. 144. H. Hollis, ed., Calendar of the Bristol apprentice book, Part 1 1532–1542, vol.  14 (Bristol Record Society (BRS), 1948); E. Ralph and N.M. Hardwick, eds., Calendar of the Bristol apprentice book, Part 2, 1542–1552, vol. 33 (Bristol Record Society (BRS), 1980). 145. Oldland, ‘Clothmaking’, 217–20. 146. Britnell, Colchester, 60. 147. P.J.P. Goldberg, Women, work, and the life-cycle in a medieval economy: Women and work in Yorkshire c. 1300–1500 (Oxford, 1992), 119. 148. D. Keene, ‘Textile terms and occupations in medieval Winchester’, Ler Historia, 30 (1996), 144. 149. C. Gross, The gild merchant, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1890), 208–9. 150. M.H.M. Hulton, Coventry and its people in the 1520s, vol. 38 (Dugdale Society Occasional Papers, 199), 30–2. 151. R.A. Pelham, ‘The cloth markets of Warwickshire during the later Middle Ages’, Birmingham Archaeological Society, 66 (1950), 32–40; D. Leech, ‘Stability and change at the end of the Middle Ages: Coventry, 1450–1525’, Midland History, 34 (2009), 17; M. Hulton, ‘Company and fellowship’: The medieval weavers of Coventry (Dugdale Society Occasional Papers, 1987), 4. 152. Statutes, 5&6 Edward VI, c. 6. 153. E.M. Carus-Wilson, ‘The oversea trade of late medieval Coventry’, in Economies et sociétés au Moyen Age (Paris, 1973), 371–81. 154. Ibid, 373–4. 155. Dormer Harris, Coventry, 12; C. Dyer, ‘The hidden trade of the Middle Ages: Evidence from the West Midlands of England’, Journal of Historical Geography, 18 (1992), 141–57. 156. Pelham, ‘Cloth markets’, 137. 157. Dormer Harris, Coventry, 262. 158. Dormer Harris, Coventry, 187.

190  Working Conditions in Towns 159. Dormer Harris, Coventry, 660; Hulton, Weavers, 11. In the early-sixteenth century there were three wage prices set for weavers based on the number of warp threads per yard, 800–900, 900–1,000 and 1,000–1,100, suggesting that there were three levels of quality, and that none of them were coarse cloths. 160. R. Goddard, Commercial contraction and urban decline in fifteenthcentury Coventry, vol. 46 (Dugdale Society Publications, 2006), 11–16. 161. Dormer Harris, Coventry, 244–52. 162. Phythian Adams, Desolation, 116, Table 38. 163. Leech, ‘Stability’, 19; Phythian-Adams, Desolation, Table 38. 164. Pelham, ‘Cloth markets’, 134; Dormer, Coventry, 100. 165. Dormer Harris, Coventry, 565. 166. Phythian-Adams, Desolation, 118; Dormer Harris, Coventry, 639–40, 656–8. 167. Ibid, 338. 168. Rot. Parl. vol.  4, 75; L.F. Salzman, English trade in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1931), 145–6. 169. Dormer Harris, Coventry, 243, 255, 271, 707. 170. Ibid, 658. 171. Ibid, 91–6. 172. Ibid. 173. Hulton, Weavers, 6. For Weavers’ property holdings, see Hulton, Weavers, 13–14. 174. Ibid, 7. 175. E. Kerridge, Textile manufactures in early modern England (Manchester, 1985), 164. 176. Ibid, 418, 697. 177. Pelham, ‘Cloth markets’, 135–7, 140. 178. E. Miller, ‘Medieval York’, in P.M. Tillott, ed., VCH City of York (Oxford, 1961), 25–113, 114–6; J.N. Bartlett, ‘The expansion and decline of York in the later Middle Ages’, EcHR, 2nd series, 12 ((1959), 17–33; P. Nightingale, ‘The rise and decline of medieval York: A reassessment’, P&P, 206 (2010), 3–42; A. Sutton, ‘The Merchant Adventurers of England: The place of the Adventurers of York and the north in the late Middle Ages’, Northern History, 46 (2009), 219–29. 179. J. Kermode, ‘Merchants, overseas trade, and urban decline: York, Beverley, and Hull c.1380–1500’, Northern History, 23 (1987), 51–73. 180. J. Kermode, ‘Money and credit in the fifteenth century: Some lessons from Yorkshire’, Business History Review 65 (1989), 475–501; J. Kermode, ‘Medieval indebtedness: The regions versus London’, in T. Rogers, ed., England in the fifteenth century (Stamford, 1994), 72–88. 181. Miller, ‘Medieval York’, 88; CPR, 1396–9, 509; M. Sellars, ed., York memorandum book (YMB), part I, vol. 120 (Surtees Society, 1912), 241–2. 182. Sellars, YMB, 243–4. 183. Swanson, Artisans, 29, 33–4. 184. YMB, 70–2. 185. YMB, 207. 186. A.J. Pollard, ‘The north-eastern economy and the agrarian crisis of 1438– 40’, Northern History, 25 (1989), 88–105. 187. J. Munro, ‘Wool-price schedules and the decline of Yorkshire wool values’, TH, 10 (1979), 211–19. 188. A. Raine, ed., York civic records, part 1, vol. 98 (York Archaeological Series Records, 1939), 94–7, 165–6; M. Sellars, ed., The York merchant and Nerchant Adventurers (YMMA), vol. 129 (Surtees Society, 1918), 65.

Working Conditions in Towns 191 189. Sellars, YMMA, 75–80. 190. Miller, ‘Medieval York’, 105. 191. Swanson, Artisans, 153. 192. K.J. Allison, ‘Medieval Hull’, in K.J. Allison, ed., VCH, East riding, county of York, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1969), 55–6.

9 The Turbulent Fifteenth Century

In the 1390s nobody could have faulted clothmakers for feeling optimistic. The price of their primary raw material, wool, was falling, exports were expanding as alien merchants were acquiring more English cloth and native merchants were selling cloth to new markets in the Baltic and the Low Countries, the domestic market for commercially made cloth was probably growing as household income rose, and peasants were buying more commercially made coarse cloth rather than homespun. But that optimism was premature. Exports plateaued with a contraction in the money supply and credit that impeded trade early in the century, and after a revival of exports in the 1440s, both domestic and export sales collapsed in the face of a generation-long, mid-century depression. In fact, it was only at the end of the century that exports started to dramatically rise as more markets opened up to English cloth and Antwerp had become the primary distribution point in northern Europe for Tudor broadcloth. It all came together in the first half of the sixteenth century as England produced a wide range of woollens that were superior in value, exports exploded, and there was undoubtedly an increase in the size of the domestic market. Early in the century denizen exporters fared far worse than alien merchants: their cloth exports fell 30 per cent in the first decade of the fifteenth century, and 43 per cent in the second decade compared with the 1390s. In contrast, alien cloth exports were off only 2 per cent in the first twenty years of the fifteenth century.1 Provincial ports fared worse than London. Foreign merchants were far better capitalised, as were London than provincial merchants. The credit crisis concentrated capital in the hands of fewer, richer merchants, taking the less financially secure merchants out of international trade.2 The industry had regained its upward trajectory from the 1420s through the 1440s only to meet a far deeper and longer setback at mid-century. After 1420, taxation rates on cloth came down for denizens and Hanse merchants as they were able to negotiate exemption from poundage.3 The mid-century depression seems to have been caused by a slump in the European money supply in the 1430s that led the Low Countries into recession, lowering demand for English

The Turbulent Fifteenth Century 193 wool, and the ensuing shortage of credit among Italians reduced demand for both wool and cloth.4 The European slump led England into recession in the late 1440s. English mints produced almost no silver coins in the 1440s, reducing credit at the same time as agricultural prices collapsed, creating a deflationary spiral, impoverishing almost everyone.5 Lower incomes and wages meant that few benefited from low prices and low rents. Credit revived in the 1550s as the mint produced some coin, and there was some recovery.6 Once again, depression served to concentrate capital disproportionately in the hands of a few London merchants at the expense of lesser merchants, both in the capital and provincial towns.7 For many historians fifteenth-century turbulence is about the struggle between Lancastrians and Yorkists and the depressing closing period of the Hundred Years’ War: but for economic historians it is about bullion wars, credit crises, depressions, disruptions in international trade, peasant migration, decline in serfdom and the transition from demesne to tenant farming. Amidst all this turmoil the fifteenth-century cloth industry showed continuous progress in terms of organisation, product innovation, process improvement and distribution efficiencies; evolving to make English woollens unassailable as they rose in quality and fell in cost. Increased competitiveness was therefore disguised for much of the century as political events and economic recessions impeded growth. The two following chapters on clothiers and London merchants who sold the cloth overseas tell much of the story, but this chapter seeks to provide some background. It compares the English and continental industries, and the trading problems that impeded export growth. It discusses the importance of changes in the wool market, growth of London and its Merchant Adventurers, and the rise of a national cloth market. All this happened in the context of a vital reorientation of the agricultural economy as demesne farming gave way to tenant farming, and arable to pasture. Finally it reviews Norwich’s surprising success with worsteds.

England and the Low Countries: Wool Duties and Bullion Wars The industry took different directions in England and the Low Countries, and this can be traced in both cases to the English wool market. Continental urban draperies remained dependant on the English wool supply for their finest cloths until steadily improving Spanish merino wools gradually replaced them in the sixteenth century, eliminating this English advantage. The full impact of Edward III’s increased wool duties was delayed until the mid-1390s as a result of continued buoyancy in the continental cloth market after the Black Death, and because competition between graziers kept prices lower than they might otherwise have been.8 In the fifteenth century wool exports fell as European trade in fine cloth contracted, the Calais Staple and Bullion ordinances constricted the flow

194  The Turbulent Fifteenth Century of English wool to the Low Countries, and fine woollens were displaced by silks. As the rates per sack were fixed, duties increased as a percentage of the wool price as prices came down. Alien export duties were approximately 9 per cent from 1271 to 1335, rose to 44.3 per cent from 1336 to 1400 when rates were raised, increased to 57 per cent in the first half of the fifteenth century, and were 78 per cent in the second half.9 Cotswolds wool accounted for 52 per cent of costs in the manufacture of five finished black cloths at Ypres in 1501, and the cost of wool could rise to as much as 70–75  per cent of pre-finishing manufacturing costs for continental draperies.10 The cost advantage to English clothiers selling fine woollens on the continent had risen to 25–30 per cent by the early-fifteenth century. As woollen cloth prices relative to silk rose, it is unsurprising that the continental demand for English wools fell, from 23,158 sacks annually in the 1370s to 7,588 sacks in the 1450s.11 Flemish nouvelles draperies were forced to move to Spanish, Scottish and even local wools to minimise the price differential with English standard broadcloth, even though the quality of these wools was inferior, and often had to be mixed with English wools to make acceptable-quality cloth.12 As important as the rise in duties were the restrictions on credit caused by countries’ struggle to maintain sufficient coinage in the face of a contraction in the money supply. Money remained scarce until the German mining boom provided additional silver to the mints, which in turn helped finance the late-fifteenth century recovery. England had sufficient supplies of gold to sustain international trade, but there was a shortage of silver to finance small, everyday purchases; the ratio of silver to gold fell from 56/44 in 1351 to approximately 30/70 in 1470.13 Given the small amount of coin in general circulation, the high level of complaints about shortage of silver, and its tendency over time to erode without additional minting, governments had to take measures to ensure that there was an inflow of bullion.14 The English government became concerned with the balance of trade, and anti-alien feeling was stirred up by those who believed that alien merchants, particularly Italians, were taking bullion out of the country. War put a burden on the coinage because at short notice the crown needed large amounts of coin to buy supplies and pay troops. This led to a struggle between England and Burgundy for bullion that was to have far-reaching consequences for both the wool and cloth trades. The Duke of Burgundy needed vast sums of money to expand his territories, which included Namur in 1421, Holland-Zeeland and Hainault in 1428, and Brabant in 1430, while the English crown needed coin to sustain its troops in France. The Duke turned to frequent re-coinages and debasements, from which he made a handsome commission, and which attracted coin from all over Europe. Parliament had a long-standing adversity to depreciating the coinage, so debasement was rarely a possibility. To attract bullion, parliament passed the Calais Staple Bullion and Partition ordinances in 1429–30,

The Turbulent Fifteenth Century 195 further strengthened in 1433, which changed the terms of the Calais wool trade. The usual credit terms were a third down paid usually in Flemish coin, with two additional payments made six and twelve months later at the Brabant fairs, allowing debts to be paid after the product had been sold. Since these payments were made through bills of exchange drawn on London, little physical currency changed hands. Now no credit was to be given. Flemish wool buyers were therefore forced to borrow money to pay for wool. One third had to be paid in gold bullion, minted at Calais, and the rest in gold nobles. The result was a rise in Flemish cloth prices as English merchants raised prices and European drapers were burdened with additional financing expense, a dramatic decline in wool sales and retaliation by the Duke, who banned the import of English cloth and the export of bullion or coin. This cycle of English bullion ordinances and Burgundian cloth bans was to be repeated until 1473.15 Burgundy unsuccessfully laid siege to Calais in 1436, a peace treaty restored the cloth trade in 1439, and the restrictions on wool payments were lifted in 1442. In 1445 the ordinances were re-imposed; the Duke retaliated with a cloth ban until 1452. This tit-for-tat was repeated for a third time in 1463, lasting until 1467. The Duke’s support for Edward IV, as he regained his throne in 1471, ended the quarrel. Parliament formally withdrew the ordinances in 1473. The Duke of Burgundy also alienated the Hanseatic League. The league placed an embargo on Bruges from 1451 to 1457. This placed another nail in the coffin of Bruges as the centre of north-European trade, increased English cloth sales through Antwerp and helped the Dutch, particularly Leiden, to expand cloth sales to the Baltic.16 The effect of bullion wars was far more disastrous for the wool than the cloth trade because Calais held almost a monopoly over wool exports, while the Duke’s ban on English cloth was far harder to enforce. The finest Flemish draperies had to accept higher wool costs even as they depressed sales. Wool and cloth prices were rising for the continental draperies just when there was general deflation and other commodity prices were falling, increasing the relative price of luxury woollens. It would seem that the impact of the Calais ordinances was particularly damaging to the old Flemish draperies in the 1430s as statistics on cloth sales at Ghent, Ypres and Mechelen show a severe drop in that decade, from which Ghent and Ypres never recovered.17 Both Leiden and Mechelen draperies revived after 1450, Leiden on the back of a successful Dutch marine expansion into the Baltic, and Mechelen by replacing Flemish woollens along the Rhine.18 Even as the bullion wars ended, continental draperies had to face one additional setback as the prices of English fine wools rose faster than the price of medium and coarse wools when the European economy revived towards the end of the century. The price of the best Shropshire wools doubled from 1454 to 1499, while the price of lower-quality wools

196  The Turbulent Fifteenth Century remained stable as the increase in pasture and sheep flocks kept pace with rising demand.19 For continental draperies that exclusively used English wools, prices soared as is illustrated by the prices for the ultra-luxury Ghent dickedinnen cloth which more than doubled over the century.20 At the same time as English wools became more expensive on the continent, they became cheaper for English clothiers, and the wool supply became more responsive to English demand for cloth rather than to staplers’ wool exports. The fifteenth century saw agricultural land converted from arable to pasture as population continued to fall, albeit at a slower rate: and wool prices fell faster than wheat prices.21 It has been estimated that 42 per cent of wool was consumed domestically in the 1390s, but this had risen to 62 per cent a century later.22 Average wool prices fell by more than half from 4.91s per stone in the 1470s to 2.32s per stone in the 1450s.23 At the same time the average quality of English wools must have declined for several reasons: exported wool was of higher average quality than wool used in the domestic cloth market, there was probably less demand for higher-quality wools as silks replaced woollens in aristocratic dress, farming techniques became more cost efficient as prices fell and this inevitably had some negative impact on wool quality, and wool coarsened as a higher percentage of sheep were raised on pasture rather than fallow land.24 Therefore, both demand and supply factors reinforced a fall in quality. Graziers responded to changes in demand, with Cotswolds’ and Berkshire wools, for example, maintaining their quality, while Lincolnshire and northern wools worsened.25 Advantage subtly shifted. England still produced the finest wools, but fewer of them. It was the variety and availability of good-quality wools rather than the superiority of the finest wools that gradually became more important. Clothiers enjoyed the freedom to seek out the wools they needed anywhere in the country while staplers selling wool overseas sourced their wools primarily from the Cotswolds, the Welsh Marches and Shropshire. It is an oversimplification to see the fifteenth-century woollen textile industry only as a struggle for dominance between the English and the Flemish and Brabant draperies. There was an intensification of competition from other strengthening draperies. Until the mid-fifteenth century, competition for ultra-luxury cloths produced by Flemish and Brabant draperies came not from England but from Leiden in Holland which built up a successful business in the Baltic, and from Florence which dominated Mediterranean markets. The Flemish nouvelles draperies had to face competition from successful Catalan and Lombard textiles in southern Europe, as well as from English cloth. This changing face of competition can be seen in Toulouse. Flemish and Brabant textiles were dominant in the late-fourteenth century, with English woollens a poor second, but English textiles had replaced them by the 1430s. At mid-century Norman, Catalan and northern Italian textiles were also supplying the market.26

The Turbulent Fifteenth Century 197 The Flemish and English industrial economies took different directions. It was perhaps inevitable that as sheep numbers rose and wool prices fell that English clothmakers and merchants would seek opportunities to broaden the cloth market, both domestic and overseas. As a result the industry continued to evolve in terms of both rising quality and lower cost. In contrast, merchants in the Low Countries saw a diminishing market for fine cloth as prices rose and silk became a more attractive textile. They protected their market as best they could, a few draperies like those at Mechelen and Leiden prospered, and the nouvelles draperies remained competitive by using cheaper wools and less-expensive production methods, but there was limited innovation. The economy of the Southern Netherlands diversified, favouring industries that catered to rising living standards: tapestries, other decorative arts, clothing accessories and metal goods.27 We can see these luxury goods flooding English markets at the end of the century, financed by the expanding woollens trade.28 There was some textile innovation, but it was from the light worsted draperies from south-west Flanders that were not dependant on English wools and were relatively free from urban regulation.29

Changing Trade Patterns This weakness in the continental woollens industry was obscured until the last quarter of the century, as the already-mentioned struggle for bullion, other trade restrictions and European depression held back exports until the 1470s.30 Forty-eight per cent of the English cloth trade was in the hands of alien merchants from 1400 to 1475, while denizen trade was mostly channelled through the ports of the Scheldt. Cloth was sold to continental merchants trading through Middleburg, Dordrecht and, after 1406, at the Brabant fairs at Antwerp and Bergen-op-Zoom. English cloth merchants rarely sold to the end customer; they were increasingly cut off from trading directly with Baltic ports and very few ventured into the Mediterranean; they were shut out of Bruges, and the Hundred Years’ War choked French trade. English merchants were less well capitalised than the leading alien merchants, and denied access to many markets they probably would have liked to serve. We call them overseas merchants but most of them outside Bristol were really just shipping cloth across the English Channel to the Low Countries. English merchants’ cloth shipments to the Baltic, France and Iberia now formed a reduced part of total trade. Southern Hanse towns were essential to English cloth exports because they controlled the overland routes to southern Germany and the eastern routes to the Mediterranean. The Hanse received preferential treatment in England: paying lower customs than denizen merchants, enjoying trading privileges, and holding houses in English towns as their headquarters. English merchants believed such generosity should have been

198  The Turbulent Fifteenth Century reciprocated by free access to Baltic markets, but Lübeck, the Hanseatic League’s leading town, was intent on restricting English shipping in the Baltic. Consequently, English cloth became a battleground among the Hanse towns, some dependant on English cloth while others were determined to shut out English merchants. Fourteenth-century success in broadening access to markets was reversed in the fifteenth century.31 In 1410 an Anglo-Prussian treaty was not ratified by the Hanse, signalling deteriorating relations. Flemish and Brabant textiles remained predominant in southern German markets in the first two decades of the century, and even Dutch woollens were outperforming English cloth.32 War, attacks on shipping by both sides, and piracy interrupted trade. It was only finally resolved in 1474 at the Treaty of Utrecht which restored Hanseatic privileges in England and promised, but never delivered, free access to the Baltic. Under these conditions trade from the eastern ports of Hull, Boston and Lynn with the Baltic diminished, and after 1474, almost ground to a halt. Fortunately, difficulties with the Baltic Hanse towns rarely effected relations with Cologne whose merchants operated from the Steelyard in London.33 Their London imports were three times greater, and exports twice as large as the Baltic towns in 1446.34 Cologne was a gateway for northern cloth to Eastern Europe, and it controlled much of the overland trade from Italy to northern Europe, as the Rhine took traffic away from rivers flowing into the Baltic.35 Non-Hanseatic trade, mostly by Italians, accounted for 28.7 per cent of cloth exports from 1400 to 1475, over half as much again as shipped by Hanse merchants. Further, their imports were almost as important as exports as the industry depended on southern oil, alum and dyes. Italian exports declined to a far greater extent than either Hanse or denizen exports during the depression from 1450 to 1465. Conflicts in the Mediterranean stopped many Venetian, Florentine and Genoese fleets from sailing in the 1430s, 1440s and 1450s. In England anti-alien riots broke out in London in 1456–7, and at Southampton in 1460. Genoese goods were confiscated and merchants imprisoned as a reprisal for taking a Bristol merchant’s ship that was trading in the Mediterranean. Penetration of English cloth in the Mediterranean basin was dependant to a major degree on the amount the Italians purchased in England, and this was somewhat constrained by the terms of trade. Italian exports were greater than their imports, but they must have wished to keep their trade somewhat in balance, limiting their cloth purchases.36 Cloth shipped to Italy in the fifteenth century was mostly dyed and finished, in contrast to the mostly unfinished cloth that passed through Antwerp.37 Southampton was the chief port for Florence and Genoa, while Venetian ships called mainly at London. The Genoese were the primary Italian importers of raw materials for the industry, especially alum over which they had a monopoly until the 1450s, at which time the trade was taken over by Florentine merchants who controlled the distribution of

The Turbulent Fifteenth Century 199 alum from newly discovered mines in the Papal States. Florence was far more interested in buying wool than cloth, and much of the cloth purchased was of low quality.38 Venetians bought mainly middling-quality cloth, while the Genoese specialised in higher-quality cloth. The Genoese may have been the largest cloth exporters. In 1455–6, 7,300 cloths were shipped on six Genoese vessels, compared with 6,460 taken on board by three Venetian galleys and 1,685 exported by the Florentine state galleys.39 Bristol’s trade had a completely different configuration from all other ports because it was almost exclusively in the hands of Bristol merchants who looked south to Gascony, Navarre and the Iberian peninsula, east to Ireland and north to Iceland. Most Bristol cloth was finished and dyed. Its trade followed the national fifteenth-century pattern falling for the two first decades, rising for three, and then receding during the midcentury depression.40 Bristol merchants had to compete with the Genoese out of Southampton who traded along the Iberian coastline, and Castilians who bought their cloths in London. In the late-fourteenth century approximately a third of its exports had gone to Gascony, a third to Iberia and 20 per cent to Ireland.41 Almost a century later, in 1479–80, more than 60 per cent of Bristol broadcloths were now going to Spain and Portugal, 17 per cent to Ireland and only 12 per cent to Gascony.42 War in Gascony had interrupted the cloth trade and its eventual loss in 1453 naturally damaged it further, although it revived with the treaty with France at Picquigny in 1475. Bristol’s exports rose once again at the end of the century, but only to levels that had been achieved in the 1440s.43 Spanish and Portuguese trade expanded during the fifteenth century, offsetting the decline in the Gascony trade. Spain obtained its best cloths, those dyed with grain, from London, but it seems that it sourced much of its middling-quality cloth from Bristol.44 English merchants were therefore forced to increasingly concentrate their activities on Brabant. They used Middelburg or Dordrecht as their primary ports until Brabant recovered Antwerp in 1406 which gave them access to the annual cycle of fairs at Bergen-op-Zoom and Antwerp. The following year Henry IV gave English merchants the right to organise themselves as Merchant Adventurers to trade with Holland, Zeeland, Brabant and Flanders. By 1421 English merchants had decided that Antwerp would be their cloth staple, as in that year forty-two Adventurers elected a resident governor to be elected annually. Two factors seem to have been critical to the initial success of Antwerp. Cologne merchants came to the fairs to exchange fustian from Ulm and Augsburg for English cloth, and Antwerp cloth finishers and dyers developed the expertise to prepare unfinished cloth for German markets.45 The early success of Antwerp can be gauged by its population growth, from 5,000 in 1374 to 20,000 in 1440, but it still remained smaller than Bruges with around 35,000.46

200  The Turbulent Fifteenth Century The England–Antwerp connection must have been well established by the 1430s because trade continued even after the town became part of Burgundy in 1430, and was therefore subject to the Burgundian cloth ban in 1434. The Borromei Company’s Bruges ledger for 1438 shows a brisk trade at Antwerp in German fustians, most of which were shipped to England, and in madder from Middleburg, much of which must have been exchanged for cloth. Although the company had branches in Bruges and London, most of the company’s Low Countries’ trade was taking place at Antwerp, Calais and Bruges, suggesting that, by that time, a significant amount of trade in certain commodities had shifted away from Bruges.47 Undoubtedly, the Anglo-Burgundian conflict over bullion must have slowed down the growth of the Antwerp cloth trade until it was finally resolved in 1473; for example, between 1464 and 1468 the English cloth mart had to be moved to Utrecht.

Tudor Broadcloth The growing importance of the Brabant fairs, London’s Merchant Adventurers, and Antwerp’s cloth finishers gave rise to the cloth that led the English charge, the unfinished West Country broadcloth. It may well have been the crisis of the mid-century depression that forced Adventurers to re-appraise their strategy and focus on higher-quality standard broadcloth, in the same way that the contraction in early-fourteenth century trade had induced Flemish draperies to concentrate almost exclusively on high-quality woollens.48 In the 1440s the West Country was providing Italians with a broad range of cloth, with a majority of the cloth cheap westerns and bastards. In 1452 Antwerp merchants were complaining that the slump was having a disastrous effect on those who ‘dye, finish, stretch, sheer and match such cloths’.49 We can imagine Antwerp’s cloth finishers and merchants advising Adventurers to provide them with quality broadcloth, which once they had finished them, would still undercut Flemish quality cloth at Bruges. It is difficult to underestimate the importance of this both in terms of strategy and execution, Adventurers on the one hand focusing on one cloth, and clothiers producing that highquality cloth consistently to the same high standard. Tudor broadcloth, after fulling and tentering, was 1¾  yard; and its usual length was 26–28  yards.50 Its mid-sixteenth century weight was 64lb. It was woven with Cotswolds wools, which would have made it lower quality than the finest Flemish cloths, but superior to the lesser European draperies that mixed English with other wools. Broadcloth became steadily heavier over the fifteenth century as merchants leveraged their wool-cost advantage, so English cloth was likely more durable than most continental cloth. It was priced lower than cloths of similar quality, but we have no records from the Brabant fairs that might have quantified this difference. English clothiers not only benefited from cheaper wools,

The Turbulent Fifteenth Century 201 but also the savings from mill-fulling, low rural wages and efficiently organised production, and perhaps from an all-carded woollen as spinners were taught to wheel-spin warps. Since there was little regulation of this cloth, customers could not have taken its quality for granted: buyers had to trust the merchant’s reputation and merchants the weavers’ mark. It may have been that Antwerp’s merchants and finishers also exercised some control over quality. From the continuous legislative attempts to avoid excessive stretching of the wet cloth on the tenter, we can assume that it sometimes shrank when wet. The Antwerp trade gave rise to a second cloth, kersey; 18 yards long, a yard wide and similar in weight by area to broadcloth. It was a far superior cloth to the standard 12-footlong, cheap cloth of the same name in the fourteenth century. While times were difficult for exporters during most of the century, the size and quality of the domestic market improved as household incomes rose, although it too would have been depressed during the mid-century depression. More cloth was required to be fashionable. Outer garments lengthened, sleeves widened, more clothing was lined, and doublet and hose required more cloth than the tunic it replaced.51 Fewer restrictions were placed on women’s dress by the end of the fifteenth century.52 The 1465 sumptuary regulations allowed servants and labourers to wear cloth up to 2s a yard and hose up to 14d a yard. Late-fifteenth century inventories tell us something about the broad range of cloth for sale. London draper Thomas Gilbert, who died in 1484, had two stores, one for his first-quality goods valued at £136 14s 9d, and across the street a discount store with £130 7s 5d in inventory.53 In his best shop he mostly sold russet, tawny and violet broadcloths, with some red, crimson, mustardevillers, green and scarlet, from 24d to 80d a yard; and, in his discount store, from 12d a yard for northern broadcloth to 36d for better cloth. In addition, the second-quality store sold some narrow, coarse coloured kerseys, frieze, cottons, rugs and linings valued from 2½d a yard for white lining half a yard in width to 6–8d for white and black coarse kersey. The Shrewsbury draper John Dune, who died in 1499, sold both kerseys and broadcloth.54 The kerseys came in a range of colours, green, black, violet, murrey and russet, mostly between 12d and 18d a yard; broadcloths came in russet, tawny, red, green and murrey at 36–40d a yard. Quality rose because, on average, people could afford to buy heavier, more expensive cloth as wool prices fell and incomes rose: and more cloth was dyed and finished. During the fifteenth century the average weight of finished broadcloth or its equivalents may have increased from around 41lb, using about 54lb of wool, to around 61lb using 80lb of wool.55 Increase in the price of cloth can be best illustrated with exported cloth. Non-Hanseatic aliens paid, on average, 30–40s for coloured broadcloth in the 1390s based on prices in the poundage subsidy accounts, but this had risen to a standardised price of 60s at London and Bristol in the 1480s.56 Kersey price and quality also rose. Kersey had been a very cheap

202  The Turbulent Fifteenth Century cloth 12 yards in length by a yard in width, priced the same as straits in the fourteenth century. By 1464 it had become a much higher-quality cloth that was now 18 yards in length by a yard in width.57 In the laterfifteenth century coloured kerseys were usually valued at 13s 4d a cloth; and in 1505 the standard customs price of 20s was set, equivalent to 60s for broadcloth.58 In a London dispute over the production of 20 blue kerseys in July 1478, each kersey, 20 yards by a yard and half a quarter fulled, was using 36lb of wool, almost as heavy, by area, as broadcloth.59 Unfortunately, we cannot trace in any detail how, why or when this kersey transformation took place. It was fuelled by the fashion for hose, but demand for kersey in the Levant may also have been a catalyst. Venetians were buying kersey in large quantities from London between 1440 and 1444.60 The lengths were not specified, but the majority of purchases were for a pound each which suggests that this was quality kersey, 18 yards long. One Venetian merchant bought 36 yards of crimson kersey for £3 12s in 1441–2, equivalent to 36s for each 18-yard cloth.61 If high wool duties weakened continental luxury draperies, low cloth duties helped export expansion. Customs duties on both wool and cloth were paid on the number of sacks of wool or equivalent broadcloths, not on their value. As wool prices fell the tax rate increased, as cloth prices moved higher the effective tax rate declined. Government did not seek to offset falling customs revenues from wool by raising cloth duties; in fact, taxation rates fell for denizens and the Hanse after 1420 as they wriggled out of the poundage subsidy that they had been forced to pay in the 1390s. Customs duties on cloth were only revised to make them comparable to the wool custom in 1558.62 The low fixed tax rate on each cloth encouraged English merchants to sell higher-quality cloth as the rate of tax declined as prices rose. Non-Hanseatic merchants continued to pay poundage which was an ad valorem subsidy. This was to place them at a competitive disadvantage when most trade passed through Antwerp, so that some alien merchants chose to buy their cloth in Antwerp.

London and Its Merchants London’s dominance led to further specialisation, a national cloth market and a focus on Antwerp. London’s trade began to grow at the expense of provincial ports in the 1460s. It emerged from the mid-century recession earlier than the rest of the country, so that by the early 1470s trade had overtaken the levels of the 1440s.63 One reason for the success of London’s trade relative to other ports was the resilience of its wool trade. London’s wool exports did not decline during the mid-century recession as London staplers tightened their grasp of the trade. This was important because it provided the funds to import goods and this enriched the city’s merchant class, and indirectly its cloth merchants. The decline of other

The Turbulent Fifteenth Century 203 east coast ports adversely affected both York and Coventry’s cloth industry. Bristol remained important, with Iberian trade eventually making up for the loss of Gascony, but it continued to lose position to London. There were only two relatively minor exceptions to the pulling power of London: Norfolk became the centre of the worsted industry, and Exeter and smaller Devon ports essentially controlled the market for cheaper cloths made in Devon and Cornwall which were mostly shipped to Normandy and Brittany. London’s cloth production steadily declined, but the city became the most important centre for finishing and dyeing in the country.64 By 1428 the seventeen remaining weavers could not pay the weavers’ farm because so many had left the city. Of the seventy masters of the English weavers who signed the 1456 agreement on wages and prices, only thirty-three lived in the city. Alien weavers were now predominantly from Holland and Brabant rather than Flanders. In the 1483–4 London alien subsidy returns there were only seventeen weavers, twenty-two male servants and two female servants living in the city.65 Fullers were now washing, cleaning and tentering mostly provincial cloth. Around 1470 there were ten tenters in the city, five at Fullers’ Hall and five at Leadenhall.66 London’s dyers, fullers and shearmen continued to increase in numbers while those in many provincial cloth towns saw their cloth-finishing contract. Any decline in finishing and dyeing exported broadcloth with the rise of the Antwerp finishing industry was offset by expanding custom from tailors, drapers and haberdashers catering to the home market.67 For example, the number of apprentice tailors enrolled increased from sixty a year in the late 1420s to eighty-five in the mid- to late 1460s, with more than 100 in some years.68 It rose to an average of 134 in the 1540s.69 Most Venetian and Genoese trade was in coloured, finished cloth, and kerseys that found a market in southern and eastern Europe were also dyed and finished.70 The expansion of the direct Italian trade with Southampton and London in the early-fifteenth century, and the growth of the trade with France and the Iberian peninsula by both English and alien merchants towards the end of the century, directly benefited the city’s dyers and finishers. London had multiple advantages over provincial merchants and other ports, as it was the chief beneficiary of the growth of Antwerp, which had become, as early as the 1430s, the fastest growing destination for English trade.71 Merchant Adventurers, dominated by Londoners, enjoyed a monopoly of English trade with the Low Countries. London also enjoyed better access to capital, especially in the tough economic times of the mid-century depression.72 The shift to gold used to finance high-value trade favoured London.73 Aliens were forced by statute, and by hosting regulations, to spend their sales revenues on English goods, and were denied more than six months’ credit from English merchants, which kept

204  The Turbulent Fifteenth Century bullion in the country.74 London merchants could access the credit networks of Italian bankers, all located in the capital.75 Also, a favourable balance of trade in the 1450s and 1460s may have offset any reduction in the coinage in circulation at this time.76 Depreciation of the currency in 1464–5 added to the coinage in circulation, and lowered the price of exported cloth. London, with its large number of scriveners, and easy access to the mayor’s court and court of chancery, made negotiation of bonds easier. London’s government sought to capitalise on its advantages. As Caroline Barron concluded, ‘The fifteenth century marked the apogee of London’s success: not in terms of population, nor in terms of wealth, but in its ability to exercise effective self-government’.77 The city managed its economic transformation well, because although oligarchic, it was remarkably attuned to the commercial interests of the city, and individual crafts were able, on occasion, to exert considerable influence. In 1475 the annual election of the mayor and sheriffs was put in the hands of the liverymen of all the crafts.78 Common Council, which approved all taxation and served as a body to resolve many disputes and give advice to the court of aldermen, had grown to 188 members by 1458–9.79 Almost without exception the leading overseas merchants, wholesalers and manufacturers were self-made men who had risen through their company’s ranks and were skilled at balancing the various interests within their crafts, while for the most part retaining authority and unity. It was a meritocracy with opportunities not just for its leading merchants, but also for many from the middling sort. The court of aldermen became more representative in the second half of the fifteenth century as its membership was expanded to eleven merchant companies to include salters, tailors and haberdashers. The first salter to be mayor was in 1475, the first haberdasher became an alderman in 1471, and the first tailor in 1474. In 1485, because of deaths in that year, thirty-three aldermen represented twentysix wards. At least eighteen, and maybe more, were involved in the cloth and clothing industries. The leading manufacturing crafts, among them dyers, shearmen and fullers, could exercise influence through the wards where they lived or the city’s Common Council. The overseas cloth merchant became far more knowledgeable about the cloth market than a century before when he was first and foremost an importer. He became a far more discriminating cloth buyer, and this forced increased specialisation on the clothier. Over the century export of cheap straits and broad dozens declined. The West Country concentrated on unfinished standard broadcloth. Suffolk made the transition from straits to full, mostly coloured, broadcloth. The cheaper cloths now came mostly from Devon, Wales, the West Riding and Cumbria where production costs were the lowest. Northern towns became less competitive as they lost their export market; and cost, regulation, and distance from the capital made it more difficult to adapt to a changing market.

The Turbulent Fifteenth Century 205

Domestic Market Growth Even though the export market showed little growth until late in the century, the focus on the Brabant fairs, dominance of London and Merchant Adventurers’ understanding of what the market needed forced a restructuring of the woollens industry, raising broadcloth weight and quality, and redefining the kersey. But the domestic market must not be ignored. Improving living standards, fashion and peasants seeking status increased domestic cloth consumption, perhaps from 120,000 cloths at the beginning of the century to 150,000 cloths at its end, although this growth or absolute size cannot be accurately estimated.80 Population continued to decline through the first half of the century although at a slower rate than the previous half-century, and showed little growth in the second half.81 Per capita consumption may therefore have risen from about 1 yard of broadcloth annually to 1½ yards of broadcloths during the century.82 The expanding supply of wool and low prices likely encouraged clothmakers to produce cloth that used more wool and therefore cloth that was more sturdy and durable, to match the weight of cloth that Cistercians at Beaulieu abbey had worn 150 years previously. In fact, what is remarkable, when we finally have the weights of all cloths in 1552–3, is how heavy the cheaper cloths are: kersey, cotton, straits and frieze, and much coarse broadcloth was as heavy as the standard West Country broadcloth. Coarse cloth prices remained remarkably constant from 1400 to 1550 which suggests that lower wool prices, a rising market and perhaps improved manufacturing productivity offset any increase in wool cost that came from heavier cloth. So it may have been that it was the trend to heavier cloth domestically, rather than any inspiration on the part of Merchant Adventurers to seek competitive advantage, that led to heavier exported cloth. For the domestic market Thorold Rogers’ woollen cloth price series recorded third-quality broadcloth for boys after 1400, a good proxy for coarse cloth. It was mainly Winchester broadcloth bought by New College, Oxford. The price was just under 18d/yd. at the beginning of the century, falling with wool prices to 14d/yd. in the 1470s, rising to 20d/yd. in the 1480s, and then in the sixteenth century it fell back to early-fifteenth century prices. Boy’s cloth was approximately 20 per cent below second-quality cloth throughout the fourteenth century, but then the gap widened as better-quality cloth prices rose faster than those for coarse cloth. Institutions were paying 8–10d for narrow cloth in the fifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries, and as low as 5d/yd. for cloth for non-clothing purposes such as placing under saddles. Retail prices, recorded by Thorold Rogers for cottons, were around 6d/yd. and 6–8d/yd. for frieze. Sir Thomas Kytson was paying 7.75/goad (a  yard and a half) in 1531 for Manchester cottons.83 In the poundage accounts, wholesale prices for Welsh cottons were usually 6d a goad and 13s 4d for

206  The Turbulent Fifteenth Century a roll of frieze, valuations that had remained relatively constant from the early-fifteenth to the mid-sixteenth century.84 The other trend was the increased availability of a range of coarse cloths across the country as the cloth industry became a national market focused on London. Cottons woven one week in Wales and taken to Shrewsbury for finishing the second week might be sold at Blackwell Hall the third week, and available for purchase in a Wiltshire shop the fourth week. The York market at the end of the fifteenth century shows how cloth from across the country was forcing out local cloth. Its drapers and tailors were able to restrict the sale of foreign cloths in 1492 to the Thursday market when they could exercise their right-of-search. Inexpensive Kendal cloth could be sold wholesale at the inns.85 Southern merchants sold their cloth wholesale to be retailed by tailors, hosiers and drapers. In 1501 West Riding cloth was to be sold on the street from the Common Hall towards Stayngate, while North Riding and Kendal cloth was to be sold on the street from the Common Hall towards Conyngstreet. In 1508 drapers were able to force all those selling southern cloth to contribute to their pageant since they maintained that there were only three drapers left in the city.86 The domestic market was subject to the same economic pressures as exports. In particular, the cloth industry felt the impact of the midfifteenth century depression as cloth prices fell in the 1450s and 1460s and credit availability may have shrunk: there was market weakness in northern England from the late 1430s, and this seems to have been the only time in the century when some wool inventory found no buyers.87 While there is a consensus that European monetary policies contributed to the fifteenth-century recessions, there is far less agreement on its daily effect on the cloth trade. Monetary historians argue that access to credit depended on trust and an expectation of repayment, and this was influenced by the money supply. Leading merchants were acutely aware of the state of trade and the shortage of coin at any time. If credit declined and trade was depressed, incomes fell which further reduced sales, tightened credit and raised interest rates. Much depended on the psychology of investing. In good economic times merchants might be induced to extend additional credit to make up for some deficiency in the money supply, but there would be a breaking point. It also might be some time after the money supply had increased before merchants had confidence to lend once again. Other economic historians point out that the coinage per capita doubled from 1300 to 1470, that the analysis of credit shortage is flawed, and that artisans and merchants found ways to adapt to the shortage of coin.88 Therefore, ‘this was not in the main a society held back by an inadequate money supply’.89 Barter increased, credit was used more efficiently, alternative credit instruments developed, Italian bankers continued to finance international trade, and low-denomination gold coins

The Turbulent Fifteenth Century 207 to some extent replaced silver coinage. Money continued to flow to profitable enterprise, clothiers and merchants therefore attracted capital, and profitable trade provided the necessary retained earnings to sustain growth. This debate over the role of credit will undoubtedly continue.90 Personal interest rates fell from approximately 10  per cent before the Black Death to 4.5 per cent at the end of the fifteenth century, as creditors became more comfortable about the risk they were taking, opportunities for investment improved, and people saved more to buy a broader range of goods.91 After 1470 when the economy started to grow again, the money supply increased at a faster rate than the economy, with a doubling of the amount of capital available per person.92

Norwich Worsteds Even as the woollens industry faced turbulence for most of the century, worsteds revived in Norfolk. They remained a footnote nationally, but for one town, Norwich, it was critical.93 Success came from its focus on a very high-quality product, the ‘ten-yard’ worsted. Almost everywhere else in the fifteenth century, urban production was giving way to the countryside, but the opposite was true for Norwich. The ‘ten-yard’ worsted was 10 yards long and 5 quarters wide (30 per cent in area of a broadcloth).94 It was also called the double worsted because it had twice the number of weft than warp threads, whereas single worsted had the same number.95 By the mid-fifteenth century, it was perceived as a new cloth that was similar in feel to silk and probably superior to just about any say on the continent. It was finer, lighter and more closely woven than other worsteds and says. It was woven on a broad treadle loom.96 A late-fourteenth century, London-excavated, fine worsted had 58 weft and 18 warp threads per cm. compared with most single worsteds with 10–15 warp and weft threads per cm.97 The typical broadcloth had from 10 warp to 20 warp and weft threads per cm.98 Whereas the single worsted was a cheap product (4.33–7.00d/sq.  yard) in the 1390s, double worsted was slightly more expensive (19.20d/sq.  yard) than coloured woollen shortcloth (16.80d/sq.  yard) in the 1480s.99 The area around Dereham, to the west of Norwich, came to specialise in the combing and spinning of worsted thread.100 Fine double worsted’s silky texture must have come from the yarn which would have required improved fleece-grading and wool sorting, expert combing and spinning, and weaving with a high thread count, but the records do not enlighten us about this evolution. What we can dimly see are the changes in finishing. Double worsteds came to be expertly sheared and calendered, hot-pressing the cloth with iron plates to give the cloth a glossy sheen. It may well have been that these techniques came from fustian makers, who sheared and calendered this mixed linen and cotton textile to give it its characteristic smoothness, making it a superior

208  The Turbulent Fifteenth Century product to linen. From the 1440s, the decade when double-worsted exports grew significantly, the number of shearmen admissions started to increase, and had further expanded by the end of the century, by which time few woollens were made at Norwich. In 1478 worsted shearmen were prohibited from using iron rubbers that might cut the cloth.101 Worsted shearmen had become sufficiently numerous and self-confident to separate from woollen shearmen in 1495, although this was reversed in 1503.102 They were separate crafts again by 1528–9.103 Although calenderers were admitted to the freedom as early as the 1440s, most were admitted as dyers: a quarter of the dyers admitted to the freedom in the second half of the fifteenth century were calenderers.104 Calenderers separated from the dyers in the sixteenth century. Dyers could not calender and calenderers could not dye worsteds, stamins or monks’ cloth.105 Norwich calenderers used the superior wet calendering process, but there was increasing use by foreigners of dry calendering with gums and oils to enhance the quality of cheaper worsteds. Dry calendering was prohibited by statute in 1513.106 There was a critical transition from single to double worsteds in the first half of the fifteenth century. In the fourteenth century almost all worsted exports were single worsteds. As demand for single worsteds declined, they were to some degree replaced, initially by half-double worsteds, and then from 1430 to 1450 by double worsteds. Most double worsteds were exported from London which suggests that London mercers played a leading role in their development, seeing an opportunity for finer worsteds as the revived Hondschoote say industry probably undermined the export of Norfolk’s single worsteds. Since double worsteds were worth from three to five times as much as the single worsted, the value of the export trade would have declined far less than the number of cloths suggest. Double worsted was a far more valuable cloth than single worsteds, traditional worsted and say bed coverings, and traditional European says and serges. At Yarmouth single worsteds were valued at 52d a cloth in 1396.107 At Lynn in 1392 they were valued between 80d and 84d.108 In the 1463 London poundage accounts thirty double worsteds were worth 333d each, but the standard rate for double worsteds was 240d a cloth. The preamble to the statute on the calendering of worsteds in 1513 stated that coarse worsted was valued at 320d, compared with fine-quality worsted priced as much as 480d or more. The increase of Norwich clothmaking at the end of the fifteenth century was export driven as 1,483 cloths shipped annually from Yarmouth and London combined in the 1490s rose to 4,558 in the 1500s (Table 9.1). Most of the increase came from Yarmouth, a tribute to the energy and initiative of Norwich mercers. Worsteds, unlike woollens, also enjoyed access to the Flemish market, and therefore could be traded at Bruges as well as Antwerp.109 It was presumably no coincidence that this growth at the end of the century was soon matched by Flemish expansion of ostades’ production, an imitation of the double worsted. Double-worsted

The Turbulent Fifteenth Century 209 Table 9.1 Average annual double-worsted exports from Yarmouth and London, 1430–1547, in cloths Yarmouth

1430–9 1440–9 1450–9 1460–9 1470–9 1480–9 1490–9 1500–9 1510–19 1520–9 1530–9 1540–7

Total Yarmouth and London

Denizen

Alien

Denizen

Alien

118 28 54 199 178 305 386 2,593 2,906 2,463 1,114 333

2 4 1 9 8 11 15 101 74 33 48 27

126 534 313 942 899 1,069110 1,042 1,798 2,607 2,102 923 654

55 29 34 45 36 39 40 66 398 523 306 197

301 595 402 1,195 1,121 1,424 1,483 4,558 6,431 5,668 2,966 1,392

Source: Jenks, Customs, parts 8–12; G. Schanz, Englische handelspolitik gegen ende des mittelalters, vol. 2 (Liepzig, 1881), 86–105.

exports fell off dramatically after 1530 in the face of expansion and proliferation of sayetteries in south-west Flanders, forcing Norwich’s worsted makers to diversify to protect their declining textile industry. Textiles were probably more important to the Norwich economy in the fifteenth and first half of the sixteenth century than to any other large town in the country.111 Freedom registrations show that textiles accounted for 30 per cent of registrations between 1400 and 1474. They were as high as 39 per cent in 1400 but with the protracted mid-fifteenth century depression had fallen to 27 per cent and 25 per cent in the dismal 1450s and 1460s, respectively. With the economic resurgence of the latefifteenth century, textile freedom enrolments rose close to 35  per cent between 1475 and 1499, and remained steady at just under 38 per cent from 1500 to 1550, at a time when all the old cloth towns were having great difficulty maintaining their woollens industries.112 In the 1390s only twice as many weavers as fullers and dyers were admitted to the freedom: by the 1490s there were seven times as many.113 Worsteds had become the primary concern of Norwich clothmakers, yet woollens production had only faced moderate decline by 1468–9 when woollens production for Norwich was 557 cloths, and 273 cloths for the rest of the county, for a total of 830, compared with 903 Norfolk cloths alnaged in the latefourteenth century.114

Notes 1. J. Munro, ‘Medieval woollens: The western European woollen industries and their struggles for international markets, c.1000–1500’, in D. Jenkins, ed., The Cambridge history of western textiles, vol. 1 (Cambridge, 2003), 306–7.

210  The Turbulent Fifteenth Century 2. P. Nightingale, ‘Monetary contraction and mercantile credit in later medieval England’, EcHR, 2nd series, 4 (1990), 574. 3. The Hanse may have paid occasional poundage after 1420 but it had little effect on exports; see J. Oldland, ‘The expansion of London’s overseas trade from 1475 to 1520’, in C. Barron and A. Sutton, eds., The medieval merchant (Donington, 2014), 78. 4. P. Nightingale, ‘England and the European depression of the mid-fifteenth century’, JEEH, 26 (1997), 635. 5. Ibid, 640. 6. C. Briggs, ‘The availability of credit in the English countryside, 1400–1480’, AHR, 56 (2008), 8. 7. J. Kermode, ‘Medieval indebtedness: The regions versus London’, in N. Rogers, ed., England in the fifteenth century (Stamford, 1992), 72–88. 8. Munro, ‘Struggles’, 278–81. 9. Ibid, 278–83. 10. J.H. Munro, ‘The medieval scarlet and the economics of sartorial splendour’, in N.B. Harte and K.G. Ponting, eds., Cloth and clothing in medieval Europe (London, 1983), 52; J. Munro, ‘Spanish merino wools and the nouvelles draperies: An industrial transformation in the late medieval Low Countries’, EcHR, 58 (2005), 453. 11. Munro, ‘Struggles’, 304. 12. Munro, ‘Spanish’, 456–69. 13. J.L. Bolton, Money in the medieval economy, 973–1489 (Manchester, 2012), 244. 14. There was a negative trade balance at London in the 1430s; see Oldland, ‘London’s overseas trade’, 91. 15. For detailed coverage of the struggle for currency, see J. Munro, Wool, cloth, and gold: The struggle for bullion in Anglo-Burgundian trade, 1340–1478 (Toronto, 1972). 16. J. Munro, ‘Hanseatic commerce in textiles from the Low Countries and England during the later Middle Ages: Changing trends in textiles, markets, prices, and values, 1290–1570’, in M.L. Heckmann and J. Röhrkasten, eds., Von Nowgorod bis London: Studien zu handel, wirtshaft und gesellschaft im mittela iterlichen Europa: Festschrift fűr Stuart Jenks zum 60. Geburstag (Göttingen, 2008), 128–9. 17. Munro, ‘Struggles’, 307–11. 18. H. Brand, ‘A medieval industry in decline: The Leiden drapery in the first half of the sixteenth century’, in M. Boone and W. Prevenier, eds., Drapery production in the late medieval Low Countries: Markets and strategies for survival (14th-16th centuries) (Leuven, 1993), 121–49; W. Mertens, ‘Changes in the production and export of Mechelen cloth, 1330–1530’, in E. Aerts and J. Munro, eds. Textiles of the Low Countries in European economic history (Leuven, 1990), 114–23. 19. J. Munro ‘Wool-price schedules and the qualities of English wools in the later Middle Ages c.1270–1499’, TH, 9 (1978), 140, 147–8. 20. J. Oldland, ‘The Variety and quality of English woollen cloth exported in the late Middle Ages’, Journal of European Economic History, 39 (2010), 247. 21. Ibid, 247. 22. J. Oldland, ‘Wool and cloth production in late medieval and early Tudor England’, EcHR, 67 (2014), 29. 23. D.L. Farmer, ‘Prices and wages, 1350–1530’, in AHEW, 467. The figures were calculated from T.H. Lloyd, The movement of wool prices in medieval England, vol. 6 (Cambridge: Economic History Review supplement, 1973), 41–4.

The Turbulent Fifteenth Century 211 24. B.M.S. Campbell, English seigniorial agriculture 1250–1450 (Cambridge, 2000), 160–2; D. Stone, ‘The productivity and management of sheep in late medieval England’, AHR, 51 (2003), 1–22. 25. Munro, ‘Wool-price schedules’, 140; J. Munro, ‘The 1357 wool price schedule and the decline in Yorkshire wool values’, TH, 10 (1979), 215–7. 26. P. Wolff, ‘English cloth in Toulouse (1380–1450)’, EcHR, 2nd series, 1–2 (1948–50), 290–1. 27. D. Nicholas, ‘Economic reorientation and social change in fourteenth century Flanders’, P&P, 70 (1976), 13; H. van der Wee, ‘Structural changes and specialization in the industry of the southern Netherlands’, in H. van der Wee, The Low Countries in the early modern world (Aldershot, 1993), 203–21. 28. J. Oldland, ‘London’s trade in the time of Richard III’, Ricardian, 23 (2003), 24–32. 29. J. Munro, ‘The origins of the English “new draperies”: The resurrection of an old Flemish industry, 1270–1570’, in N. Harte and D.C. Coleman, eds., The new draperies (Oxford, 1997), 35–127. 30. R.S. Lopez and H.A. Miskimin, ‘The economic depression of the Renaissance’, EcHR, 14 (1962), 420. 31. Munro, ‘Struggles’, 285; Munro, ‘Hanseatic’, 100–1. 32. Munro, ‘Struggles’, 282; Munro, ‘Hanseatic’, 125. 33. D. Keene, ‘New discoveries at the Hanseatic Steelyard in London’, Hansische Geschichtblätter, 107 (1989), 24–5. 34. J.L. Bolton, The medieval English economy 1150–1500 (London, 1980), 311. 35. R. Davis, ‘The rise of Antwerp and its English connection, 1406–1510’, in D.C. Coleman and A.H. John, eds., Trade, government and economy in preindustrial England: Essays presented to F.J. Fisher (London, 1976), 8. 36. Bolton, Medieval economy, 313. 37. E. Fryde, ‘The English cloth industry and the trade with the Mediterranean c.1370–c.1480’, in M. Spallanzani, ed., Produzione commercio e consumo dei panni di lana (Florence, 1976), 345. 38. E.B. Fryde, ‘Anglo-Italian commerce in the fifteenth century: Some evidence about profits and the terms of trade’, Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire, 50 (1972), 350–3. 39. E.B. Fryde, ‘Italian maritime trade with medieval England (c.1270–c.1530)’, in E.B. Fryde, Studies in medieval trade and finance (London, 1983), 318. 40. E. Carus Wilson, ‘The overseas trade of Bristol in the fifteenth century’, in Venturers, 42. 41. E. Carus-Wilson, The overseas trade of Bristol in the later middle ages, vol. 7 (Bristol Record Society, 1937), 190–203. 42. Carus-Wilson, Overseas trade of Bristol, 218–89. 43. Carus-Wilson, ‘Bristol in the fifteenth century’, in Venturers, 40–9. 44. W.R. Childs, Anglo-Castilian trade in the later Middle Ages (Manchester, 1978), 81, 90. 45. Davis, ‘Antwerp’, 7. 46. Ibid, 9; J.L. Bolton and F.G. Bruscoli, ‘When did Antwerp replace Bruges as the commercial and financial centre of north-western Europe? The evidence of the Borromei ledger for 1438’, EcHR, 61 (2008), 363. 47. Bolton and Bruscoli, ‘Antwerp’, 360–79. 48. J.S. Lee, ‘Crises in the late medieval cloth trade’, in A.T. Brown, A. Burn and R. Doherty, eds., Crises in economic and social history: A comparative perspective (Woodbridge, 2015), 325–49. 49. Davis, ‘Antwerp’, 8.

212  The Turbulent Fifteenth Century 50. Statutes, 5&6 Edward VI, c. 6. 51. F.E. Baldwin, Sumptuary legislation and personal regulation in England (Baltimore, 1926), 62–3, 68–9, 107; C. Dyer, Standards of living in the later Middle Ages: Social change in England c. 1200–1520 (Cambridge, 1989), 177. 52. Baldwin, Sumptuary, p. 116. 53. TNA, PCC, Prob. 2/12. 54. TNA, PCC, Prob. 2/149. 55. Oldland, ‘Wool and cloth’, 29. 56. Oldland, ‘Variety and quality’, 249. 57. Statutes, 4 Edward IV, c. 1. 58. Oldland, ‘Variety and quality’, 231–3, 250. 59. LMA, Corporation of London, Common Council Journal 8, COL/CC/01/ 01/010, f.181 Assuming a 25% loss of wool in the production process, the weight per square yard would have been 1.2lb, as heavy as the average kersey in 1552, and just below that of the standard broadcloth. 60. H. Bradley, ed., The views of the hosts of alien merchants 1440–1444, LRS (2012), 8–124. 61. Ibid, 27. 62. T.S. Willan, A Tudor book of rates (Manchester, 1962), 71–4. 63. Oldland, ‘Richard III’, 2. 64. J. Oldland, ‘The finishing of English woollens, 1300–1550’, in R. Netherton and G. Owen-Crocker, eds., Medieval clothing and textiles, vol. 3 (Woodbridge, 2007), 111–6. 65. J.L. Bolton, ed., The alien communities of London in the fifteenth-century (Stamford, 1998), 48, 49, 59, 60, 66, 70, 72, 75, 76, 93, 95, 96, 99, 101, 125, 135–140; S.L. Thrupp, ‘Aliens in and around London in the fifteenthcentury’, in A.E.J. Holleander and W. Kellaway, eds., Studies in London history: Essays in honour of P.E. Jones (London, 1969), 251–72. 66. Cal. LBL, 198. 67. Perhaps as much as two thirds of English exports to the Low Countries were finished by Antwerp’s cloth finishers; see W. Prevenier and W. Blockmans, The Burgundian Netherlands (Cambridge, 1986), 99. 68. M. Davies and A. Saunders, The history of the Merchant Taylors’ company (Leeds, 2004), 81. 69. S. Rappaport, Worlds within worlds: Structures of life in sixteenth-century London (Cambridge, 1989), 394–6. 70. Fryde, ‘English cloth industry’, 345, 361; Fryde ‘Anglo-Italian commerce’, 347; F. Edler, ‘Winchcombe kerseys in Antwerp (1538–44)’, EcHR, 7 (1936), 57–62. 71. G.D. Ramsay, English overseas trade during the centuries of emergence (London 1957), 7; Davis, ‘Antwerp’, 2–20; Bolton and Briscoli, ‘Antwerp’, 360–79. 72. Nightingale, ‘England and the European depression’, 635–40. 73. P. Nightingale, ‘Gold, credit, and mortality: Distinguishing deflationary pressures on the late medieval economy’, EcHR, 63 (2010), 1, 095. 74. W. Childs, ‘ “To oure losse and hindraunce”: English credit to alien merchants in the mid-fifteenth century’, in J. Kermode, ed., Enterprise and individuals in fifteenth-century England (Stroud, 1991), 68–98; Bradley, Views of the hosts, ix–xlix. 75. Kermode, ‘Medieval Indebtedness’, 81; J.L. Bolton, ‘London merchants and the Borromei bank in the 1430s: The role of local credit networks’, in H. Kleineke, ed., The fifteenth century, X: Parliament, personalities and power: Papers presented to Linda S. Clark (Woodbridge, 2011), 70.

The Turbulent Fifteenth Century 213 6. Oldland, ‘London’s overseas trade’, 91. 7 77. Barron, London, 305. 78. M. Davies, ‘Artisans, guilds and government in London’, in R.H. Britnell, ed., Daily life in the late Middle Ages (Stroud, 1998), 134–5. 79. Barron, London, 129–36. 80. For changing peasant status, see Chis Dyer’s two articles, ‘Changes in the size of peasant holdings in some West Midland villages, 1400–1540’, in R.M. Smith, ed., Land, kinship and life-cycle (Cambridge, 1984), 277–94, and ‘The political life of the fifteenth-century English village’, in L. Clark and C. Carpenter, eds., The fifteenth century, vol. 4 (Woodbridge, 2006), 152. 81. T. Britnell, ‘Postan’s fifteenth century’, in R. Goddard, J. Langdon and M. Müller, eds., Survival and discord in medieval society (Turnhout, 2010), 63–5. 82. Clark has nominal wages increasing 32 per cent, from the 1390s to 1490s; see G. Clark, ‘The long march of history: Farm wages, population, and economic growth, England 1209–1869’, EcHR, 50 (2007), 130–4. 83. CUL, Hengrave Deposit, ms. 78/2, f. 52v. 84. Sixteenth-century inflation affected the price of coarse cloth, although to a less degree than quality broadcloth. In 1529 Sir Thomas Kytson was paying 7¾d per goad for Manchester cottons, so the 6d price in the poundage accounts no longer reflected the market price; see CUL, Hengrave, ms. 78.2. In 1558 the Book of Rates valued a goad of cottons at 8d, and a roll of frieze at 20s; see Willan, Book of rates, 66–7. 85. A. Raine, ed., York civic records, vols. 2, 103 (Yorkshire Archaeological Record Series, 1941), 172–5. 86. J.N. Bartlett, ‘Some aspects of the economy of York in the later Middle Ages, 1300–1500’ (Unpub. Ph.D. thesis, Univ. of London, 1958), 67. 87. J. Hatcher, ‘The great slump of the mid-fifteenth century’, in R. Britnell and J. Hatcher, eds., Progress and problems in medieval England (Cambridge, 1996), 243–6; A.J. Pollard, ‘The north-eastern economy and the agrarian crisis of 1438–1440’, Northern History, 25 (1989), 88–105. 88. Bolton, Money, 71–4, 258–95. 89. Ibid, 293. 90. See John Munro’s review of Bolton, Money, on EH.Net (June 2013): http:// eh.net/book-reviews/money-medieval.english-economy-973-1489. 91. Ibid, 61–2. 92. S.R. Epstein, Freedom and growth: The rise of states and markets in Europe, 1300–1750 (London, 2010), 61; M. Allen, ‘Silver production and the money supply in England and Wales, 1086–c.1500’, EcHR, 64 (2011), 128, N.J. Mayhew, ‘Population, money supply, and the velocity of circulation in England, 1300–1700’, EcHR, 48 (1995), 244; S. Broadberry, B.M.S. Campbell, A. Klein, M. Overton and B. van Leeuwen, British economic growth 1270–1870 (Cambridge, 2015), 30; C. Challis, The Tudor coinage (Manchester, 1978), 234–8. 93. J. Oldland, ‘ “Fyne worsted which is almost like silke”: Norwich’s double worsted’, TH, 42 (2011), 181–99. 94. Statutes, 7 Edward IV, c. 1; Hudson and Tingay, Norwich, vol. 2, 151; E. Kerridge, Textile manufactures in early modern England (Manchester, 1985), 9. 95. Kerridge, Manufactures, 9. 96. A. Sutton, ‘The early linen and worsted industry in Norfolk and the evolution of the London Mercers company’, Norfolk Archaeology, 40 (1989), 213. 97. E. Crowfoot, F. Pritchard and K. Staniland, Textiles and clothing c.1150– c.1450 (London, 1992), 37–8. 98. Ibid, 45.

214  The Turbulent Fifteenth Century 99. J.H. Munro, ‘Industrial Protectionism in medieval Flanders: Urban or national’, in H. Miskimim, D. Herlihy and A.L. Udovic, eds., The medieval city (New Haven, 1977), 257; TNA, E 122/139/4–8, 141/25, 194/17, 78/7, 82/7, 85/3; E 101/409/2, 6, 12; Oldland, ‘Fyne worsted’, 187. 100. Kerridge, Manufactures, 9. 101. Hudson and Tingay, Norwich, vol. 2, 102. 102. Statutes, 11 Henry VII, c. 11; 19 Henry VII, c. 17. 103. K.J. Allison, ‘The wool supply and the worsted industry in Norfolk in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’ (Unpub. Ph.D. thesis, Univ. of Leeds, 1955), 423. 104. Norfolk Record Office (NRO), Norfolk City Records (NCR), the old free book, Case 17c, ff. 56–7. Calendering appears to have been introduced to London only in the second half of the fifteenth century when it was introduced by Frenchmen; see L.F. Salzman, English industries of the Middle Ages (London, 1964), 238. In London it was shearmen who controlled the shearing of fustians and operated calendering shops in the sixteenth century; see Oldland, ‘Clothmaking’, 189–93, 245. 105. Hudson and Tingay, Norwich, vol. 2, 111, 118–19; Statutes, 5 Henry VIII, c. 4, 25 Henry VIII, c. 5; NRO, NCR, books of minutes of assembly proceedings, 1491–1553, Case 16d, f. 135; H. Sutermeister, ‘Merchant classes of Norwich and the city government, 1350–1500’ (Unfinished Ph.D. thesis, Univ. of East Anglia, 2004), ch. 4, 2. 106. Statutes, 5 Henry VIII, c. 4. 107. TNA, E 122/149/33. 108. N.S.B. Gras, The early English customs system (Cambridge, 1918), 526– 53. Worsteds were worth 54d in the 1447–8 Yarmouth customs accounts; see H.L. Gray, ‘English foreign trade from 1446 to 1482’, in M. Power and M. Postan, eds., Studies in English trade in the fifteenth century (New York, 1966), 361. 109. Munro, ‘Industrial protectionism’, 243. 110. 1494–6 accounts are missing. 111. R. Britnell, ‘The economy of British towns 1300–1540’, in Palliser, CHUB, 326. 112. P. Dunn, ‘Trade’, in C. Rawcliffe and R. Wilson, eds., Medieval Norwich (London, 2004), 217; Sutermeister, ‘Merchant classes’, ch. 4, 28. 113. Dunn, ‘Trade’, 216. 114. Heaton, Yorkshire, 84–8; TNA, E 358/8, 9.

10 The Clothiers’ Century, 1450–1550

This chapter  examines the reasons for clothiers’ great success, and the following traces their regional development and operational differences. This surge in rural clothmaking was just one aspect of a rural economy and society that was in transition. Population continued to slowly decline in the first half of the century, from a pre-plague 4.81  million according to the latest estimates to a nadir of 1.90 million in 1450, then rising slowly to 2.35 million in 1522.1 Landlords faced with reduced demand, rising wage costs and difficulties in enforcing customary work leased out their demesnes; and tenant farmers converted some of their arable to pasture on which they predominantly grazed sheep. Pastoral farming is estimated to have increased from 54 per cent of agricultural output in the 1400s to 62 per cent in the 1450s.2 Prices fell, wages rose and the standard of living improved; by how much is open to debate. There may have been a significant increase in wages at harvest time but it is unlikely that there was much increase at other times of the year, and many would have chosen leisure over work once their needs were met. New research based on yearly wage contracts and a basket of consumables to represent board and lodging suggest that real wages for servants increased by 60  per cent from the pre-plague period to the end of the fifteenth century at which time they started to decline as prices rose and wages stagnated.3 Household income may have risen even faster as wives and children found more paying work. Tenants and peasant farmers had difficulty making ends meet as prices fell and they sought to keep their costs down by limiting wage increases for agricultural work in non-peak periods, and by relying more on servants who were paid annually and in kind.4 They were forced to use their household’s time more productively. It has been suggested that ‘nonagricultural employment may have contributed roughly a tenth of rural incomes by 1300. Two centuries later this proportion had probably doubled, as manufacturing fastened more vigorously onto rural labour’.5 In terms of output it has been suggested that in 1522 national agricultural output accounted for 39.7 per cent of the economy, with industry just behind at 38.7 per cent, and services at 21.6 per cent.6 A recent attempt

216  The Clothiers’ Century, 1450–1550 to quantify the change in industrial employment from 1381 to 1522 estimates that it increased from 19.2 to 23.5 per cent of the workforce.7 By 1540 perhaps as many as 18 per cent of the adult population, 264,000 people, were involved in making cloth.8 One historian summarising these changing European markets chose to emphasise the increased productivity from the combination of agricultural and industrial work in the countryside, the inter-relatedness of town and country, the importance of clustering of skills and entrepreneurs to create a competitive industry, and the freedoms given to rural manufacturing by governments.9 Some peasants and tenant farmers saw clothmaking as a way to increase revenues, to use the extra wool they were growing, and to use dependant labour more efficiently. Others who became clothiers saw an opportunity in clothmaking, in an otherwise deflationary economy, to fill the expanding demand for better-quality cloth. A workforce on the move to escape serfdom, and a peasant society that was becoming less homogeneous, provided some of the labour that clothmaking required. We can see this entrepreneurship and the attraction of clothmaking for those looking for work, in Castle Combe, Wiltshire, as a market for cloth emerged there in the early-fifteenth century.10 Clothiers were able to both lower cost and raise quality at the same time which significantly broadened the opportunity that lay before them. Around them peasants and tenant farmers were aggressively cutting costs to meet their lease obligations in the face of falling prices by moving to pastoral farming, managing labour inputs better, and using less costly processes. Clothiers adopted similar practices by organising production more efficiently, using fulling mills and adopting wheel-spun warp yarn. Domestically, improved living standards enabled more villagers to afford little luxuries, eat and drink well, buy more land, dress fashionably and expect better-quality cloth. Clothiers found the labour close at hand since clothmaking was embedded in rural society, and there was still underemployment outside the harvest season. The 1377–81 poll tax returns reveal that in Wiltshire there were weavers and fullers in almost every village.11 In Essex’s Hinckford Hundred 5 per cent of those giving occupational designations were clothmakers.12 A 1393 East Anglian petition claimed that, ‘la substance et greindre partie des gentz des ditz’ (a substantial part of the population) were clothmakers, a region becoming well known for its clothmaking.13 At York much cloth was woven in the adjacent Ainsty wapentake, over which the city had administrative control, where 20  per cent of occupations recorded in the 1379 poll tax were textile related.14 In the West Riding, more than 20 per cent at Rotherham and Wakefield paying the 1377 poll tax were engaged in the textile industry.15 After the Black Death, expanding occupational opportunities for women made it harder to have wool carded and spun in towns, and weaving became a less desirable occupation. At the same time, changes in land use, from arable to

The Clothiers’ Century, 1450–1550 217 pasture, stimulated rural production as the supply of wool grew. The decline of serfdom and the conversion of customary land, which had accounted for approximately half of peasant land in the early-fourteenth century, to leasehold was already well advanced by the beginning of the fifteenth century. This led to greater individual freedom, a better sense of self-worth for a significant number of peasant farmers, an active land market and the flexibility to combine agricultural and industrial pursuits that characterised many clothiers and their workforces.16 Clothmaking was one reflection of peasants’ ability to adapt rapidly to market needs.17

Merchant and Complete Clothiers Clothiers were the catalysts that transformed rural cloth manufacture and eroded urban clothmaking, and yet we know so little about them, or how they operated. The transition from large-town to small-town and village production, and the rise of clothiers that led this change has neither been well documented nor explained.18 There are few records of their activities because they lived for the most part in an unregulated environment: and there are no surviving clothiers’ accounts or letters similar to those of the Cely, Johnson and Heritage families that enlighten us about the workings of staplers and graziers, or the tenant farmers that Christopher Dyer has investigated.19 We know the results of clothiers’ activity but have far more difficulty finding out how they made it all happen. In the late-fourteenth century it was usually either urban cloth merchants or cloth finishers who had purchased cloth from weavers, urban and rural, and then organised its finishing and took the cloth to the alnager: a century and a half later it was increasingly the clothier, who then sold rural cloth to merchants in London and other provincial towns. Initially the attraction of rural cloth was its low price that came from lower labour costs and sometimes the efficiency of rural fulling mills over urban fulling by foot. Clothiers’ marketing role made sense because someone had to assemble rural cloth, leaving weavers, fullers and shearmen free to weave, full and shear the cloth. But from 1450 onwards there was increasing pressure from overseas merchants to raise quality. To accomplish this many clothiers also organised the production of cloth, from start to finish; and it was this restructuring that made rural cloth so competitive. It is therefore useful to identify two types of clothier, the merchant clothier and the complete clothier.20 The merchant clothier bought cloth from the weaver or fuller, perhaps had it piece-dyed, sheared and packed, and then sold it to a merchant in a distant market. This replicated the role that the merchant draper had performed in larger clothmaking towns. The complete clothier controlled cloth production. He started by buying wool and then either supervised, or brought in house, all production processes. There was a further distinction between wealthy leading complete

218  The Clothiers’ Century, 1450–1550 clothiers who would sell the cloth mostly in London and the smaller, less capitalised complete clothiers, who might be no wealthier than successful weavers, and sold their cloth to larger clothiers with superior distribution networks.21 As a rough generalisation the complete clothier made highquality and margin broadcloth and kersey that he sold in London; the merchant clothier handled price-sensitive coarse broadcloth and kersey, dozens and straits, much of which was sold domestically. The one exception was narrow cloths ¾ yard wide—frieze, cottons, linings and rugs— that were woven in the countryside but mostly finished and sold by urban craftsmen and merchants from Welsh border towns, and in the sixteenth century from Manchester and Bolton.22 Merchant Adventurers and other merchants predominantly from London sold the cloth overseas, while drapers and others redistributed cloth across the country. Complete clothiers’ rapid rise was made possible by an almost perfect set of underlying conditions, among the most important of which was free trade. This had been legislated in 1335 when the Statute of York allowed domestic and alien merchants to trade throughout the country. Free trade allowed a national market concentrated on London to emerge, its merchants sourcing cloths from different regions.23 Successful clothiers in each region exploited their advantages in wool and other raw materials, organisation, labour costs and proximity to markets. Clothiers also benefited from an absence of industry regulation. Until the sixteenth century most towns ensured that its weavers and fullers sold their cloth to merchants, and clothworking guilds had strict rules on the number of apprentices and servants that limited the size of their operations.24 In contrast, there were few institutional barriers to becoming a clothier. A weaver or fuller could become a merchant, a merchant could organise production, and a sheep farmer could become a yarnmaster, and then a clothmaker. Small-tenant farmers who raised sheep might organise carders and spinners, and then hire weavers and fullers to make cloth.25 The leading Stowmarket clothier in the 1460s, Robert Cake, also worked his land of more than a virgate, with his wife and three sons.26 The first clothiers in the Kentish Weald were landowners.27Lords of the manor often welcomed clothmaking’s contribution to revenue. Lavenham was a manor of the Earl of Oxford, delegating its administration to six headboroughs whom he appointed.28 In Newbury the Winchcombes met with no opposition as they set up workshops in the town.29 The town’s textile industry remained unregulated until 1596 when the borough was incorporated, with ordinances regulating trade and industry passed in the following year.30 In small towns it was readily apparent that clothiers brought employment, trade and investment to the community, so they were encouraged rather than restricted. At High Wycombe a law was passed in 1511 that any weaver, fuller or dyer who ‘hindered’ a clothier was to be fined.31

The Clothiers’ Century, 1450–1550 219 Free trade encouraged competition since there were no legislated barriers to entry, a rising market encouraged new clothiers to an area, and in many parts of the country labour could be readily found, raw materials easily accessed, and water rights leased for fulling mills. Landlords like Sir John Fastolf encouraged clothmaking at Castle Combe, Wiltshire, as it meant higher entry fines, and he even taxed annually those working on the manor. Success attracted clothworkers from outside the manor, and clothiers even had to build houses for them. There was no limit to the size of the operation that a clothier might establish. The largest clothiers might engage up a substantial workforce, as it took 30–40 persons to make a single broadcloth, and his production might be four or more broadcloths a week. The rapid increase in demand and a rise in quality were two interdependent factors that encouraged the growth of rural clothmaking. English cloth exports rose from 33,360 cloths a year in the 1460s to 111,950 cloths in 1530s, a rise of 335 per cent, but the value of those equivalent broadcloths rose from £33,380 in the 1460s to £314,650 in the 1530s, almost a tenfold increase.32 For 100 years the market expanded with few setbacks which provided a continuous stream of opportunity which the enterprising clothier strove to grasp. Some of this growth can be attributed to an improvement in the economy after the mid-fifteenth century depression, and treaties which guaranteed broader access to continental markets; but it was also the greater value and quality of English cloth and a broadening of product offerings that drove export sales. Further, the domestic market, which was larger than the export market, also grew with rising standards of living, more people buying commercially made cloth rather than making homespun, changes in fashion and eventually as a result of population growth.33 Improvement in the overall quality and reputation of English exported cloth from 1400 to 1550 is unmistakable. In the 1390s the Hanse had turned to rural clothmakers to find cheap, narrow straits and exported broadcloth from eastern ports that was of relatively low quality.34 In the 1440s Italians were still mostly buying cheap westerns at 26s a cloth and far fewer bastards, probably white cloths, at 38s 2d from the western counties.35 Forty-five years later, aliens exporting through London in 1488–9 were mostly buying coloured broadcloths with a set price of 60s and, in far fewer quantities, white broadcloths at 40s, coloured westerns at 40s, white westerns at 30s and bastards at 26s 8d.36 At the same time Suffolk was making the transition from cheap, narrow cloth to quality coloured broadcloth. In the next century quality kersey became Antwerp’s second English cloth import after standard broadcloth; and English weavers in Worcester, Glemsford, Coggeshall, Reading and the Kentish Weald wove superfine broadcloth that challenged the finest cloth from Bruges, Leiden or Armentières.

220  The Clothiers’ Century, 1450–1550

Complete Clothiers’ Transformation of Rural Clothmaking Complete clothiers organised the rural transition from making coarse to quality cloth. To accomplish this they had to divert scarce capital from financing trade to production which urban merchants had almost always avoided. Large-scale production therefore had to have been as profitable as trade or growing sheep to attract capital. Many clothiers were based in small towns but their fulling operations were often beside rural streams and they depended on carders, spinners, weavers and fullers in the countryside. Once one clothier had become successful other clothiers would be attracted, so that a cluster of clothiers developed along river systems, creating some economies of scale and healthy competition that helped lower prices and raise quality.37 Complete clothiers were able to adjust their business operation to fit market needs: they had to supervise each stage of production and distribution but they rarely needed to conduct all production processes in house. It was a mixture of the putting-out system where all processes were subcontracted, and the domestic system in which work was carried out in house.38 There were isolated examples of a factory system, but these were unusual as the capital investment and operational inflexibility usually offset any benefits from economies of scale.39 Leading complete clothiers making quality cloth had one thing in common: they operated a wool warehouse. Skills in weaving, fulling and finishing were of little value if yarn quality was poor. Clothiers were able to produce consistent quality thread by sourcing the appropriate wools from a distance if necessary, carefully sorting them, and then organising an army of spinners. Half the hours to make standard finished broadcloth were in yarn preparation, and most of the work was done by spinsters who usually combined spinning with household and agricultural work.40 Some clothiers showed their appreciation in their wills. In 1486 Thomas Spring II left the substantial sum of £66 13s 4d to his spinners, fullers and weavers.41 In 1539 the Cranbrook clothier, Stephen Draner, left £30 to his spinners and weavers.42 The best documented organisation of spinners was a Newbury cloth workhouse in the 1620s and 1630s, with an output of four broadcloths a week. The wool was sorted, washed, dyed, carded and oiled in the workhouse and then delivered every two weeks to six spinning houses in the surrounding villages up to twenty miles from Newbury, as well as in Newbury itself.43 Approximately seventy spinners were paid between 2d and 4d/lb depending on thread quality to feed weavers at the workhouse and produce additional yarn for sale. There may also have been cost savings as spinners were trained to produce a carded, wheel-spun warp thread that made an all-carded woollen. Carding and wheel-spinning of wefts on the Great Wheel had largely replaced combing and spinning with a distaff and spindle in the

The Clothiers’ Century, 1450–1550 221 fourteenth century. It is likely that all warps except for superior cloths were wheel spun by the mid-sixteenth century.44 The 1552 cloth act specifically identifies Coggeshalls and Glainsfords handiwarps, fine white cloths from western Suffolk and Essex whose warp was still spun with a distaff and spindle. However, the rate and manner of diffusion of carded and wheel-spun warps is unknown. A new spinning wheel, the Saxony wheel, permitted the continuous drafting, twisting and winding-on of the yarns, and can be traced back to 1475, and was clearly used for woollen warps and wefts in the early sixteenth century.45 Armentières in western Flanders had mastered how to make an all-carded fine woollen during the sixteenth century.46 The first direct reference to an all-carded English woollen is at Norwich in 1502, where woollen weavers’ ordinances declared that low warp-thread count, narrow cloths (350 warp threads per yard) were all wheel spun.47 The Saxony wheel provided substantial improvements in productivity but it was used more extensively in the linen industry, and it may have been that spinners had been trained to produce warp thread using the Great Wheel. Clothiers therefore involved themselves in yarn preparation at a time when there were substantial opportunities to improve spinning productivity, whether it was on the Great or Saxony wheel. Leading clothiers making coloured cloth operated dyehouses, and almost all surviving clothier inventories before 1550 included dyeing operations. This gave clothiers an added advantage over urban dyers because they could dye in-the-wool, whereas merchants buying unfinished cloth would dye-in-the-piece. By the mid-sixteenth century most Suffolk and Kent broadcloth and much Newbury kersey was dyed blue with woad in-the-wool and then some of it would be re-dyed in-the-piece either locally, at London or on the continent. Wool dyeing provided a more consistent colour as different batches of wool could be intertwined. Woad dyeing required no mordant to set the dye, and was the cheapest and most widespread form of dyeing, with considerable savings in firewood and labour costs in the countryside. Clothier dyehouses were to be expected in Suffolk, Kent and Berkshire where coloured cloth predominated, but it was not as customary to find them in the West Country where most production was white unfinished broadcloth. In 1472 Walter and Joan Mayhew of Croscombe, Somerset, were woad and madderdyeing their wool; in 1480 Richard Rychards of Dursley, Gloucestershire, specialised in red cloth as he had madder and alum in his dyehouse as well as red cloth in his warehouse.48 Castlecombes and stroudwaters had a reputation for reds, and there was some cloth dyeing in the West Country to meet domestic demand. Of all rural clothmaking areas it was Kent that built its reputation on the quality of its coloured broadcloth. Stephen Draner, the Cranbrook clothier who died in 1539, had woad, madder and alum worth £25 3s 4d and blue wool worth £6.49 As almost all kerseys were sold dyed and finished, sixteenth-century Newbury fine

222  The Clothiers’ Century, 1450–1550 kersey clothiers also based their reputation at least in part on their dyeing proficiency.50 John Winchcombe bought up most of the Southampton woad in 1539–40, reducing his excise duties in return for shipping his kersey there.51 The other process that clothiers selling coloured cloth often brought in house was shearing and dressing in order to standardise quality prior to sale. The quality of raising the nap and shearing it, and the number of times this was done, determined the final feel of the cloth.52 Thomas Ravyn, from Needham Market Suffolk, for example, had four pairs of shears and habicks, hooks required to secure the cloth on the shearing board, in his 1538 inventory.53 There is no evidence that clothiers had any difficulty attracting weavers, and many became dependant on clothiers for continuous work. In Suffolk we can see the decline in independent weavers in debt actions recorded in the plea rolls in the second half of the fifteenth century as their debts were replaced by those of clothiers.54 There was evidence of clothiers’ domination of the industry as early as the 1520s. In 1525, when the proposed Amicable Grant taxation met with stirrings of rebellion as many clothworkers were unemployed, the Duke of Norfolk summoned the leading Suffolk clothiers, including Thomas Spring, to help him solve the problem.55 Three years later, when the slowdown in the overseas cloth trade created unemployment in March 1528, the Duke of Norfolk met with forty leading clothiers at Nayland, Suffolk, to encourage them to continue production.56 In May clothiers complained that they could not sell their cloth, nor could they find the oil necessary to spin their wools.57 A few clothiers became producers on a large scale. John Winchcombe was reputed to have run a weaving shed with 200 looms, and William Stumpe was said to have been the primary contributor to Malmesbury’s production of as many as 3,000 cloths, but these figures are probably inflated, although they do reflect an effort to ramp up production in the boom times of the 1530s and 1540s.58 The growing strength and concentration among clothiers caused friction with weavers. Suffolk and Essex weavers complained in 1539 that clothiers had looms in their own homes and employed their own weavers and fullers, and were pricing their cloths so low that it forced weavers to become clothiers’ servants.59 Kent weavers petitioned that weavers be restricted to a single loom, and that an arbitration system be set up to resolve friction over quality or payment conflicts.60 In 1554 clothiers were restricted to a single loom which curtailed any further development of a rural factory system.61 The initial attraction of rural cloth was its lower cost. It was simply cheaper to live in the countryside, and most work was based on piece work rather than wages that forced efficiencies. Plentiful firewood was also an important cost saving for fullers and dyers. If cost of production, together with the variety, availability and cost of wools was a critical advantage, so was the allocation of capital which determined the size

The Clothiers’ Century, 1450–1550 223 of business and how it was managed. A poem on wool and cloth, at the time of Edward IV, reflected reality: ‘the poor have the labour, the rich the money’.62 This was because wages and prices for making cloth were either regulated or reduced to low levels by market forces, while sale and distribution were less regulated and more profitable. Suffolk weavers, petitioning the government in 1539, complained that, ‘the clothiers concluded and agreed among themselves to hold and pay one price for weaving of the said cloths, which price is too little for the petitioners to sustain their households upon, even by working day and night, holy day and work day. Many are reduced to become other men’s servants’.63 The poor had no power and suffered for it. The preamble to the 1465 cloth act claimed that ‘labourers have been driven to take a great part of their wages in pins, girdles, and other unprofitable wares’, which was echoed in a fifteenth-century rhyme:64 By merchants and clothmakers, for God’s sake take keep, The which maketh the poor to mourn and weep; Little they take for their labour, yet half is merchandise: Alas! For truth, it is a great pity.

Capital and Credit Every clothier and merchant required significant capital to start and grow his business, and there was a long production chain from grazier to clothier to merchant that was greased by credit. Clothiers were financed with mostly rural capital, at a time when access to credit was under pressure in the fifteenth, but easing in the sixteenth century, if we are to believe that credit availability moved in step with the money supply.65 One crucial difference between urban and rural clothmaking was that most urban capital was allocated to finance trade, but in the countryside capital was also allocated to manufacture. Both London merchants and clothiers usually had more money tied up in credit than they had in raw materials and cloth inventory. Eleven London merchant probate inventories from 1486 to 1559 show that hopeful debts (current debts) accounted for 41 per cent of moveable wealth compared with business stock of 24 per cent.66 A 1535 revised assessment of Londoners’ wealth for a subsidy, probably ordered by Thomas Cromwell because he thought that the prior assessment was low, showed that debts were 75 per cent greater than all other moveable goods.67 The average value of eight surviving clothier probate inventories between 1480 and 1539 was £541.68 Hopeful debts accounted for 49 per cent of the inventory; business stock and wool 29 per cent; ready money, plate and jewels 15 per cent; and household goods and apparel just 7 per cent. Another later inventory of John Bawden of Horsemonden, Kent, in 1564 indicated that two thirds of his business investment was in raw materials, wages owed and cloth, and a third in financing his cloth trade.69

224  The Clothiers’ Century, 1450–1550 Clothmaking became more capital intensive in the sixteenth century as the market expanded and competition concentrated the market in fewer hands. In the fifteenth century it had been possible to become a clothier with perhaps only £15–20, and a kerseymaker for less. A clothier needed to buy the wool, oil to grease it, and sometimes dyes and mordants; and to have sufficient money in working capital to pay wages prior to collecting money once the cloth was sold. The wool to make standard broadcloth might cost 15s and a kersey a third of that. If the clothier’s output was only twenty-five broadcloths a year he would need the capital to buy oil and wool for about four cloths that might cost £5, and perhaps £10 tied up in equipment and working capital. To own or lease a fulling mill with tenters, or to buy the equipment and dyes to run a dyehouse, required considerable financial resources. In the sixteenth century it has been estimated that it took £60 to be an independent clothier in the Kentish Weald making fine woollens if he bought his own dyes and wool and owned a tenter, but who likely sold his cloths immediately for ready money; and £100 if he also needed to extend credit to his buyers.70 In the Weald clothiers often had to wait six months for payment.71 William Page of Devizes, who sold £100 in cloth early in the sixteenth century, was paid half at the end of the year, but had to wait another year for the other half.72 The Bristol merchant, John Smythe bought his cloth from the clothier on the basis of ‘halff year and halff year’ which enabled him to finally pay off his debt only after the cloth had been sold.73 Leading clothiers were well capitalised as they carried large inventories of wool, cloth and yarn. Walter Mayhew, a Somerset clothier, in 1472 had more than £11 in wool and yarn, £10 in finished cloth, almost £3 in dyehouse equipment, £30 in woad, and another £3 in shears, teasels, oil and soap, for a total of £57.74 Robert Rychards, a Gloucestershire clothier, in 1480 left £44 10s in wool, £62 in cloth in his warehouse and another £54 in London, £2 in looms, £8 in dyes and dyehouse equipment, adding up to £170 10s.75 John Reygnam, a Suffolk farmer and clothier, had £6 in wool, £54 in cloth, £10 in dyes and mordants, and debts of more than £280 that he hoped his executors would collect.76 Nicholas Frere, a Newbury kerseymaker, in 1495 had only £1 in yarn and oil, two narrow looms worth 10s, but £63 in kerseys, and around £50 in debts owed to him.77 William Cuffe of Salisbury, who died in 1500, had three broadlooms and two other looms in his weaving house worth £3, both wool and wool oil each worth £7 in his woolhouse and larder, yarn worth £13½ together with £3 of woad in his yarn house, £157 of finished cloth in the warehouse, as well as another £40½ of coarse ray cloth in a back chamber, for a total of £228 tied up in raw materials and finished product.78 The leading Cranbrook clothier of his time, Stephen Draner, in 1539 had £38 in wool and dyes, £11 in dyehouse equipment, £195 in cloth and £658 in the difference between the money owed to him less the money owing, so it seems that he had £902 tied up in his business.79

The Clothiers’ Century, 1450–1550 225 Offering credit was risky. Inventories were often classified into hopeful debts, presumably those that were in good standing; doubtful debts, those which were overdue but there was still some reasonable expectation of collection; and desperate debts, those that today we would call bad debts except that they appear to have been rarely written off, presumably in the somewhat forlorn hope that one day collection might be possible. Desperate debts therefore often represented the accumulated uncollectible debts over the life of the business. Offsetting hopeful debts were debts owing. The Suffolk clothier, Walter Coopar, was operating with a high level of risk. On his death in 1495, with a total inventory of £70, he had £21 of it in hopeful debts, but at the same time he owed £32, while recording an additional £44 in presumably unrecoverable desperate debts.80 Small operators’ shortage of working capital meant that they had to strike a dangerous balance between the credit offered to customers and what they owed for raw materials and to other suppliers. John Scoton of Nayland, Suffolk, in 1539 had debts to be collected of only £4 compared with the £31 he owed.81 Start-up capital, for the most part, was found locally rather than through investment by urban merchants. There are no clothier accounts to enlighten us about how capital was managed, but the wool dealer and grazier, John Heritage, at the turn of the sixteenth century shows how he shrewdly used his farming capital to place a down payment on wool, which then gave him access to credit until he sold the wool off to staplers in London or to clothiers. Among his buyers was Robert Pecocke, the brother of the famous clothier, Thomas Paycock of Coggeshall, Essex.82 At Castle Combe, for example, a clothier with a little initial capital, growing demand, security of employment and re-investment of profits in the industry could achieve success. In 1435 the manor council estimated William Hayne’s moveable assets to be worth £2,000 on his death, although this was adjusted to £667, after £52 had been given to a builder of his house and a contribution made to the new church tower. It cost his wife £100 to take up her husband’s properties, and re-marry.83 The one exception to the rule that rural clothmaking was locally financed seems to have been the Suffolk industry in the 1460s and 1470s as capital came from both London merchants and local landowners.84 London merchants may have driven the transformation from low-priced narrow cloths to higherquality coloured broadcloth.85 John Forthe of Hadleigh was a merchant and landowner with residences and shops in London; John Stanesby and John Motte were London fishmongers. Motte employed a team of spinners, fullers and weavers; and Stanesby twelve Italians at Bildeston. A London grocer, John Kyng, made cloth at Shelley. As rural clothmaking evolved in the fifteenth century, available capital made the difference between those who could afford to offer credit and therefore control the sale of their own cloth, and those less fortunate who were forced to sell to larger clothiers. Successful weavers in the Kentish

226  The Clothiers’ Century, 1450–1550 Weald were usually also farmers, and this often provided them with other income and access to credit that enabled them to accept late payment for their cloths.86 Kerseymakers seem to have required less capital than broadcloth clothiers, because production was organised around the small or part-time weaver. In the West Riding it took a week for six people to sort, card and spin the wool, weave and shear one kersey, not much more work than for an extended family. The cloth might be finished and sold by others.87 The equipment for one petty Wealden clothier in 1579 was worth only £5.88 Small clothiers in the Weald seem to have few debts when they died probably because they could not afford to offer credit.89 Independent, but with little capital, it was difficult for them to expand, so they frequently combined farming with part-time clothmaking. Those who transformed clothmaking in the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, its clothiers and merchants, were self-made men from mostly middling backgrounds, as were the tenant farmers who struggled to make a profit as the demand for grain fell. Few came from great wealth, as did Thomas Gresham who was the son of Richard Gresham, probably the richest Londoner of his time. Many rich merchants were the second sons of gentlemen, husbandmen or provincial merchants looking to make their fortune in London, and had all painstakingly learned their trade through seven-year apprenticeships.90 Clothiers’ and merchants’ parents were not without resources as overseas merchants needed capital to set up in trade, and many clothmakers’ families owned some land, described by Michael Zell as ‘petty landowners’.91 It was the middling sort that could organise a large number of local clothmakers and at the same time have the contacts to find distant markets for their cloth. A few clothiers were the sons of weavers and fullers who had some success but it was frequently the second generation of clothmakers that brought great family prosperity. Family was obviously important because it set the course of the young clothier or merchant, and was often there to assist and fall back on as the apprentice became a clothier or merchant. As the industry grew and consolidated in the sixteenth century, more capital was required to set up in business. But fortunes were made not so much from well-off beginnings, but from the patient re-investment of profits in the business over time. With 139 merchants shipping more than forty cloths to Antwerp in 1514–19, and 119 clothiers in the Babergh Hundred in 1522 making and selling cloth, this was a brutally competitive business, with only a few achieving great success.92 It required not only capital, but good health, training, negotiating skill, determination and an expert analysis of risk.

Selling Rural Cloth The advantage developed by all leading clothiers was their reputation, their network of buyers and the capital needed to deliver cloth to

The Clothiers’ Century, 1450–1550 227 London, and their ability to extend credit. Thomas Gresham tended to buy his cloth from a small number of trustworthy large clothiers in the late 1540s; Worcesters from Hugh Asbyes, 6,000 kerseys from a few Newbury clothiers and northern kerseys from Gilbert Ramsden.93 The cloth mark was the clothiers’ brand name, and could have considerable value.94 In 1536 all clothiers and weavers had to mark their cloths, although this had become common practice before then.95 Capital for investment and management of the business separated large from small clothiers. The largest clothiers wholesaled the cloths of smaller clothiers and independent weavers.96 The time and expense of moving cloth to London made it more efficient to consolidate marketing of cloth, since it would have been necessary to start off early in the week from the West Country to be at Blackwell Hall for its opening on Thursday at noon. A network of fairs across the country provided clothiers and merchants with an alternative way to market cloth.97 Key to this reputation was consistent quality. This had been achieved in continental towns since the end of the thirteenth century through strict ordinances and close supervision of production processes. It was no mean accomplishment for clothiers to establish comparable standards across broad areas of the country with little regulation other than the marking of weavers’ cloths. Thomas Kytson in the 1530s could go to any village in the clothmaking districts of Somerset and Wiltshire and buy almost exactly the same quality product. In the 1552 cloth act all regional cloths had to be of exactly the same weight, and consequently of consistent manufacture. The fines for infractions tell us that most clothiers selling cloth in London delivered the exact weight, and those who were fined were only 1lb off, a remarkable level of precision given that the West Country clothier made standard whites from 84lb to 90lb of wool and ended up with a cloth of 64lb.98 Leading clothiers had direct relationships with London merchants, thereby avoiding Blackwell Hall. Thomas Howell, the London draper, dealt with many clothiers in southern Suffolk and Essex in the 1520s, as did the draper Humphrey Monmouth, who sold Suffolk cloth to alien merchants.99 Many London mercers and drapers would have had strong provincial connections since few of them had actually been born in the capital. For example, John Quarles, who was warden of the drapers in 1550–1, Merchant Adventurer and founding member of the Muscovy Company set up in the 1550s, had strong connections with Reading.100 Clothiers could also sell to alien merchants who controlled some 40 per cent of cloth exports. For example, the Trowbridge clothier James Terumber sold twenty-nine unfinished cloths to a Venice merchant in 1463.101 Clothiers were illegally selling cloths to Hansards from houses opposite the London Steelyard on the Dowgate waterfront.102 William Stumpe had his own factor in London.103 Some clothiers went as far as to join London companies. John Greneway of Tiverton, Devon, joined the London

228  The Clothiers’ Century, 1450–1550 Drapers’ Company and the Merchant Adventurers while he also shipped cloths from Devon ports, some of them in his own ship.104 At least one clothier is known to have personally sold his cloth in European markets. John Sandford of Stonehouse, Gloucestershire, was an exporter of cloth to Germany and had a residence and agency in that city, where he died in 1560 during one of his periodic visits.105

Clothiers’ Achievement Competition between urban and rural clothmakers gradually evolved into that between one clothier and another, and between regions with differing costs for wools, labour and distribution. In an unregulated marketplace and with much of the trade passing through London, leading clothiers scrambled to raise quality, create reputations for their cloths and establish direct relationships with London merchants. Over time regions specialised to remain competitive and to become known for particular types of cloth. In the late-fourteenth century merchants usually looked for unfinished rural cloth that could be dyed and finished in towns, usually low price and quality cloth. By the late-fifteenth century many clothiers were able to dye and finish their own cloth, and were no longer dependant on finishing in provincial towns. Each area sought to develop a brand reputation: castlecombes, guilfords, winchcombes (the only cloth that was named after a clothier rather than a place), stockbreds, penistones, stroudwaters, coggeshalls, glemsfords, bridgewaters, tauntons and tavistocks. Clothiers in the sixteenth century were able to make cloths as good as any made in towns. Kentish cloths from the Weald were among the highest-quality coloured broadcloths found anywhere, and were associated by the mid-sixteenth century with fashionable new colours.106 Winchcombes were the finest kerseys sold at Antwerp. In 1547 William Damsell, from Antwerp, concluded that although there was ‘wondrous little profit to be had presently in cloths or kersies, it shall be best to have hither 1,000 of Winchcombe’s kersies’.107 Historians have noted that clothiers clustered together in all the principal clothmaking areas, and modern industrial clustering has been shown to benefit from both competition and cooperation that produced efficiencies and high quality. It worked perhaps even more effectively in the early-modern rural cloth industry. In the absence of any detailed study of a community of clothiers, what follows remains a hypothesis. It is easy to see how a successful clothier would attract others to an area, like bees to the hive, but less easy to perceive how the original clothier might benefit. A complete clothier had capital invested in both production and trade, and therefore could grow by re-investing his scarce capital in either one or the other. He could add to his raw materials, workforce and inventory or he could finance additional trade by buying others’ cloth. To foster greater growth he might encourage young clothiers to come to the area,

The Clothiers’ Century, 1450–1550 229 perhaps selling them wool or yarn, dyeing and fulling services, requiring them to make the same quality product and then selling their cloth. The young clothier got his start, his foot-to-the-fire apprenticeship, while the older clothier used his capital to expand the amount of cloth he sold which in turn reinforced his reputation. We know that the industry consolidated over time so practice favoured the wealthy clothier. The main reason for this must have been that selling became more profitable than making cloth in a rising market. At some point inefficiencies creeped into production as it became more difficult to manage an increased number of dependant workers, while the more he sold the higher his reputation became, and this attracted larger overseas merchants to trust his reputation and buy more cloths from fewer clothiers. The only time when there is evidence of a factory system was in the 1540s when demand rose so quickly that the leading clothiers attempted to mass produce cloths. Clustering was therefore an engine for growth which could favour both the small and the large clothier, capital usually favouring the large clothier who had greater flexibility and could accept a higher risk level. Clothiers re-organised dyeing practice. In towns it had been logical to in-the-piece dye because merchants bought unfinished cloth and then put the cloth out to dyers to customise the colour. As the balance of power slowly shifted towards clothiers, they frequently made the colour choice, often dyed the wools in house or put the wools out for woading, and then maddered the cloth to make a wide range of reds, blues, greys, tawneys, browns and blacks. We can see from London fines between 1554 and 1585 that a number of rural areas made dyed, finished cloth.108 Suffolk made blues; Stroudwater and Castle Combe were known for their reds. Kentish cloths were nearly always dyed, as were northern kerseys, and Manchester frieze. The colours of fine Kentish cloth were predominantly russet, sad new, new, grey, iron grey, turkey, rats, sheeps, horseflesh, blue, blue-brown, black and medley, a subtle palette from dyeing with woad and madder. Clothiers tended to specialise in a single colour, or a narrow range of colours based on woad and madder. In the sixteenth century, for the first time, dyeing became a national competitive advantage, and it stemmed both from low cost in labour, in firewood, but also in the quality of dyeing, especially in the Kentish Weald. Although white unfinished broadcloth remained the bedrock of Merchant Adventurers’ exports, there was a steady increase in coloured cloth. Most Suffolk broadcloth and quality kersey was exported as blue cloth by the mid-sixteenth century. An estimate at the end of the century placed white cloth exports at 60 per cent and coloured at 40 per cent of the total.109 Clothiers never monopolised rural broadcloth production. Some clothiers were large-scale operators, outsourcing production to a large web of both part- and full-time men and women, and organising their own marketing; but there were many that could hardly be distinguished from the successful independent weaver who relied on a few spinners and carders.

230  The Clothiers’ Century, 1450–1550 There was usually room for the independent weaver, fuller and shearman. Coarse cloth, both broad and narrow, was more likely to be woven by independent weavers. In Suffolk, over a four-year period in the 1460s, of the 577 people taking cloth to the alnager, 303 presented less than sixteen cloths; 121 sixteen to thirty-one cloths, most of them part-time weavers; and 153 more than thirty-one cloths, some of them full-time weavers and some clothiers. Only two presented, on average, more than 150 cloths a year.110 In Yorkshire’s West Riding, government commissioners identified 542 weavers or clothiers in 1533–4 from all over the West Riding who were illegally making coarse cloth using refuse wool and flocks.111 It is estimated that there were 500–550 independent weavers in the Kentish Weald.112 Clothiers’ entrepreneurship and large-scale operations bought great wealth to a few. Clothmakers were, on average, far wealthier than other rural trades in the principal clothmaking areas (Table  10.1). Thomas Spring was by far the richest with lands in the Babergh Hundred alone worth £97 a year, his moveables worth five times more than the next wealthiest, Thomas Smyth of Long Melford. There was a wide range of wealth among clothiers, from Thomas Spring to those who were no richer than weavers. Almost all weavers, fullers and shearmen probably worked for wealthier clothmakers. Four dyers, eight fullers, nine shearmen and thirty-one weavers were assessed to have no moveables at all. Fulling mills may have been owned or leased by the largest clothiers who then hired fullers to do the work. It seems that there were probably fulling mills in Bures, Glemsford, Melford and Nayland, but not in Lavenham.

Table 10.1 Wealth comparison between trades in the Babergh Hundred, Suffolk, in 1522 Trade

Number of artisans

Average wealth

Clothmakers Assessment of more than £300 £100–299 £50–99 £20–49 £10–19 £ 5–9 Less than £5 Dyers Fullers Shearmen Weavers

103 7 14 15 31 24 8 4 12 40 26 108

£97 16s  9d

Total

289

36 12   9

       

 3 11   0  2 16   8  2 7 11  2 14   2

Source: J. Pound, The military survey of 1522 for Babergh Hundred, Suffolk Record Society, 28 (1993).

The Clothiers’ Century, 1450–1550 231 Similarly only a few places had dyehouses. There were fewer shearmen than fullers, probably because some of the broadcloth was finished in London or elsewhere. Some clothiers’ wealth was truly impressive, equal to all but the very largest overseas cloth merchants. Great success was not easily achieved in one generation: it took three generations of Springs at Lavenham almost a century to build up their enormous wealth, much of it bequeathed in 1523 by Thomas Spring III to his eldest son, who then gave up clothmaking to manage his vast estates, and was knighted. At a time when a knight was expected to have an income of £40 a year, and the median knight’s income in 1524 around £180, Thomas Spring III had a landed income of £370–80 a year from 27 manors, and lands in 130 places when he died in 1523, and was assessed to be worth £3,200 in 1522.113 William Stumpe of Malmesbury had built up extensive estates in the Cotswolds and was able to pay £1,517 for the site of Malmesbury Abbey after its dissolution. His son was knighted during his lifetime.114 John Winchcombe II left lands worth £158 a year when he died in 1558.115 In the Kentish Weald at Cranbrook, six clothiers had moveable wealth of £100 or more in 1524–5 subsidy returns compared with eight in Lavenham.116 The departure of one clothier family from the industry, usually when the male line petered out or sons decided to give up clothmaking, could have significant repercussions on the economy of a whole town. Lavenham’s decline began soon after the death of Thomas Spring III. Newbury’s slide can be attributed to the Winchcombes and Dolmans leaving the industry in the 1560s and 1570s. The industry in Steeple Ashton, Wiltshire, may have declined because the sons of the clothier, Robert Long, moved to Trowbridge.117 Leading clothiers were philanthropic, leaving an imprint on the landscape with their contributions to chapels, churches and guildhalls. One historian ventured the opinion that, ‘the distribution of the finest examples of perpendicular architecture in England coincide closely though not exactly where the clothing industry was planted’.118 Along the Stour and its tributaries the mills that fulled the cloth have fallen down, but the Suffolk guildhalls and perpendicular churches at Hadleigh, Lavenham and Long Melford proudly testify to the wealth of its clothiers. Fifteenthcentury Suffolk clothiers paid for the market cross at Lavenham, and gave £80 to Bildeston church.119 Three generations of Springs, and many other clothiers, gave generously to maintain and then rebuild Lavenham’s church.120 At Coggeshall, in Essex, the imposing house of Thomas Paycocke still dominates West Street with his merchant’s mark carved on the front as well as within, and his monumental brass still rests in the local church, where he had built an aisle and chantry.121 William Stumpe’s house at Malmesbury still stands. The early-sixteenth century Devon clothiers, John Lane and John Greneway, both built chapels at Cullompton and Tiverton, respectively, and Lane decorated them with

232  The Clothiers’ Century, 1450–1550 the symbols of his trade: sculptures of handles with teasles that raised the nap of the cloth, shearmen’s shears that cropped the nap, and his merchant’s mark that he had woven into the selvedge of his cloths.122 Robert Long and Walter Lucas built the aisle of the parish church at Steeple Ashton in Wiltshire, and John Stokes an additional north aisle at Seend.123 William Stumpe paid for the remaining buildings of Malmesbury Abbey within a few years of its dissolution, enabling the abbey nave to become the parish church.124 A  clothier founded a grammar school at Manchester.125 Nicholas Amor, surveying clothiers’ welfare in latefifteenth century Suffolk, found that a quarter of the rich clothiers in their wills made substantial provision for at least a year to those who had contributed to their success.126

Notes 1. S. Broadberry, B.M.S. Campbell, A. Klein, M. Overton and B. van Leeuwen, British economic growth 1270–1870 (Cambridge, 2015), 20. 2. S. Broadberry, B. Campbell, A. Klein, M. Overton and B. van Leewen, ‘British economic growth, 1270–1870: An output-based approach’, Working Paper (2011), 34. 3. J. Humphries, Jane and J. Weisdorf, Unreal wages: A new empirical foundation for the study of living standards and economic growth in England, 1260–1860, discussion papers in economic history, vol. 147 (University of Oxford, Oxford, 2016), 20, table A1. 4. J. Hatcher, ‘Unreal wages: Long-run living standards and the “golden age” of the fifteenth century’, in B. Dodds and C.D. Liddy, eds., Commercial activity, markets and entrepreneurs in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2011), 1–24; C. Dyer, ‘A golden age rediscovered: Labourers’ wages in the fifteenth century’, in M. Allen and D. Coffman, eds., Money, prices and wages (Basingstoke, 2015), 180–95. 5. B.M.S. Campbell, ‘The land’, in R. Horrox and M. Ormrod, eds., A social history of England, 1200–1500 (Cambridge, 2006), 221. 6. Broadberry et al, Economic growth, 34; : charted in Broadberry et al, Economic Growth, 114, 136, 161. 7. Broadberry, et al., Economic growth, 346–50. 8. Oldland, ‘Economic impact of clothmaking on rural society, 1300–1550’, in M. Allen and M. Davies, eds., Medieval merchants and money: Essays in honour of James L. Bolton (London, 2016), 229. 9. S.R. Epstein, Freedom and growth: The rise of states and markets in Europe, 1300–1750 (London, 2000), 106–11. 10. E.M. Carus-Wilson, ‘Evidences of industrial growth on some fifteenth-century manors’, EcHR, 2nd series, 2 (1959), 198–205. 11. E. Carus-Wilson, ‘The woollen Industry before 1550’, in E. Crittall and R.D. Pugh, eds., in VCH, Wiltshire, vol. 4 (London, 1959), 122–3. 12. L. Poos, Rural society after the Black Death: Essex, 1350–1525 (Cambridge, 1991), 59. 13. Rot. Parl., vol. 3, 320. 14. P.J.P. Goldberg, Women, work, and life cycle in a medieval economy: Women in York and Yorkshire c.1300–1520 (Oxford, 1992), 46; P.M. Tillott, ‘The boundaries of the City’, in P.M. Tillott, ed., VCH, City of York, vol.  1 (Oxford, 1961), 318.

The Clothiers’ Century, 1450–1550 233 15. Goldberg, Women, 46. 16. M. Bailey, The decline of serfdom in late medieval England (Woodbridge, 2014), 331–7. 17. J. Whittle, The development of agrarian capitalism: Land and labour in Norfolk 1440–1580 (Oxford, 2000), 310–13. 18. This was written prior to the publication of John Lee’s fine book on clothiers, J.S. Lee, The medieval clothier (Woodbridge, 2018). I have made no attempt to incorporate his findings. 19. A. Hanham, ed., The Cely letters, 1472–88, vol.  273 (Early English Text Society, 1975); B. Winchester, Tudor family portrait (London, 1955); C. Dyer A country merchant 1495–1520: Trading and farming at the end of the Middle Ages (Oxford 2012); C. Dyer ‘A small landowner in the fifteenth century’, Midland History, 13 (1972), 1–22; C. Dyer, ‘A Suffolk farmer in the fifteenth century’, AHR, 55 (2007), 1–22. 20. This terminology has been adopted from Kerridge; see E. Kerridge, Textile manufactures in early modern England (Manchester 1985), 176–96. 21. M. Zell, Industry in the countryside: Wealden society in the sixteenth century (Cambridge, 1994), 199; Heaton, Yorkshire, 146–9. 22. T.C. Mendenhall, The Shrewsbury drapers and the Welsh wool trade in the XVI and XVII centuries (Oxford, 1953). 23. J. Oldland, ‘London’s trade in the time of Richard III’, Ricardian, 24 (2014), 8–15. 24. H. Swanson, ‘The illusion of economic structure: Craft guilds in late medieval English towns’, P&P, 121 (1988), 29–48. 25. Carus-Wilson, ‘Evidences of industrial growth’, 202; C. Dyer, Age of transition (Oxford, 2005), 117–9. 26. N.R. Amor, ‘Merchant Adventurer or jack of all trades? The Suffolk clothier in the 1460s’, Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology, 20 (2004), 422. 27. Zell, Industry, 190. 28. D. Dymond and A. Betterton, Lavenham: 700 years of textile making (Bury St. Edmunds, 1972), 5. 29. C. Jackson, ‘The Berkshire woolen industry, 1500–1650’ (Unpub. Ph.D. thesis, University of Reading, 1993), 75–6. 30. Ibid, 79, 104. 31. C. Dyer, ‘Small towns’, CHUB, 531. 32. J. Oldland, ‘The expansion of London’s overseas trade from 1475 to 1520’, in C. Barron and A. Sutton, eds., The medieval merchant (Donington, 2014), 87. 33. Oldland, ‘Economic impact’, 232–5. 34. J. Oldland, ‘Wool and cloth production in late medieval and early Tudor England’, EcHR, 67 (2014), 35–8; Oldland, ‘Variety and quality’, 219, 246. 35. Carus-Wilson, ‘Woollen industry before 1550’, 139; H. Bradley, The views of the hosts of alien merchants 1440–1444, LRS (2012); Oldland ‘Variety and quality’, 248. 36. Oldland, ‘Variety and quality’, 249. 37. Carus-Wilson, ‘Evidences of industrial growth on some fifteenth-century manors’, 189–205; Carus-Wilson, ‘Woollen industry before 1550’, 133–7; J.E. Pilgrim, ‘The cloth industry in East Anglia’, in J. Geraint Jenkins, ed., The wool textile industry in Great Britain (London, 1972), 255; J. Langdon, Mills in the medieval economy, England 1300–1540 (Oxford, 2004), 233. 38. D. Peacock, ‘The Winchcombe family and the woollen industry in sixteenthcentury Newbury’ (Unpub. Ph.D. thesis, University of Reading, 2003), 270–5. 39. G.D. Ramsay, The English woollen industry 1500–1750 (London, 1982), 24–5. 40. C. Muldrew, ‘Th’ancient distaff and “whirling spindle”: Measuring the contribution of spinning to household earnings and the national economy in England’, EcHR, 65 (2012), 502–4.

234  The Clothiers’ Century, 1450–1550 1. Dymond and Betterton, Lavenham, 68. 4 42. TNA, PCC, Prob. 2/525. 43. C. Jackson, ed., Newbury Kendrick workhouse records 1627–1641, vol. 8 (Berkshire Record Society, 2004), xxxiii–xxxiv, lx. 44. Kerridge assumes that all sixteenth-century West Country broadcloth was wheel spun, see Kerridge, Manufactures, 14. 45. Munro, ‘Textiles’, 202–3. 46. P. Chorley, ‘The evolution of the woollen, 1300–1700’, in N. Harte, ed., The new draperies in the Low Countries and England, 1300–1800 (Oxford, 1997), 20–1; H. van der Wee, ‘The western European woollen industries, 1500–1750’, in D. Jenkins, ed., CHWT, 405. 47. Hudson and Tingay, Norwich, 105–6. 48. TNA, PCC, Prob. 2/10, 57. 49. TNA, PCC, Prob. 2/525. 50. D. Peacock, ‘Dyeing Winchcombe kersies and other kersey cloth in sixteenthcentury Newbury’, TH, 37 (2006), 187–202. By the mid-sixteenth century much of the dyed cloth sold was blue, to be re-dyed later. For example, of all the 10,855 dyed kersies, bought by Thomas Gresham from 1546 to 1549 from clothiers John Winchcombe II, his son Henry Winchcombe, Thomas Dolman I and William Bennet, 77 per cent were in various shades of blue (4,552 watchet kerseys, 2,259 blue, 1350 azure and 192 plunket). The only other colour in any quantity was red (1,241). 51. J. Hare, ‘Commodities: The cloth industry’, in M. Hicks, ed., English inland trade, 1430–1540 (Oxford, 2015), 155–6. 52. J. Munro, ‘The medieval scarlet and the economics of sartorial splendour’, in N.B. Harte and K.G. Ponting, eds., Cloth and clothing in medieval Europe (London, 1983), 31–8; J. Oldland, ‘The finishing of English woollens, 1300– 1550’, in R. Netherton and G. Owen-Crocker, eds., Medieval clothing and textiles, vol. 3 (Woodbridge, 2007), 98–102. 53. TNA, PCC, Prob. 2/212. 54. N.R. Amor, From wool to cloth: The triumph of the Suffolk clothier (Bungay, 2016), 142, 197. 55. E. Hall, The union of the two noble and illustre families of Lancastre and Yorke (London, 1809), 699–700; L&P, 4, pt. 1, #1323, # 1325, #1329, #1343. 56. L&P, 4, pt. 2, # 4044. 57. L&P, 4, pt. 2, #, 4239. 58. G.D. Ramsay, The Wiltshire woollen industry in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (London, 1965), 31–2; Kerridge, Manufactures, 196; C. Jackson, ‘Boom-time freaks or heroic pioneers? Clothing entrepreneurs in sixteenth and early seventeenth-century Berkshire’, TH, 39 (2008), 149. 59. L&P, 14, part 1, # 874; G. Unwin, ‘Woollen cloth—the old draperies’, in W. Page, VCH, Suffolk, I (London, 1911), 259. 60. BL, Cotton Ms. Titus B I, f. 197. 61. Statutes, 2&3 Ph. & Mary, c.11. 62. H.E.S. Fisher and A.R.J. Juřica, eds., Documents in English economic history: England from 1000 to 1760 (London, 1977), 28. 63. C.H. Williams, ed., English historical documents 1485–1558 (London, 1967), 1004. 64. A.R. Myers, ed., English historical documents 1327–1485 (London, 1969), 1025; H.E.S. Fisher and A.R.J. Juřica, Documents in English economic history: England from 1000 to 1760 (London, 1977), 28. 65. For the controversy over credit availability in the fifteenth century, see C. Briggs, ‘The availability of credit in the English countryside, 1400–1480’,

The Clothiers’ Century, 1450–1550 235 AHR, 56 (2008), 1–24; J. Bolton, ‘Was there a “crisis of credit” in fifteenthcentury England’, British Numismatic Journal, 81 (2011), 144–64; J. Bolton, Money in the medieval English economy, 973–1489 (Manchester, 2012), 274–95; J. Munro’s review of Bolton’s book on E.H.Net (June, 2013); P. Nightingale, ‘A crisis of credit in the fifteenth century, or of historical interpretation?’ British Numismatic Journal, 83 (2013), 149–62; C. Briggs, ‘Money and rural credit in the later Middle Ages revisited’, in M. Allen and D’Maris Coffman, eds., Money, prices and wages: Essays in honour of professor Nicholas Mayhew (Basingstoke, 2015), 129–41. 66. J. Oldland, ‘The allocation of merchant capital in early Tudor London’, EcHR, 63 (2010), 1062. 67. Ibid, 1066. 68. TNA, PCC, Prob. 2/10, 57, 87, 94, 174, 220, 233, 525; Oldland, ‘Allocation’, 1062. 69. M. Zell, ‘Credit in the pre-industrial English woollen industry’, EcHR, 49 (1996), 672–3. 70. Ibid, 210–14. 71. Ibid, 218. 72. Ramsay, Wiltshire, 27. 73. D. Sacks, The widening gate: Bristol and the Atlantic economy (Berkeley, 1991), 79. 74. TNA, PCC, Prob. 2/10. 75. TNA, PCC, Prob. 2/57. 76. TNA, PCC, Prob. 2/87. 77. TNA, PCC, Prob. 2/95. 78. TNA, PCC, Prob. 2/174. 79. TNA, PCC, Prob. 2/525. 80. TNA, PCC, Prob. 2/94. 81. TNA, PCC, Prob. 2/233. 82. Dyer, Country merchant, 118. 83. Myers, Documents, 1022–4. 84. Amor, ‘Merchant adventurer’, 414–36. 85. This probably also occurred in the fourteenth century when Bristol merchants may have developed the Somerset industry, but there is no evidence. 86. Zell, Industry, 174–5. 87. Heaton, Yorkshire, 95–6. 88. Zell, Industry, 199. 89. Ibid, 214. 90. Apprentices to late-fifteenth century London tailors and skinners, companies with a merchant livery and artisan householders, were sons of craftsmen and merchants (48%), yeoman (45%), husbandmen (29%) and gentry (25%); see S. Thrupp, The merchant class of medieval London, 1300–1500 (Ann Arbor, 1962), 217–9; S.R. Hovland, ‘Apprenticeship in later medieval London, c.1300–c.1530’ (Unpub. Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 2006), 57–62. 91. Zell, Industry, 191. 92. See Tables 11.1 and 12.2. 93. Mercers’ Hall, London, Thomas Gresham Day Book. 94. Ramsay, Wiltshire, 50–2; C. Brett, ‘Thomas Kytson and the Wiltshire clothmen 1529–1539’, Wiltshire Archaeological and History Magazine, 97 (2004), 60–2. 95. Statutes, 27 Henry VIII, c.12. 96. G.D. Ramsay, ed., John Isham mercer and Merchant Adventurer (Northamptonshire Record Society, 1962), xxvi.

236  The Clothiers’ Century, 1450–1550 97. J.S. Lee, ‘The role of fairs in late medieval England’, in M. Bailey and S. Rigby, eds., Town and countryside in the age of the Black Death: Essays in honour of John Hatcher (Turnhout, 2012), 411–14. 98. See Chapter 15 for a discussion of fines for faulty cloth brought to London. 99. Drapers Hall, Thomas Howell ledger, f.50; Britnell, ‘Suffolk’, 94–5. 100. Jackson, ‘Berkshire’, 31. 101. Carus-Wilson, ‘Woollen Industry before 1550’, 134. 102. Ramsay, Wiltshire, 26. 103. Ibid, 25. 104. E.M. Carus-Wilson, ‘The significance of the secular sculptures in the Lane chapel, Cullompton’, Medieval Archaeology, 1 (1957), 115–16. 105. R. Perry, ‘The Gloucestershire woolen industry 1100–1690’, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, 66 (1947), 112. 106. Statutes, 4&5 Ph. & Mary, c. 5. 107. S.J. Bindoff, The history of parliament: The House of Commons 1509– 1558, vol. 1 (London, 1982), 243. 108. TNA, E 159/329–90. 109. Heaton, Yorkshire, 156. 110. Amor, ‘Merchant Adventurer’, 417. 111. Heaton, Yorkshire, 134. 112. Zell, Industry, 179. 113. J.C.K. Cornwall, Wealth and society in early sixteenth century England (London, 1988), 23, 146; B. McLenaghan, The Springs of Lavenham and the Suffolk cloth trade in the XV and XVI centuries (Ipswich, 1924), 86–8. 114. Ramsay, Wiltshire, 31–7. 115. Jackson, ‘Berkshire’, 98. 116. Zell, Industry, 220. 117. Ramsay, Wiltshire, 3. 118. W. Cunningham, The growth of English industry and commerce during the early and middle ages (Cambridge, 1910), 440. For a discussion and illustrations of graziers’ and clothiers’ building, see S. Rose, The wealth of England: The medieval wool trade and its political importance 1100–1600 (Oxford, 2018), 181–204. 119. Amor, ‘Merchant Adventurers’, 429. 120. Dymond and Betterton, Lavenham, 9–11, 67–73. 121. E. Power, Medieval people (London, 1924), 146–69; E. Power, The Paycockes of Coggeshall and their house, vol. 16 (Essex Archaeological Society, 1923), 23. 122. Carus-Wilson, ‘Significance’, 102–17. 123. Carus-Wilson, ‘Woollen Industry before 1550’, 136. 124. K.G. Ponting, The woollen Industry of south-west England (Bath, 1971), 140; Ramsay, Wiltshire, 35. 125. A.S. Green, Town life in the fifteenth century, vol. 2 (London, 1894), 17. 126. Amor, From wool to cloth, 212–15.

11 The March of the Clothiers

Clothiers’ rise was staggered as individual regions responded to the opportunity for specific cloths. It began in the West Country, which by the end of the fourteenth century accounted for half the country’s quality cloth production, followed by Suffolk/Essex in the later-fifteenth, and Kent and Newbury in the early sixteenth.1 West Country complete clothiers were the first to transform rural clothmaking, making white, unfinished broadcloth for London mercers/Merchant Adventurers who wanted to develop Antwerp and the Brabant fairs as the primary access for English cloth in northern Europe. Yet the early success of western rural clothmaking was tied to Bristol, the leading cloth port in the period immediately following the Black Death. We can see from Bristol’s Weavers’, Fullers’ and Drapers’ ordinances that the city tried to preserve its own cloth industry while at the same time regulating the purchase of country cloth. Bristol thread or dyed wool could not be taken outside the town, and cloth woven in the town had to be fulled there.2 In 1380 drapers specified when and where ‘foreign’ cloth could be sold.3 The quality of Bristol cloth was higher than from eastern ports, so clothmaking in its hinterlands was held to higher standards. It is likely that broadloom’s rural diffusion began at an earlier date in Somerset than elsewhere. From 1394 to 1400, Bristol, on average, produced 4,400 cloths annually while Somerset alnaged 11,860 cloths, mostly broad dozens. The Somerset village of Pensford accounted for no less than 20 per cent of the county’s production in 1395–6. Two clothiers, Thomas and John Prysshton, took 795 and 570 cloths, respectively, to the alnager to pay the subsidy in that year, which was far more than the total production of Wells, an important clothmaking town.4 We do not know to what extent they were complete clothiers, or whether they were local merchants simply assembling the cloth. However, Pensford was a ‘new’ village since it was not a taxation unit early in the century and seems to have grown around fulling mills close to a ford on the road to Bristol. It may have been that the entrepreneurial Prysshtons, with good mercantile contacts, introduced the broadloom to Pensford, organised spinning and built a mill. Once the Prysshtons had passed

238  The March of the Clothiers away production declined. Somerset clothmaking was now organised along capitalistic lines, producing broadcloth rather than narrow cloth, and its clothiers were no longer dependant on Bristol, but also serving a wider market: at Salisbury, Southampton and London. We can probably assume that much rural cloth woven in the countryside, and sold to merchants at this time, was finished in towns. Sussex and Surrey clothmakers complained in 1391 that fullers were buying Guilford cloth to be fulled elsewhere which helped urban dyeing and finishing industries, but undermined local fullers.5 At the same time, however, Suffolk dyers, fullers and shearmen were finishing straits across the county.6 London was becoming more dependent on rural cloth. Many provincial drapers moved to London after 1353 and began to source provincial cloth, while London’s drapers made sure that the city’s clothmakers were forced to sell their cloth exclusively to them.7 It seems that London’s weavers specialised in the very fine, long cloth sold to royal and aristocratic households, while cheaper cloths for export were purchased from small towns in Surrey, Essex, Suffolk and elsewhere. London’s weavers were in decline while fullers and shearmen were increasingly finishing rural cloth.8 After 1380 London regained its liberties which meant that provincial drapers now had to sell their cloth to Londoners as they could no longer sell at retail. Drapers set about organising the sale of provincial cloth, limiting its sale to specific locations, the Stocks or Guildhall.9 London cloth had to be specially sealed to distinguish it from provincial cloth.10 The establishment of Blackwell Hall as the city’s cloth mart in 1394 facilitated the sale of provincial cloth which was entering the city in far larger numbers. Other cloth towns had similarly regulated the sale of incoming rural cloth; at the Moothall in Colchester; the Risbygate Market in Bury St. Edmunds; on Touker Street in Bristol; at the Drapery in Coventry; and a worsted seld was set up for worsteds in Norwich.11 Commercial rural clothmaking was slower to develop in northern England. York Weavers’ 1346 charter reconfirmed that production of high-quality coloured broadcloth and rays was to be restricted to a few Yorkshire boroughs, and the 1400 Weavers’ ordinances took care to record the various charters that maintained this urban monopoly.12 Yet, in 1399 York weavers complained that they were unable to pay the farm because there were at least 200 weavers in the surrounding countryside making dyed and rayed cloth.13 Coventry was able to attract Irish weavers to make cheap frieze in the late-fourteenth century, and there is no evidence that much rural cloth was exported by Coventry merchants.14

West Country Whites It was only in the fifteenth century that we can be sure that clothiers were organising rural production. The best documented early-fifteenth century development of a rural textile industry was at Castle Combe in

The March of the Clothiers 239 northern Wiltshire.15 Clothmaking at the manor can be traced back to rental of a fulling mill in 1340, but it was not until Sir John Fastolf inherited the manor in 1409 that a significant cloth industry developed based on his annual purchase of around forty red and white cloths a year for his troops fighting in France. His steward William Worcester, whose notebooks have given us the best description of rural clothmaking in late-medieval England, put the manor’s industrial success down to Fastolf’s half-century tenure. His contributions were not only his cloth purchases, but also the revival of its market, and creation of an annual fair. But the greatest benefit was his laissez-faire attitude to his tenants, and his maintenance of peace on the manor. Tenants leased land along the By Brook, building fulling mills. The clothier William Haynes owned four, one of which cost £30 to rebuild, and his wife’s brother, Richard Halwey, three. The clothiers’ business was rooted in their fulling mills, and in the dyehouses turning out the red cloth for which the area soon earned a national reputation. Success attracted labour. Richard Halwey had nine employees working for him in 1450, both apprentices and servants. At that time there were sixty or seventy journeymen clothworkers on the manor. In 1444 two wardens for the dyers and fullers, and two for the weavers, were appointed to maintain order but there is no evidence that regulations were introduced that would have placed restrictions on the way that the industry was organised. It was possible for Walter Power to come to the area from Ireland, find work as a journeyman, then to establish his own business, employ his own servants and apprentices, buy property and rebuild his house for £100. So prosperous did Castle Combe become that Sir John Fastolf was able to sell tenancies on death to the highest bidder, bringing new entrepreneurial vigour to the village. Expansion of late-fifteenth century West Country clothmaking was closely related to the rapid growth of demand for unfinished cloth at the four annual Brabant fairs at Antwerp and Bergen-op-Zoom which, by the end of the fifteenth century, may have accounted for 70 per cent of English cloth exports. West Country clothiers’ accomplishment was to replace cheap bastards and westerns by higher-quality, full-length, unfinished broadcloth, a transition that seems to have been achieved in the third quarter of the century. There is evidence of rising prosperity in Wiltshire by the 1460s, even when exports were depressed.16 The lynchpin of the clothier’s operation was the fulling mill, because fulling and tentering were the last process in the production of white, unfinished cloth.17 Rents for fulling mills were falling in the first half of the sixteenth century, and at least in Gloucestershire they were mostly controlled by clothiers.18 The clothier might own the fulling mill himself, but often held it on a long lease from the local gentry.19 In south-west England there was an explosion in the number of tenant fulling mills in the sixteenth century.20 Clothmaking spread up and down small river systems such as the Bradford Avon in western Wiltshire and eastern Somerset, and Stroudwater

240  The March of the Clothiers in Gloucestershire. In the manor of Bisley, whose southern boundary was the Stroudwater, sixteen water leases were granted between 1447 and 1459.21 The little clothing towns of Bradford and Trowbridge along the Avon in Wiltshire had three and four fulling mills, respectively.22 In addition to white, unfinished broadcloth the West Country also had a reputation for its reds, at Castle Combe and Stroudwater. John Stoby of Cirencester sent thirty-six red cloths to six fullers in the Stroud valley to be washed, fulled, dyed red and shorn in 1459.23 Wiltshire remained the centre of the industry in the sixteenth century followed by Gloucestershire and then Somerset, mostly producing a standardised, unfinished white shortcloth of similar weight and dimensions.24 Thomas Kytson, the wealthy London mercer, purchased unfinished broadcloths from 109 different clothmakers in the small towns and villages of western Wiltshire and eastern Somerset during the 1530s.25 His largest supplier was John Clevelod of Beckington, a small village in Somerset between Westbury and Trowbridge from whom he bought, on average, 371 cloths a year from 1529–30 to 1537–8. Ten clothiers in Somerset and Wiltshire sold him more than 100 cloths a year over a number of years, accounting for 40 per cent of his purchases. At the other extreme there were forty-one from whom he bought a pack of ten cloths or less.26

Coloureds from Suffolk, Essex and Kent The Suffolk/Essex clothmaking region was transformed by clothiers from around 1460 onwards, and it succeeded because it focused on coloured cloth, presumably in competition with West Country cloth, some of which was dyed and finished in London. Suffolk had successfully developed a market for its narrow cloths since the fourteenth century, many of which were dyed. Clothiers transitioned clothmaking from cheap straits and kersey to high-quality coloured broadcloth which required better wools, an investment in dyeworks and the upgrading of technical skills. The number of independent dyers declined just as Suffolk clothmaking drastically expanded in the second half of the fifteenth century, suggesting that the leading clothiers brought dyeing in house.27 Clothmaking spread along the Stour and its tributaries that formed the border between Suffolk and Essex, and along Essex rivers, Colne, Blackwater and Brain. The transition can be seen to be in progress from the 1466–7 Suffolk ulnage particulars, which show that while straits were still the primary cloth in many villages, some were making a combination of straits and broadcloth as at Hadleigh, but that Lavenham and Long Melford were already producing broadcloth exclusively.28 There was a rising market for coloured broadcloth as a result of growth in the domestic market, and an upswing in London’s export trade after 1475. In 1468 Spanish merchants had their cloth duties reduced to denizen rates which led to a dramatic

The March of the Clothiers 241 increase in the trade in coloured cloth with southern Europe.29 Proximity to London was critical to gauge the fashion for specific colours, and Suffolk dyers had the advantage of low-cost labour, firewood and woad dyeing in-the-wool. It may have been that Suffolk clothiers were able to offer finished coloured cloth for almost the price of quality unfinished western whites by using cheaper wools, and undercutting those who purchased unfinished western whites and had them dyed and finished in London.30 Coloured broadcloths were priced around £3, and the cheaper vesses around £2 15s in the later 1520s.31 This was close to the £2 18s 10d that Sir Thomas Kytson paid for his Wiltshire unfinished whites in 1529–30.32 Suffolk continued to make vesses, originally of much lower quality and produced to less-exacting standards, but by the 1520s priced just below standard broadcloth.33 Suffolk clothiers were forced to restructure their industry once again when the southern European market declined with the Reformation, and competition from Reading and the Kentish Weald intensified competition for coloured broadcloth. Also, fashionable colours changed as bright colours gradually gave way to sombre colours produced by dyeing in woad and then with madder to produce greys, browns and blacks. They successfully re-focused on Antwerp, finding a market there for blue cloth as Suffolk dyeing in-the-wool or yarn was both cheaper and probably superior than Antwerp woad dyeing in-the-piece.34 A 1565 act required that all exported Suffolk and Kentish cloth was to be finished, and therefore dyed.35 A Suffolk survey in the early seventeenth century estimated that the county exported 30,000 cloths, of which 7,000 were blues, 20,000 azures and 3,000 plunkets; 10,000 of which were re-dyed on the continent with red to produce violets, murreys, silver, peach and other colours.36 Another export market opened up in the early-sixteenth century for superfine cloths, competing with the best cloths from the traditional Flemish towns and new cloth towns like Armentières that continued to use English wools. In England these cloths had been known since the earlyfourteenth century as ‘long’ cloths, often woven to lengths of 40 yards. They had been woven for the local market, primarily in London in the fourteenth century, and in some provincial towns like Northampton and Ludlow in the fifteenth. English ‘longs’ had rarely been exported because the traditional Flemish towns controlled the market, and it was a small and declining segment. However, the revival of the European economy and the high cost of these cloths on the continent because they were dependant on heavily taxed English wools now made the market attractive. As in the short broadcloth market, ‘longs’ were produced both as unfinished whites and finished coloured cloth. Worcester whites were the primary brand, but cloths from the western Suffolk villages of Glemsford and Cavendish in Suffolk, and Coggeshall, Bocking and Braintree in Essex also competed for this exclusive market.37

242  The March of the Clothiers Kentish clothiers specialised in higher-quality coloured long cloth up to 40 yards, while also producing some standard cloths and vesses. Long cloths in Stephen Draner’s 1539 inventory were at least three times as expensive than the £3 3s 10d paid by Thomas Kytson for standard white cloths in 1538–9: there were two brown-blues at £10 a cloth and another two fine brown-blues at £15.38 The strategy seems to have been to produce coloured cloth equivalent in quality to long white Worcesters, but to offer a wide and expanding range of colours as the breadth of the colour palette broadened with subtle shade differences in greys and browns.39 Wealden production is estimated to have been around 13–14,000 cloths, equivalent to almost 10 per cent of the export market by the 1560s, so clothiers had now found a market for dyed finished cloth at Antwerp.40 Clothiers totally dominated clothmaking because they had the capital to dye wools.41 Eighty of the 241 dyeing fines resulting from the 1549 cloth act that regulated fraudulent dyeing practices, and exacted in London from 1554 to 1585, were paid by Kent clothiers.42 Another distinction of Kent clothiers was that they, only occasionally, owned fulling mills. It has been estimated that ten to fifteen mills were sufficient to full all the cloths, so cloth was taken to a few large-scale mills, probably overshot mills.43 The mill just outside Maidstone owned by Thomas Hendley, a Cranbrook gentleman, cost £80 to build in 1545, and was rented for £13 6s 8d a year.44 Wealden clothiers seem to have outsourced much of their cloth finishing to large-scale fullers and then to London shearmen.45

Newbury Kersey Lastly, a cluster of Newbury clothiers was making coloured kersey early in the sixteenth century.46 It was probably John Winchcombe I  who established the town’s reputation, although we know little about him. He died in 1519 but it must have been his success that accounted for his son’s great wealth assessed in 1522.47 John Winchcombe II and Thomas Dolman built on their fathers’ work, as they and several others produced an estimated 9,000 high-quality coloured kerseys annually in the late 1540s.48 They used wool from their own sheep, as well as wool bought mostly in Berkshire, owned dyehouses, fulling mills and tenter grounds. They dyed and combed the wool in their own warehouses, put the wool out for spinning, probably wove some of the kerseys in house as well as put wool out to weavers, fulled the cloth either in their own mills or those they controlled, and then finished the kerseys themselves. Such were the reputation of Winchcombe and Dolman kerseys that their production seems to have been mostly bought by a few domestic and alien merchants, among them Thomas Gresham in the 1540s, for sale in Antwerp, and they were sometimes paid for in advance.49 Thomas Cromwell purchased 1,000 Winchcombe kerseys in 1539.50 From 1538 to 1544 the Antwerp commission agents, van der Molen, paid 38–48s for

The March of the Clothiers 243 Winchcombe kerseys from around Newbury, 36–48s for ‘broom and two keys’ kerseys, and 6–8s less for northern kerseys.51 As in Suffolk many kerseys were dyed blue to be re-dyed on the continent, but there was also many reds.52 In each of these areas complete clothiers restructured clothmaking to produce far higher-quality cloth than had been previously made. Their success attracted additional clothiers so that a cluster of clothiers formed and a reputation for their cloths established. As the market continued to expand merchants turned to clothiers to fill demand and this, together with their control over the complete business system and strong financial position, allowed them to further consolidate their control until the midsixteenth century. A few large sixteenth-century clothiers brought every process except fulling into a factory system to meet rising demand.53 William Stumpe, the Malmesbury clothier, according to Leland, had the buildings of Malmesbury Abbey filled with looms.54 In Deloney’s ­seventeenth-century poem, ‘Pleasant History of Jack of Newbury’, the early-sixteenth century Newbury clothier John Winchcombe the Elder was said to have 200 looms in a single room. There was a boy at each loom, 100 women carding, 200 spinning, eighty children sorting wool, eighty raising the nap of the cloth, fifty shearing it, twenty fulling it and forty dyeing it in the dyehouse. There was a fully staffed kitchen to provide food for this large workforce.55

Merchant Clothiers Clothiers that sold cheaper cloths were less wealthy and were rarely complete clothiers as they sold less distinctive cloth that required lower-level skills, and were sold on the basis of their low price. Profit margins were insufficient to attract clothiers to organise large-scale production. Coarsecloth production had migrated during the fifteenth century to Devon and Cornwall, Wales and northern England where wool and labour were cheaper. Coarse-cloth prices were relatively constant from 1400 to 1550 in contrast with quality broadcloth whose prices rose steadily in the laterfifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries. There was a widening price gulf between good and coarse wools. In Yorkshire a few large complete clothiers operated in much the same way as those in the West Country or Suffolk, but many were small farmers who also made a dozen every week, purchased wool from wooldrivers, had it spun by family members and then took the woven cloth to fairs and markets.56 Merchant clothiers assembled the cloth and then sent it to London, either to Blackwell Hall or at a booth they rented at the annual St. Bartholemew’s fair.57 However, as the exports of coloured northern dozens and kersey rose, a few clothiers probably increased their control over production, investing in dyehouses as did the Leeds clothier, John Pawsome, in 1576.58 Similarly Devon clothiers purchased narrow

244  The March of the Clothiers cloths from small-scale independent weavers and fullers.59 Welsh cottons weavers mostly bought their wool in local markets, spun it and wove it themselves and then returned to the same markets to sell their inconsistent lengths of cloth and buy more wool.60 Urban merchants finished and then sold both frieze and cottons. The prevalence of rural dyeing skills meant that some narrow-cloth weavers could organise the production of finished cloth. Most kersey was sold dyed, and certainly by the second half of the sixteenth century most rural cloth, northern dozens and kersey and southern dozens were sold dyed in fashionable colours, and Manchester frieze was typically sold in either grey or black.61 Small-town dyers benefited from consistently clean water necessary to thoroughly wash the wool or cloth both before and after dyeing, cheap fuel, low labour costs and close proximity to carders and spinners. Kersey clothiers in the Weald were dyeing their own wool, weaving the cloth, taking it to the local mill and then having it finished by shearmen.62 Kersey and other narrow-cloth clothiers tended to be smaller producers, although there were exceptions such as those at Newbury. Wealden kerseymakers were far less wealthy than broadcloth clothiers.63 Cheaper cloths were made by smaller, independent clothiers and weavers, many working on a part-time basis. In Devon there were many weavers who sold to fullers who then sold to clothiers or other merchants. Northern clothiers were, on average, also smaller men: there were no Stumpes, Springs or Winchcombes. They made cheaper cloths with smaller profit margins. Clothiers’ wills suggest that they usually owned land, but plots too small to make a living, and were part-time clothmakers, producing a kersey or dozen a week. Many of the smallest clothiers ‘leased or owned a cottage, with a toft of ground adjoining, on which they fed a little livestock’. They had their loom, spinning-wheels, a set of ‘walker sheres’ and often a dye-vat or ‘lead’.64 Staplers and woolmen who focused on quality broadcloth largely ignored markets for cheaper wools, so a network of wool and yarn markets and itinerant woolbroggers serviced poor weavers.65 Staplers were able to have acts passed preventing common dealers in certain counties from purchasing wool, and this was even extended to Yorkshire in 1531, but never to Devon; but it is unlikely that this ever interrupted the wool trade to coarse clothmakers, since broggers were allowed to buy wool that staplers ignored.66 A 1555 Halifax act allowed some 500 households to buy wool from wooldrivers. Similar acts put forward for Devon, Cornwall and the North Country failed to pass.67 Devon relied on wool markets at Crediton, Exeter, Launceston, Moretonhampstead and Okehampton. The far north was well served by both wool and cloth markets; wool at Carlisle, Chorley, Clitheroe, Doncaster, Garstang, Halifax, Kendal, Ripon and Wakefield; and cloth at Bolton, Cockermouth, Kendal, Kirkby, Lonsdale, Leeds, Manchester, Preston, Rochdale and Wakefield.68

The March of the Clothiers 245 Yorkshire clothmaking was business for the extended family, as six people were required to card, spin, weave and shear to make a single kersey.69 Yorkshire was simply too far away for an artisan clothier to bring the cloths to London, so there had to be clothier middlemen from whom merchants like Sir Thomas Kytson and Sir Thomas Gresham purchased their northern dozens, kerseys and penistones. Annual fairs were critical to West Riding clothiers. Cloth had been sold at the Wakefield fair early in the fifteenth century, but by the sixteenth century there was a circuit of fairs at Ripon, Wakefield and Bradford through October and November that had probably replaced York as the chief market for Yorkshire cloths.70

Regulation and Decline of Complete Clothiers Clothiers’ success attracted regulation. The first clothier act, in 1512, set some rules for clothiers as they dealt with spinners, weavers and fullers, and this was expanded in the 1514 cloth act.71 It was only in midcentury that government regulation of clothiers, in response to growing criticism, deliberately restricted their activities. As a result, the second half of the century was far more difficult for complete clothiers than the first. English cloth became more expensive in overseas markets as export duties rose six-fold in 1558 and the currency was re-valued, raising cloth prices and putting pressure on margins. Clothiers found it more difficult to make the high profits that innovation, rapid growth and absence of restriction had made possible a century before. The Statute of Artificers in 1563, ‘by insisting upon apprenticeship in trade and industry, by defining the classes from which apprentices might be taken, by fixing wages, and by prohibiting the sudden termination of contracts between employer and employed, it made illegal that mobility of labour without which rapid industrialization and spectacular commercial expansion are impossible’.72 A study of court cases to enforce length of apprenticeship and number of looms does suggest that the law was enforced, at least in the West Country.73 The ‘golden age’ of the clothiers was over. Clothiers’ power over weavers were somewhat reduced since they could no longer weave much cloth themselves. It became more typical for the West Country clothier, who dealt in unfinished cloth, to buy it from the weaver, full it at their own mills and then sell the cloth.74 Clothiers put much of the spinning out to capital farmers rather than organise it themselves.75 West Country clothiers became more similar to Yorkshire and Devon clothiers who concentrated on finishing and marketing cloth, although they worked on a larger scale. The quality kersey and coloured-broadcloth clothier who worked with dyed wool continued to control yarn preparation and finish the cloth himself.76 After 1550 the rate of product change slowed, the market stagnated and government regulation prevented any further factory development or

246  The March of the Clothiers clothier concentration. Complete clothiers continued to exercise control over cloth production in areas making dyed cloth but became far less important in the West Country. A comparison of textile occupations can be made in highly developed clothworking areas: among Suffolk’s Babergh Hundred in 1522 which included Lavenham, Long Melford and Nayland at the height of their prosperity; Gloucestershire’s clothmaking regions in 1608; and at Cranbrook, Kent in 1653–61 (Table 11.1).77 The Suffolk survey covered all those with goods worth £4 plus all those paid wages; the Gloucestershire returns are for those deemed fit to fight in the wars, and Cranbrook occupations were taken from the marriage register.78 Suffolk clothiers clearly controlled production in the 1520s as 38 per cent of clothworkers were clothiers and their average moveable wealth was £97 16s 9d, compared with weavers at £2 14s 2d. Similarly, a list of mid-seventeenth century Cranbrook occupations show the continued dominance of clothiers and the low number of independent fullers in the Kentish Weald.79 Clothiers were less prominent in the Gloucestershire districts of Stroudwater, Dursley and Little Avon in the early-­seventeenth century as they only accounted for 9–11  per cent of clothworkers, whereas weavers accounted for around 70, and fullers 13–23 per cent. West Country unfinished broadcloth had been expanding from the latefourteenth century; the great growth along the Stroudwater had taken place in the late-fifteenth century, and it had now become a generic product with well-established distribution networks.80 There was still some value for clothiers’ control over the whole production process in terms of consistency and reputation, and the capital they could employ, but far less than a century before. Weavers could buy wool from woolbroggers or yarn from yarnmasters as well as from clothiers.81 Only twenty-seven Gloucestershire clothiers are shown to have had servants, suggesting that few were organising yarn production.82 They had, in the main, reverted

Table 11.1 Clothworking employment in the woollen industry: Suffolk Babergh Hundred in 1522, Gloucestershire in 1608 and Cranbrook in 1653–61 Clothiers Weavers Dyers Fullers 1522 Suffolk, Babergh Hundred 1608 Gloucestershire, Stroudwater 1608, Gloucestershire, Dursley 1608, Gloucestershire, Little Avon 1653–61 Cranbrook

119 (38) 112 (36) 13 (4) 64 (9)

Shearmen Total

41 (13) 27 (9)

492 (67) 15 (2) 168 (23)

37 (11) 237 (72)

5 (2)

49 (15)

48 (10) 351 (75)

6 (1)

62 (13)

50 (38)

3 (2)

1 (1)

77 (58)

312 (100) 739 (100) 328 (100)

2 (1)

468 (100) 131 (100)

Source: Pound, Military Survey, App. E; Tann, Wool and water, pp. 1–5; Zell, Industry, p. 121.

The March of the Clothiers 247 to become merchant clothiers using their capital to expand the number of cloths they sold, and using factors to sell cloths at Blackwell Hall.83 For a century, from 1450 to 1550, clothiers were the instrument by which London merchants were able to dramatically improve the quality of English broadcloth and kersey, and by 1550 could be considered to have been equal partners with the leading merchants in their industry’s success. It was an industrial revolution based on a reorganisation of how cloth was made and sold and a re-allocation of capital rather than any technological innovation, but their accomplishments were worthy of comparison with factory cotton spinning at the end of the eighteenth century. Clothiers industrialised rural yarn production and supervised all other processes to make rural cloth as good as, if not better than, urban cloth and at a lower price. The system was competitive and flexible, adapting to opportunity while capitalising on local wools, skills and labour costs. Rising quality and lower costs made production of quality cloth profitable. Complete clothiers’ first, and perhaps greatest accomplishment, in conjunction with the Merchant Adventurers Company, was to reorganise West Country cloth production to create the standard, unfinished Tudor short broadcloth that remained the backbone of English exports for the next 150 years. Successful complete clothiers in other parts of the country focused on smaller, but still substantial and distinctive markets, most of which required dyeing expertise. Fine kersey was exclusively a rural cloth. Clothiers succeeded because they were innovators and entrepreneurs, and they attracted the capital to organise a superior production and marketing system. They were a reflection of an outpouring of entrepreneurship that accompanied the transition from demesne to tenant farming. Tenant farmers were forced to innovate to make their holdings profitable as prices fell while at the same time they had to pay rents and tithes, using their land and labour more efficiently. Many first-generation clothiers were farmers looking for new revenue opportunities; and once successful, the profits from clothmaking were frequently re-invested back into land with its lower risks. After 1550 many complete clothiers’ profits were squeezed, while land ownership became more profitable as prices rose and wages fell. The decline of the complete clothier may in part have been because his capital was better spent elsewhere.

Notes 1. H.L. Gray, ‘The production and exportation of English woollens in the fourteenth century’, EHR, 34 (1924), 34. 2. F.B. Bickley, The little red book of Bristol, vol. 2 (London, 1900), vol. 2, 7–8, 29–30. 3. Ibid, 51–5. 4. J.N. Hare, ‘Pensford and the growth of the cloth industry in late medieval Somerset’, Somerset Archaeology and Natural History, 147 (2004), 173–80.

248  The March of the Clothiers 5. Bridbury, Clothmaking, 77. 6. N.R. Amor, From wool to cloth: The triumph of the Suffolk clothier (Bungay, 2016), 132. 7. E.J. Quinton, ‘The Drapers and the drapery trade of late medieval London, c.1300–c.1500’ (Unpub. Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 2001), 113–7; J.R. Oldland, ‘London clothmaking, c.1270–c.1550’ (Unpub. Ph.D. Thesis, University of London, 2003), 70–1. 8. J. Oldland, ‘Making and marketing woollen cloth in late-medieval London’, London Journal, 36 (2011), 94–8. 9. Oldland, ‘Clothmaking’, 83. 10. Cal. LBH, 145. 11. R.H. Britnell, Growth and decline in Colchester 1200–1525 (Cambridge, 1986), 80; Bickley, Bristol, vol. 2, 51–5; R.S. Gottfried, Bury St. Edmunds and the urban crisis (Princeton, 1982), 98; Hudson and C.J. Tingay, Norwich, vol. 2, 50, 90, 92; R. Goddard, Lordship and medieval urbanisation: Coventry 1043–1355 (Woodbridge, 2004), 231. 12. York Memorandum Book (YMB), vol. 120 (Surtees Society, 1911), 240–2. 13. E. Miller, ‘Medieval York’, in P.M. Tillott, ed., VCH York, vol. 1, 88; CPR, 22 Richard II (1396–9), 509; YMB, 241–2. 14. E. Carus-Wilson, ‘The oversea trade of late medieval Coventry’, Economies and Sociétés au Moyen Age (1973), 371–81. 15. E. Carus-Wilson, ‘Evidences of industrial growth on some fifteenth-century manors’, EcHR, 2nd series, 2 (1959), 195–205. 16. E. Carus-Wilson, ‘The woollen industry before 1550’, in E. Crittall and R.D. Pugh, eds., VCH, Wiltshire, vol. 4 (London, 1959), 133–4. 17. Ibid, 116; J. Langdon, Mills in the medieval economy, England 1300–1450 (Oxford, 2004), 40–56, 220; J. Tann, Wool and water: The Gloucestershire woollen industry and its mills (Stroud, 2012), 23–6. 18. Langdon, Mills, 224; Tann, Wool and Water, 21. 19. G.D. Ramsay, The Wiltshire woollen Industry in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (London, 1965), 19. 20. Langdon, Mills, 56. 21. Carus-Wilson, ‘Evidences’, 194. 22. Carus-Wilson, ‘Woollen industry before 1550’, 116. 23. Ibid, 195. 24. Fines levied in London from 1550 to 1585 for faults under the cloth acts may be an indication of relative county production. There were 702 infractions from Wiltshire, 626 in Suffolk, 429 in Gloucestershire and 116 in Somerset. 25. C.J. Brett, ‘Thomas Kytson and Somerset clothmen, 1529–1539’, Somerset Archaeology and Natural History, 143 (1999), 29–56; C.J. Brett, ‘Thomas Kytson and Wiltshire clothmen, 1529–1539’, Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine, 97 (2004), 35–62. The 1536 subsidy returns indicate that he was probably the wealthiest London merchant, with income from lands of £400 year and movables of £3,333; see J. Oldland, ‘The allocation of merchant capital in early Tudor London’, EcHR, 63 (2010), 1, 058. 26. Brett, ‘Somerset’, 32; Brett, ‘Wiltshire’, 39–40; J. Oldland, ‘The clothiers’ century, 1450–1550’, Rural History, 29 (2018), 10. 27. Amor, From wool to cloth, 179. 28. R.H. Britnell, ‘The woollen textile industry of Suffolk in the later Middle Ages’, Ricardan, 13 (2003). 29. J. Oldland, ‘London’s trade in the time of Richard III’, Ricardian, 29 (2014), 1–4. 30. In the 1552 act, short Suffolks were 23–25 yards long and weighed 1.48lb/sq. yd., compared with Wiltshire whites at 26–28 yards which weighed 1.32lb/ sq.yd., but they both weighed 64lb; see Statutes, 5&6 Edward VI, c. 6. 31. London, Drapers Hall, Thomas Howell ledger.

The March of the Clothiers 249 2. Brett, ‘Wiltshire’, 42. 3 33. E. Kerridge, Textile manufactures in early modern England (Manchester, 1985), 17. The 1483 cloth act specifically excluded all cloths valued at 40s or less, including vesses, and were therefore not subject to the same finishing standards set for quality broadcloth and kersey. In 1522 Suffolk vesses were specifically exempted from the 1514 law that finished broadcloth was not to shrink more than a yard. In 1535 vesses were exempted from the law that required weavers to weave their mark into the cloth. 34. BL, Cotton ms. Titus B V, f. 314; G. Unwin, ‘The history of the cloth industry in Suffolk’, in G. Unwin, Studies in economic history: The collected papers of George Unwin (London, 1966), 279. 35. Statutes, 8 Eliz. c. 6. 36. BL, Cotton ms, Titus B, v, f. 254–5; G Unwin, ‘Woollen cloth—the old draperies’, in W. Page, ed., VCH, Suffolk, vol. 1 (London, 1911), 279. 37. J.E. Pilgrim, ‘The cloth industry in East Anglia’, I, J. Geraint Jenkins, ed., The wool textile industry in Great Britain (London, 1972), 255. 38. Brett, ‘Wiltshire’, 42; TNA, PCC, Prob. 2/525. In 1548 Thomas Gresham was buying long, white Worcesters for between £6 and £10 in 1548; see Mercers Hall, London, Thomas Gresham Day Book. 39. There were twenty-one colour shades approved in the 1552 act, Statutes, 5&6 Ed. VI, c.6. 40. M. Zell, Industry in the countryside: Wealden society in the sixteenth century (Cambridge, 1994), 158. John Broke, the London mercer’s 1532 inventory included fine, dyed Kent cloths at Antwerp; see Devon Record Office, 312M, FY/64. 41. Zell, Industry, 165, 209. 42. Statutes, 3&4 Ed. VI, c. 2; TNA, E 159/329, 330, 331, 335, 337, 338, 339, 350, 355, 357, 359, 360, 361, 363, 366, 368, 370, 371, 375, 376, 378, 380, 381, 384, 387, 389, 390. 43. Zell, Industry, 179–81. 44. Ibid, 180–1. 45. Ibid, 182–3. 46. Newbury had been an important clothmaking town producing dyed kersey at least from the 1460s, and some of its most important citizens were involved in clothmaking; see M. Yates, Town and countryside in western Berkshire, c.1327–c.1600: Social and economic change (Woodbridge, 2007), 83–7. A  small interwoven group of clothiers, fullers and dyers supervised one another’s wills, and their journeymen often became clothiers when their masters died. 47. Ibid, 91. 48. D. Peacock, The Winchcombe family and the woolen industry in sixteenthcentury Newbury’ (Unpub. Ph.D. thesis, University of Reading, 2003), 26. 49. Ibid, 29–68, 91, 151–85. 50. TNA, SP/1, 143. 51. F. Edler, ‘Winchcombe kerseys in Antwerp (1538–44)’, EcHR, 7 (1936), 58. 52. D. Peacock, ‘Dyeing Winchcombe kersies and other kersey cloth in sixteenthcentury Newbury’, TH, 37 (2006), 187–202. 53. Heaton, Yorkshire, 90. 54. C.H. Williams, English historical documents 1485–1558 (London, 1967), 267. 55. T. Deloney, The pleasant history of John Winchcombe, in his younger yeares called Jacke of Newberie (London, 1633). 56. Statutes, 2&3 Ph. & Mary, c.13; Heaton, Yorkshire, 93–101; J.S. Lee, ‘Crises in the late medieval English cloth trade’, in A.T. Brown, A. Burn and R. Doherty, eds., Crises in economic and social history (Woodbridge, 2015), 333–4.

250  The March of the Clothiers 57. Heaton, Yorkshire, 146–8. 58. Ibid, 97–8. 59. M.R. Gay, ‘Aspects of Elizabethan apprenticeship’, in A.H. Cole, A.L. Dunham and H.S.B. Gras, eds., Facts and factors in economic history (New York, 1932), 145–7. 60. BL, Cotton ms., Titus B, v, f. 242. 61. TNA, E 159/329–90. 62. Zell, Industry, 169, 183–8. 63. Ibid, 169. 64. Heaton, Yorkshire, 95. 65. P. Bowden, The wool trade in Tudor and Stuart England (London, 1962), 79–80, 116. 66. Bowden, Wool trade, 114; Statutes, 4 Henry VII, c. 11, 22 Henry VIII, c. 1. 67. Bowden, Wool trade, 119. 68. A. Everett, ‘The marketing of agricultural produce’, in J. Thirsk, ed., The agrarian history of England and Wales, IV, 1500–1640 (Cambridge, 1967), 591; Bowden, Wool trade, 68–70, 93–4. 69. Manuscripts of Lord Kenyon, Historical Manuscripts Commission, 14th Report, App. pt. 4, 572–3. 70. M. Sellars, ‘Textile industries’, in W. Page, ed., VCH York, vol. 2 (London, 1913), 408; J. Raine, ed., The Durham household book, vol.  18 (Surtees Society, 1844), 255. 71. Statutes, 3 Henry VIII, c.6; 6 Henry VIII, c.9. 72. F.J. Fisher, ‘Commercial trends and policy in sixteenth-century England’, EcHR, 10 (1939–40), 113. 73. Gay, ‘Elizabethan apprenticeship’, 162–3. 74. Kerridge, Manufactures, 192–7. 75. Ibid, 202–3. 76. Ibid, 198, 203. 77. J. Pound, The military survey of 1522 for Babergh Hundred, vol. 38 (Woodbridge: Suffolk Record Society, 1986), App. E; Tann, Wool and water, 1–5; Zell, Industry, 121. 78. Pound, Military survey; E. Perry, ‘The Gloucestershire woolen industry 1100–1690’, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, 46 (1947), 81. 79. Oldland, ‘Clothiers’ century’, 13. 80. Carus-Wilson, ‘Evidences’, 191–7. 81. K. Ponting, The woollen industry of south-west England (Bath, 1971), 26; Ramsay, English woollen industry, 21. 82. R. Perry, The woollen industry in Gloucestershire to 1914 (Shrewsbury, 2003), 27. 83. G.D. Ramsay, The city of London in international politics at the accession of Elizabeth Tudor (Manchester, 1975), 39–40.

12 The London-Antwerp Ascendency and the Merchant Adventurers Company

The interdependence of Antwerp and London, Merchant Adventurers’ skilful exploitation of the trade between the two towns, and the continuity of this trade over such a long period of time led to the supremacy of English woollens on the continent. The Company had the exclusive right to trade throughout the Low Countries, but most cloth was sold at the four annual Brabant fairs held at Antwerp and Bergen op Zoom, the Easter or Paas market at Bergen, the Sinxsen or Whitsun fair at Antwerp, the Bamis fair at Antwerp in October and the Cold Mart at Bergen in November. The fairs’ share of English cloth exports more than doubled from 1440 to 1480, to at least 35–40 per cent of total trade.1 Trade was stimulated by currency depreciation in 1526, and then again in 1542. Only occasionally did political friction with Burgundy threaten the cloth trade, and then only for short periods. Historians have noted some industry disruption in 1528, for example, but it had little or no effect on exports.2 The flourishing trade with Spain came unstuck in the 1530s as the Protestant reformation brought retaliation against English merchants which further concentrated English trade on the Antwerp market.

London-Antwerp Axis English cloth was critical to Antwerp’s growth, perhaps accounting for a third of all Antwerp’s imports around 1500.3 Brabant fair towns dominated Low Countries’ trade, even though Bruges retained the wool staple, Amsterdam remained an important centre for the grain trade, and some cloth was also shipped to Hamburg.4 From 1520 to 1550 Antwerp’s success fed on itself, as the English cloth trade was just one spoke of the wheel, consequently making English cloth a smaller share of the trade over time. English woollens accounted for less than 15  per cent of Antwerp’s imports around 1560.5 The growth of the trade in light worsteds and worsted mixed cloths, for instance, was even faster than that in English woollens.6 The prosperity of the southern Netherlands, and the opening up of trade routes, sparked an industrial revolution in the southern Netherlands. Linen, light draperies, satins, tapestries and

252  London, Antwerp, Merchant Adventurers carpets, embroidery, painting, pottery, glassmaking, cloth finishing, sugar refining, salt and soap works, ammunition and armour were all growth industries.7 And a plethora of specialised luxury products, from spectacles to tennis balls, can be found in the English customs accounts. It has been estimated that a quarter of Netherlands industrial production was exported in 1570.8 Antwerp’s cloth finishers and dyers were one of the three most important craft guilds by 1516, turning English white unfinished cloth into the coloured cloth European merchants wanted.9 Antwerp was an integral part of the English cloth production process, dyeing and finishing a large proportion of English broadcloths traded at Antwerp. In 1537 there were 1,348 cloth dressers, excluding apprentices, in Antwerp, of whom 291 were masters.10 From 1536 to 1537 until 1562, there was a list of the apprentices enrolled to be shearers. In the first four years these averaged eighty-two a year, and in the 1540s eighty-five each year.11 This seems to indicate that cloth finishers were at least as numerous in Antwerp as in London. Antwerp provided not just a market for English cloth but a marketplace for other cloths, clothing, raw materials and luxuries. A comparison of denizen trade in the mid-1440s and early 1480s, before and after the mid-century depression, shows a dramatic shift in trade patterns (Table 12.1). Cloth had replaced wool in terms of their export value, and denizen merchants were now responsible for a greater share of imports than they were of cloth exports. They were therefore using their growing strength as wholesalers to capture a rising share of total trade. There is an astonishing increase in miscellaneous merchandise as the growing profitability from the cloth trade financed the import of a wide range of linen, silks and other luxuries.12 Large Flemish towns, losing their cloth

Table 12.1 Value of denizen trade before customs duties, 1446–8 and 1479–82, in pounds 1446–8 Exports Staplers wool Cloth Miscellaneous merchandise Total Imports Wine Miscellaneous merchandise Total denizen imports

44,800 60,100 4,000

1479–82 58,000 75,50015 6,000

108,900

139,500

32,700 53,100 85,800

23,100 116,500 139,400

Source: H. Gray, ‘English foreign trade from 1446 to 1482’, in M. Power and M.M. Postan, eds., Studies in the history of English trade in the fifteenth century (New York, 1966), 18, 36.

London, Antwerp, Merchant Adventurers 253 industry, had replaced it with the manufacture of high-quality and artistic luxury products for which there was growing domestic and foreign demand.13 The strength of London wholesaling enabled London cloth merchants to compete more effectively with provincial merchants, now that they operated profitable export and import businesses.14 English cloth found expanding markets throughout Europe as Antwerp’s trade blossomed. The chief market was southern Germany, and markets served from there. As a result, Hansards’ cloth exports grew as fast as denizen exports in the first half of the sixteenth century. In 1565 an Antwerp magistrate estimated that, of the merchants buying English cloth, half were Germans, 42 per cent from the Netherlands, and 7 per cent Italians.16 Much English cloth destined for Italy was now carted overland from Antwerp, more than 60 per cent by Italians, 23 per cent by Flemish merchants, and a sprinkling of German, Spanish and Portuguese merchants.17 The Italian trade through Antwerp is estimated to have been 18 per cent of the total trade in the 1540s.18 Antwerp remained a competitive cloth market as continental draperies were still able to sell low-priced cloths at the Brabant fairs. It has been estimated that 90,000 English broadcloths were exported to Antwerp in the 1560s, 67,000 of which were re-exported dyed and finished at an average price of 46.56 guilders.19 At the same time 70,000 woollens from the Low Countries were exported at an average price of 20 guilders. These cheap continental cloths replaced English woollens in the Baltic.20 This strongly suggests that much continental production was of lighter, narrow, cheaper cloth. Spanish merino wool was improving in quality and sold at Bruges in increasing quantities. Spanish wool exports to Bruges were about 15,000 sacks or bales between 1505 and 1508; 20,000 in the early 1520s; and approximately 40,000 in the early 1540s, rising to 50,000 in 1549, enough Spanish wool to make 100,000 cloths.21 At the same time, English wool exports fell from 7,806 sacks annually from 1501–5 to 4,576 sacks between 1541 and 1545.22 The result was an improving continental wool supply, although generally inferior to the broad range of wools available to English clothiers. Spanish wools were used by the light- as well as the heavy-cloth industries.23 Spain was exporting the wool of perhaps 6 million sheep at mid-century, approximately 80 per cent going to Bruges.24 The English adult sheep population was probably about 15 million at mid-century.25

Merchant Adventurers’ Dominance Merchant Adventurers across the country controlled an estimated 38 per cent of total exports (wool exports had fallen to 27 per cent), and 66 per cent of imports in 1483.26 Denizen merchants had developed networks of clothiers to source their cloths, often by-passing Blackwell Hall, and relationships with London finishers and dyers to customise them, and

254  London, Antwerp, Merchant Adventurers had developed improved marketing skills to find continental markets for better-quality broadcloth and kersey. They needed these advantages to compete with Hansards who enjoyed marginally lower levels of customs duties on exported cloth and often had superior customer networks on the continent. The size of the cloth trade, finishing of English cloth by Antwerp artisans and the tacit support of the English government gave Adventurers a strong negotiating position. In 1474 the Company was granted concessions in the settling of trade disputes, and was given a house in Antwerp as its court and headquarters. In 1486 it was formally recognised as a separate company by London’s Common Council.27 After that date the Company was able to fine all those who traded illegally with the Low Countries. London merchants increasingly dominated cloth sales and therefore the Company. Friction broke out in 1478, the northerners complaining that they were being squeezed out of the trade. The king, who happened to be in York, told them to behave and settle matters amicably. The Company was able to play off Antwerp against Bergen and Middelburg to obtain preferential status, and avoid attempts to tax cloths and shipping.28 In 1497 Merchant Adventurers were forced to lower their entry fee to 10 marks.29 As a result, the number of merchants involved in the cloth trade rose, from 192 merchants in 1490–1 to 293 in 1507–8.30 Adventurers’ ability to sell cloth competitively at the Brabant fairs depended to some extent on the profitability of their imports. A  merchant had more flexibility to negotiate if he was well capitalised and made money on his return cargo, raising his return on investment and avoiding the currency market. Unfortunately, we do not have any fifteenth-century accounts that might have allowed an exploration of the profitability of either the cloth trade or imports. One noticeable trend was the increase in luxury manufactured imports that would likely carry higher margins than commodities. In 1420–1 London had been an exporter of metal and leather products, but by 1480 there were considerable imports of armour, guns, and a whole range of clothing accessories, and metal products. In both 1464 and 1484, acts were passed that tried to control imports of metal products and clothing accessories in response to complaints from many trades: girdlers, pointmakers, pinners, pursers, glovers, cutlers, goldbeaters, saddlers, cardmakers and coppersmiths.31 There is little evidence that these artisan trades successfully curtailed the trade in ‘small luxuries’. By 1480 the Merchant Adventurers’ Company had become the dominant force in the cloth trade, accounting for 45  per cent of the cloths exported by denizens in 1471–2, 39 per cent in 1480–1 and 42 per cent in 1502–3.32 While it was a national company it was controlled by London: the overseas governor always seems to have been a Londoner, and it was dominated by London mercers. As an overseas company it had no direct political power in London, but its members’ Low Countries’ contacts and the wealth of its leading merchants made the Company influential in civic

London, Antwerp, Merchant Adventurers 255 government. In 1486 the city first regulated the Company, approving ordinances, and establishing that the mayor and aldermen select London deputy governors annually, one a mercer and one from other companies. In contrast with the expanding Antwerp trade, prospects were dimmer elsewhere. English merchants were cut out of the Baltic and Iceland, and faced restrictions in many Hanse towns. The wine trade had never fully recovered from the loss of France. Trade with Spain and Portugal was expanding but much of it was falling into alien merchants’ hands.33 The rise of the London-Antwerp axis changed the balance of power among London’s merchant companies, whose membership had been expanded to eleven in the fifteenth century to include salters, tailors and haberdashers; and clothworkers became the twelfth merchant company in 1528. Historically, most merchant companies, as their names suggest, were importers and distributors, specialising in specific goods. Mercers concentrated on importing linens, silks, small goods made of silk and linen, and haberdashery items, and then wholesaling them in London; grocers imported drugs, dyes, confections and canvas; fishmongers, fish; some salters, imported salt; ironmongers, iron; skinners, furs; vintners, wine; haberdashers, haberdashery. Further, because of their concentration on a particular assortment of imports, they often tended to have a specific geographic focus; fishmongers on the Baltic, mercers and grocers on the southern Netherlands, salters on Brittany, vintners on Gascony, ironmongers on northern Spain. They exported the few English products that they could sell in those markets, and also opportunistically purchased a limited selection of other goods. Mercers and grocers were fortunate in that much of their trade was in the Low Countries, but they faced far greater competition as Antwerp overtook Bruges, and their participation in the wool market diminished.34 Drapers’ fortunes revived. They had lost their trade in imported cloth by the mid-fourteenth century, and had become wholesalers and retailers of domestic cloth; but by the mid-fifteenth century drapers had used their expertise to become cloth exporters, first to Spain, and then at Antwerp.35 They were also buying raw materials for the cloth industry: oil, soap, alum and dyestuffs which were now available in Antwerp, cutting into grocers’ trade. By the end of the century they were the second-largest cloth exporting company, with 25 per cent of the London denizen trade.36 A few members of other London companies also traded cloth—haberdashers, tailors, and the occasional shearman and fuller—while grocers and fishmongers found their cloth trade dwindling.37 A greater percentage of imports could now be found at Antwerp, among them Italian silks, German fustians and Rhenish wines. Many London companies found their imports drying up. With the loss of Gascony, vintners lost their dominance of the London wine trade, as wines now also came from the Mediterranean, Iberia and Germany, often imported by alien merchants. Much of the iron was brought in by the Spanish; salt

256  London, Antwerp, Merchant Adventurers was imported by French merchants from the Bay of Bourgneuf, and fishmongers often found the Baltic ports closed to them, denying them access to timber, tar, ashes, wax, furs and flax from this area. Mercers gradually lost their trade in wholesaling fustians and clothing accessories, as they concentrated on cloth exports and linen imports.38 Even the grocers, the second merchant company in the city, found its trade in spices and dyes undermined. Cloth merchants were exchanging cloth for madder and other dyes and mordants, while spices moved from Bruges, where grocers mostly traded, to Antwerp, and the spice trade was to be further threatened as Antwerp became the mart for Portuguese spices. Drapers and others had even closer connections with provincial dyers in many regions of the country than grocers. Skinners’ overseas fur trade was falling as fashion changed and supplies of many fur-bearing animals dwindled.39 London mercers were the leading cloth exporters as they had been the force behind the development of the Merchant Adventurers, negotiated the early agreements with Antwerp, and usually held a controlling interest in the Company.40 The Low Countries had always been their focus, buying linens from Holland, Germany and elsewhere; silks at Bruges; and fustians from southern Germany. Linen was the leading manufactured import. An estimate of around 1  million  yards of linen was imported in 1480–1, half of which was by denizen merchants, a large proportion of which must have been handled by London mercers.41 It was a natural development that, as the Antwerp trade developed, they would add broadcloth to the wool and worsteds that many were already handling. Mercers therefore were in the ideal position by 1470 to dominate the cloth trade. The leading mercers, because of their wealth, status and trading position, attracted the best and wealthiest apprentices, who developed the expertise necessary to be successful at Antwerp, and then were launched into business, sometimes with financial help from their masters or the company. Mercers were able to demand in 1503 that £100 be required to set up in business, far more than the £40 required by the grocers in 1480.42 From time to time merchants were forced to re-direct their cloth elsewhere as trading conditions deteriorated, and some cloth passed through Hamburg, Rouen and Lyon, but the Antwerp trade still accounted for 84 per cent of all exports from London in the 1540s as problems arose with the Spanish trade after the Reformation.43 The trade was dominated by a small number of Adventurers, while many merchants, primarily interested in importing goods, might ship a few cloths opportunistically. In 1514–15 more than 400 denizens exported cloth, almost two thirds of them shipping fewer than forty cloths amounting to only 16 per cent of exports in that year. By 1547–8 only 6 per cent of cloths were shipped by merchants in such small quantities. The numbers of overseas merchants grew with the size of the trade, while it became more concentrated as wealthier merchants shipped larger quantities (Table  12.2). A  total of

131

4 5 6 5 16 34 61

23,04445

3,255 2,787 2,715 1,635 3,978 4,698 3,976 139

4 2 3 7 20 38 65 22,44546

2,938 1,126 1,350 2,435 4,969 5,482 4,145

Cloths

164

5 7 6 7 15 16 44 64

Merchants

1534–5

37,32947

5,993 5,417 3,267 3,061 5,113 4,154 6,339 3,985

Cloths

203

8 22 11 18 12 30 38 64

Merchants

1547–8

62,30048

9,850 16,893 6,013 8,082 4,136 7,269 5,633 4,424

Cloths

Source: P. Ramsey, ‘The Merchant Adventurers in the first half of the sixteenth century’, (Unpub. D.Phil. thesis, Oxford University, 1962), Appendices; TNA, E 122/80/2, 82/3, 82/7, 167/1.

Total

More than 1,000 600–999 500–599 400–499 300–399 200–299 100–199 40–99

Merchants

Cloths

Cloths exported

Merchants

1514–1544

1507–8

Table 12.2 London denizen merchants exporting more than forty cloths, 1507–8 to 1547–8

258  London, Antwerp, Merchant Adventurers 131 Adventurers shipped cloth to the 1535 Sinxsen mart, but seventeen accounted for almost half the cloths.49 In 1547–8, forty-one merchants, each exporting more than 500 cloths, accounted for more than half of denizen exports. Antwerp sharpened cloth merchants’ skills, and made Adventurers expert negotiators: ‘they thus gained access to an extended world of knowledge encompassing information garnered from the length and breadth of a commercial system of global dimensions’.50 Successful Adventurers had usually spent part of their apprenticeship at Antwerp as factors. They needed to acquire sophisticated financial and negotiating skills, and knowledge of a wide selection of raw materials and manufactured products in which they traded. The mercer Sir Richard Gresham, one of the most successful Adventurers, could have purchased the freedom for his son Thomas, but instead apprenticed him to his brother John. Thomas explained that his father had been wise as he needed to come by ‘the experience and knowledge of all kinds of merchandise’.51 In particular, merchants had to become experts in currency exchange and interest rate fluctuations, since finance costs could account for 10–20 per cent of the wholesale price at Antwerp: ‘In large measure, upon the movement of the Antwerp exchange depended the fortunes of their trade through the city. Dear money augured badly for commerce’.52 Interest rates had been falling on the Antwerp market from 1492 to 1526, a major contributor to Antwerp’s success; then rates fluctuated widely between 2 and 14 per cent monthly until 1540.53 These newly acquired financial skills led to the development of a more sophisticated London financial market. Interest rates, which traditionally had been 6–7 per cent higher in London than Antwerp until the 1520s, fell closer to Antwerp rates in the 1530s.54 This made it easier to finance trade with other markets at times when there were disruptions at Antwerp. The mercer Richard Gresham, lord mayor in 1537–8, was able to move effortlessly among cloth merchant, importer, property speculator and financier. He exported cloth and imported linens, silks and other luxuries, as well as buying grain and other merchandise in the Baltic in the 1520s. From 1535 he withdrew from the cloth trade, leaving its management to his son Thomas, to manage currency and buy and sell property. He managed money on the exchanges, and became an advisor to the crown on currency, responsible for transferring government funds to the continent. In 1537–8 he tried unsuccessfully to establish a bourse similar to that at Antwerp.55 One by-product of the success of unfinished West Country broadcloth at the Brabant fairs was an ongoing conflict between the Merchant Adventurers and the cloth finishers, London’s fullers and shearmen, and after they had amalgamated, clothworkers, who constantly pressed for finishing English cloth prior to export but with limited success.56 In 1467 cloths had to be ‘fulled and fully wrought’ before export; in 1487 cloths worth more than £2 had to be exported ‘barbed, rowed and shorn’.57 This ceiling for exempted white cloths was raised to £3 3s 4d in 1511, £3

London, Antwerp, Merchant Adventurers 259 6s 8d, and £4 in 1535.58 Adventurers were able to circumvent the law by buying licences from the crown, and preventing London shearmen from searching the ships, so it is doubtful that these acts were effective in raising the percentage of finished cloth shipped to Antwerp.59

Merchants and Trade Expansion It was not just the size, but the continuity of the trade at the Brabant fairs that was remarkable. There were ups and downs, of course, but no long interruptions. The London mercer, Thomas Kytson, sold his cloth to at least two of the fairs each year from 1512 to 1540, and sometimes four.60 He was therefore able to focus nearly all his efforts on Antwerp: the only deviations were the shipment of some cloth to Bordeaux in 1514 and 1516, to the Levant in 1519 and 1525, and to Rouen in 1538. In 1512 Merchant Adventurers agreed to move the Sinxen and Bamis marts to Middelburg for seven years, but in 1516 a commercial treaty was signed that made English cloth subject to only a single toll, and the Adventurers returned to Antwerp. In 1518 the Adventurers were exempted from the jurisdiction of the Antwerp cloth guild; security at the fairs was guaranteed, and tolls were reduced to the levels of 1446.61 Mercers, who had accounted for about 40 per cent of London’s denizen cloth exports in the later-fifteenth century, continued to dominate the trade in the first half of the sixteenth (Table 12.3).62 They were responsible

Table 12.3 Companies exporting cloth in 1534–5 Trade

Mercers Drapers Grocers Merchant tailors Haberdashers Clothworkers Skinners Salters Ironmongers Fishmongers Total known denizens Unknown denizens shipping more than 100 cloths Merchants shipping less than 100 cloths Total exporters Source: TNA, E 122/82/7.

Number of merchants

Cloths

Per cent of cloths

Average number of cloths by merchant

36 13 7 7 5 2 2 1 1 1 74 26

16,840 3,529 2,526 1,972 1,319 691 652 135 122 317 28,103 5,241

45.1 9.5 6.8 5.3 3.5 1.9 1.7 0.4 0.3 0.8 75.3 14.0

467.8 271.5 360.9 281.7 263.8 345.5 326.0 135.0 122.0 317.0 385.2 201.6

64

3,985

10.7

62.3

164

37,329

100.0

227.6

260  London, Antwerp, Merchant Adventurers for 38 per cent of denizen exports in 1514–15, and at least 43 per cent of the Merchant Adventurers’ shipments to the Brabant fairs.63 Mercers’ share had risen to 45 per cent of denizens’ cloth exports in 1534–5, but had fallen to 38 per cent by 1547–8.64 Other cloth-related companies— drapers, haberdashers, merchant tailors and clothworkers—took over some of the trade, while grocers and other merchant companies had become less important. Mercers not only dominated in terms of their numbers but also in the average number of cloths each mercer shipped. The sixteenth-century cloth trade was very profitable for its leading participants. It has been estimated that the mercer Thomas Kytson’s gross margins probably averaged out at 25 per cent, with net profit of 20 per cent, perhaps higher than most as he would have enjoyed some economies of scale and a considerable reputation with clothiers and buyers in Antwerp that lesser merchants would have envied.65 The mercer, Sir Thomas Gresham, seems to have made a 20 per cent return on capital in the late 1540s, thereby doubling his money every five years.66 Hansard competition kept margins reasonable, as they paid lower petty custom duties that probably offset the advantages that English merchants enjoyed from their direct networks with clothiers. The mercer, about whose trade we know the most, was Thomas Kytson. With remarkable consistency he exported cloths to Antwerp for thirty-three years, mainly from Wiltshire and Somerset, until his death in 1540 at the age of 55. In the 1510s he shipped, on average, 1,056 broadcloths each year and 194 kerseys; in the 1520s, 890 broadcloths and 520 kerseys; in the 1530s, 1,388 broadcloths and 57 kerseys.67 In addition, he shipped a few northern dozens, cottons, frieze and penistones. Earning 20 per cent after expenses would have produced an income of around £6–800 a year in the 1510s and 1520s, rising to £10,000 in the 1530s.68 In 1535 he seems to have been the richest London merchant, with income from property of £400 a year, and moveable goods of £3,333.69 The other giant among cloth merchants was another mercer, Richard Gresham, who also gained his freedom in 1507, continuing to ship cloth until 1536 after which time he was primarily a currency trader. In 1534–5 he shipped 2,278 cloths, almost 3 per cent of London’s exports.70 Perhaps more typical was the profitability of the Bristol merchant John Smythe in the 1540s. Based on his ledger his exports to Bordeaux, Biscay, Lisbon and Andulasia made a profit of 12.6  per cent (8  per cent on cloth) on his exports and a more favourable 16.4 per cent on his exports from March 1540 to September 1543.71 Smythe traded cloth for woad with the Somerset clothier, John Yerberry, having it finished in Bristol.

Impact on the London Economy It is difficult to underestimate the importance of the growth of London’s trade under the early Tudors to its economy (Table  12.4). Exploding

39.3

22.8 4.0 66.1 59.5 65.9 132.0 80 0.2 50.0 18.1 31.9

38.1

19.1 3.8 61.0 62.4

70.9 131.9 80 (9.9) 60.7

11.6 27.7

22.3 24.6

51.9 110.4 67 6.6 53.2

26.3 3.3 58.5 49.4

28.9

17.3 21.7

64.9 133.4 81 3.7 60.9

31.1 4.1 68.6 48.6

33.4

11.9 23.5

100.8 206.6 126 5.0 64.6

39.4 6.0 105.8 57.0

60.4

21.2 21.2

135.5 273.5 166 2.5 57.2

43.2 8.0 138.0 67.8

86.8

22.0 24.7

121.6 269.9 164 26.7 53.2

36.3 7.7 148.3 70.3

104.3

21.6 25.9

175.1 365.2 221 15.0 52.5

30.9 11.7 190.1 77.6

147.5

19.5 23.7

279.7 540.2 329 (19.2) 56.7

38.6 18.1 260.5 78.2

203.8

19.1 22.5

268.2 546.3 332 10.3 58.3

24.8 16.6 278.5 85.1

237.1

21.3 19.3

270.6 622.7 378 81.5 59.4

19.0 18.4 352.1 89.4

314.7

Source: S. Hovland’s assembly of customs figures from G. Schanz, Englische handelspolitik gegen ende des mittlelalter (Leipzig, 1981); H.L. Gray, ‘Tables of enrolled customs and subsidy accounts 1399–1482’, in Power and Postan, Studies in English trade, 330–64. Unpublished figures were provided to S. Hovland by H.S. Cobb from TNA, E356/22, 23 for 1482–5, and by Peter Ramsey for 1485–1509. The enrolled customs accounts have now been published; see Jenks, Customs. These figures have been summarised and explained in detail in Oldland, ‘London overseas trade’, 72–92.

Total London/ 32.8 Sandwich, Southampton cloth exports Wool 36.9 Miscellaneous goods 5.2 Total exports 74.9 Cloth as per cent of 43.8 total exports Total imports 89.1 Total trade 164.4 Index, 1420 − 9 = 100 100 Balance of trade (14.6) Denizen share of total 59.7 trade (per cent) Hanse share (per cent) 11.0 Other alien share 29.3 (per cent)

1420–9 1430–9 1440–9 1450–9 1460–9 1470–9 1480–9 1490–9 1500–9 1510–9 1520–9 1530–9

Table 12.4 London’s trade, 1420–1539, in pounds

262  London, Antwerp, Merchant Adventurers exports and imports helped to revive and expand the English economy, especially after 1500 when cloth exports and merchandise imports grew rapidly. Profits from cloth exports grew the capital base that was either re-invested in cloth inventory, in imports, in diversification into other fields or in conspicuous consumption: in property, plate and luxuries of all kinds. London’s growing prosperity produced greater immigration from the provinces that led to a rise in population which then exploded under Queen Elizabeth.72 London increased its share of national cloth exports from about 40 per cent in the first half of the fifteenth century to more than 80 per cent by 1550, if Sandwich and Southampton, which might be considered London outports, are included. The value of cloth exports grew faster than the number of cloths as the quality and price of exported cloth rose.73 The value of London’s cloth trade in the 1530s had almost increased tenfold from the 1420s. Importantly, this growth had not been achieved at the expense of wool exports which were remarkably stable for the century 1420–1520 as London staplers took over much of the provincial wool trade, increasing their share from 35 per cent in the 1420s to more than 60  per cent nationally after 1520. London’s cloth trade controlled by denizen merchants held steady throughout the period at approximately 60 per cent of the total trade, which indicates that alien merchants throughout the period always made an important contribution by expanding markets for English cloth and bringing into England both raw materials and luxury goods. London’s trade remained in balance except for a single decade, the 1520s, so imports rose in line with exports, ensuring a continuing supply of raw materials required by the cloth industry, stimulating London’s wholesale trade, and broadening the range of goods for consumers to purchase. More London merchants were involved in cloth retail and wholesale than in exports as London increasingly became the centre for the country’s inland cloth trade. There was conflict between leading wholesalers who wanted all provincial merchants to buy their cloth in London and the lesser merchants who wanted to sell cloth at fairs. In 1479 seventeen crafts, led by the mercers and including drapers and merchant tailors, unsuccessfully tried to prevent freemen from selling at fairs, as eleven crafts opposed. This decision in favour of free trade meant that the small merchant could compete. The haberdashers, for example, were able to undercut mercers’ prices at the fairs.74 In 1520 the common council determined that only makers of cloth could retail in the city.75 Trade expansion made London’s merchant class far wealthier. This can be clearly seen, after 1520, from surviving assessments of moveable goods, debts and landed incomes in the forced loan, amicable grant and subsidy returns.76 This level of wealth appears to have been far greater than a century before if we compare assessments with the few surviving, fifteenth-century London tax assessments. For example, Henry VII had raised loans of £2,000 in 1485 and £4,000 from the City in 1487; Wolsey

London, Antwerp, Merchant Adventurers 263 had little difficulty negotiating a loan of as much as £30,000 in 1522.77 In 1436, 100 Londoners had annual incomes of £20 or more from lands or rent; by 1535 that number had risen to 176.78 Sixty-eight in 1535 had incomes from rents and fees of £50 or more, and this averaged out at £122 per person.79 This was considerable wealth when we consider that in the early-fourteenth century, it has been estimated that there were 925 knights in the country whose average income is estimated to have been only £40 per annum (p.a).80 London’s wealth dwarfed that of the leading provincial towns. The average tax assessment in London in 1525 for the Amicable Grant was £105 compared with Coventry with £48 for the 1524 − 5 subsidies: 25 per cent in London had assessed moveable wealth of £100 or more, compared with only 8  per cent at Coventry.81 London’s lay wealth, comparing subsidy returns from 1334 and 1515, rose at almost twice the rate of any other county in England.82 London had 2 per cent of the population but contributed more than 10 per cent of national taxation in Henry VIII’s reign.83 London’s economy became very dynamic at the end of the fifteenth century, and there was greater consumption of luxury goods.84 London was arguably for the first time, among the leading rank of European cities. Perhaps not as rich as Venice or as populous as Paris or Naples, but its wealth was growing rapidly, its size similar to Florence and Rome, and it had many of the earmarks of considerable prosperity.85 One Venetian officially reporting back to the Senate in 1497 certainly thought so. He considered that ‘the riches of England are greater than those of any country in Europe’, and thought that London’s riches ‘are not occasioned by its inhabitants being nobles or gentlemen; being all, on the contrary, persons of low degree, and artificers who have congregated there from all parts of the island, and from Flanders, and from every other place’.86 He was particularly impressed with the fifty-two goldsmiths’ shops along Cheapside that seemed to carry more silver than was to be found at Venice, Milan, Florence and Rome combined. It seems that trade was not only making the leading overseas merchants rich, but also creating a larger, and richer, middling sort.87

Notes 1. J. Munro, ‘Bruges and the abortive staple in English cloth: An incident in the shift of commerce from Bruges to Antwerp in the late fifteenth century’, Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire, 44 (1966), 1143. 2. J.S. Lee, ‘Crises in the late-medieval cloth trade’, in A.T. Brown, A. Burn and R. Doherty, eds., Crises in economic and social history (Woodbridge, 2015), 339–48. 3. P. Ramsey, Tudor economic problems (London, 1963), 55. 4. I. Blanchard, The international economy in the “age of the discoveries”, 1470–1570 (Stuttgart, 2009), 128. 5. J. Munro, ‘Money, wages and real income in the age of Erasmus’, Collected works of Erasmus, vol. 12 (Toronto, 2003), 677.

264  London, Antwerp, Merchant Adventurers 6. Van der Wee, The growth of the Antwerp market and the European economy, vol. 3 (Louvain, 1963), 60. 7. H. Van der Wee, The growth of the Antwerp market and the European economy (fourteenth-sixteenth centuries), vol. 2 (Louvain, 1963), vol. 2, 186–91. 8. W. Brulez, ‘The balance of trade of the Netherlands in the middle of the 16th century’, in Acta Historiae Neelandica IV (Leiden, 1970), 48. 9. W. Prevenier and W. Brockmans, The Burgundian Netherlands (Cambridge, 1986), 99. 10. Van der Wee, Growth of Antwerp, vol.  2, 197, n.302. Van der Wee was quoting O. de Smedt, De Engelse natie de Antwerpen in de 16e eeuw (1496– 1582), vol. 2 (Antwerp, 1950–54), 356. 11. Van der Wee, Growth of Antwerp, vol.  1, 532, taking statistics from J. Cuvelier, ‘Le registre aux statuts. Ordinances et admissions du metier des tisserands de laine ou grand metier de Bruxelles (xvme–xviiime siècle)’, Bulletin Commission Royale d’Histoire (1912), 121–46. 12. For the range of miscellaneous merchandise, see H. Cobb, ed., The overseas trade of London: Exchequer customs accounts 1480–1, LRS (1990), and H. Cobb, ‘Textile imports in the fifteenth century: The evidence of the customs accounts’, Costume, 29 (1995), 1–11. 13. H. Van der Wee, ‘Structural changes and specialization in southern Netherlands industry, 1100–1600’, in H. Van der Wee, ed., The Low Countries in the early modern world (Aldershot, 1993), 217–20. 14. London’s trade, with an emphasis on the period 1480 to 1520, is analysed in two articles, J. Oldland, ‘London’s trade in the time of Richard III’, Ricardian, 23 (2013), 1–30; and Oldland, ‘London’s overseas trade’, 55–92. 15. Gray is using the same price for cloth in both periods which underestimates the value of the cloth trade by the 1480s. My projections summarised for London in Table 12.4 suggest that trade was roughly in balance in both the 1440s and 1480s. 16. Ibid, 32. 17. W. Brulez, ‘L’exportation des Pays-Bas vers Italie par voie de terre au milieu du XVIe siècle’, in Studi in onore di Amintore Fanfani, IV (Milan, 1962), 470. 18. Blanchard, International, 135, n. 63. 19. Brulez, ‘Balance of trade’, 41–2. The value of English cloth may be exaggerated. Brulez added 30 per cent to the value of English cloth as a result of Antwerp finishing. However, kerseys, which were a significant percentage of the trade, were mostly dyed and finished in England. 20. Blanchard, International, 149–52, 205–8. 21. C.R. Phillips and W.D. Phillips, Jr., Spain’s golden fleece: Wool production and the wool trade from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century (Baltimore, 1997), 251–3. A Spanish sack seems to have been 212lb, compared with an English sack of 364lb. Using 84lb of wool to make a cloth, 2.5 English cloths could be made from a sack of merino wool, while an English sack made 4.33 broadcloths. 22. Munro, ‘Struggles’, 305. 23. Van der Wee, Growth of Antwerp, vol. 2, 187. 24. Phillips and Phillips, Golden Fleece, 263. 25. Oldland, ‘Wool and cloth’, 29. 26. C. Ross, Edward 1V (London, 1974), 358. 27. Statutes, 12 Henry VII, c.6; A.F. Sutton, ‘The Merchant Adventurers of England: Their origins and the Mercers’ company of London’, Historical Research, 75 (2002), 43–4. The entry fee was raised to £5 in 1505 with Henry VII’s new charter to the Merchant Adventurers.

London, Antwerp, Merchant Adventurers 265 28. Sutton, Mercery, 267, 271, 324–5, 331, 334. 29. Statutes, 12 Henry VII, c.6; Sutton, Mercery, 341. 30. P. Ramsey, ‘The Merchant Adventurers in the first half of the sixteenth century’ (Unpub. D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1962), 369. 31. Cobb, The overseas trade of London, xxxv–xxxviii; Sutton, Mercery, 263. 32. Sutton, Mercery, 322, 332; E. Quinton and J. Oldland, ‘London merchants’ cloth exports, 1350–1500’, in R. Netherton and G. Owen-Crocker, eds., Medieval clothing and textiles, vol. 7 (Woodbridge, 2011), 131. 33. W. Childs, Anglo-Castilian trade in the later Middle Ages (Manchester, 1978), 81, 118; W. Childs, ‘Anglo-Portuguese trade in the fifteenth century’, TRHS, 6th series, 2 (1992), 212. 34. P. Nightingale, A medieval mercantile community: The Grocers’ Company and the politics and trade of London 1000–1485 (London, 1995), 543–50. 35. Childs, Anglo-Castilian, 211; Quinton and Oldland, ‘London merchants’, 132–3. 36. Ibid, 131–3; Nightingale, Mercantile Community, 546–7. 37. Oldland, ‘London merchants’, 131. 38. A.F. Sutton, ‘The shop-floor of the London mercery trade, c.1200–c.1500: The marginalisation of the artisan, the itinerant mercer and the shopholder’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 14 (2001), 36–8; J.R. Oldland, ‘London clothmaking, c.1270–c.1550’ (Unpub. Ph.D. Thesis, University of London, 2003), 190–3. 39. E. Veale, The English fur trade in the later Middle Ages, LRS, 38 (2003), 149, 170–80. 40. Sutton, ‘Merchant Adventurers’, 25–46. 41. Cobb, ‘Textile imports’, 8–9. Exports of 66,084 cloths in 1480–81, at 25 yards a cloth, would have been 1,652,100 yards. Therefore, linen imports were, in quantity, 60 per cent of cloth export in terms of yardage, but much less in value as linen was a far cheaper product. 42. Ramsey, ‘Merchant Adventurers’, 385. 43. G. Connell-Smith, Forerunners of Drake: A study of English trade with the Spanish in the early Tudor period (London, 1954), 81–99; Blanchard, International, 128–29, 135, 182. Blanchard has argued for a decline in the Antwerp trade in the 1530s, but we have no customs particulars for this period that would allow us to either confirm or dispute this. Thomas Kytson sold a third more equivalent broadcloths at the Brabant fairs in the 1530s than the 1520s. 44. This account is in very poor condition. Readable entries appear to have accounted for about 75 per cent of total denizen exports. 45. 23,044 cloths represent 88.9 per cent of all items taken from the account. 46. 22,445 cloths represent 84.4 per cent of all items taken from the account. 47. 37,329 cloths represent 92.3 per cent of all items taken from the account. 48. 62,300 cloths represent 96.2 per cent of all items taken from the account. 49. Smedt, De Engelse natie, vol. 1, 427–30. 50. Blanchard, International, 254. 51. J.W. Burgon, The life and times of Sir Thomas Gresham compiled chiefly from his correspondence preserved in her majesty’s state paper office: Including notices of many of his contemporaries, vol.  1 (London, 1839), 47; I. Blanchard, ‘Gresham, Sir Thomas (c.1518–1579)’, NDB, vol. 23, 765. 52. Blanchard, International, 254–5. 53. Ibid, 93. 54. Ibid, 80–4. 55. Blanchard, ‘Gresham’, 761–2. 56. Sutton, Mercery, 335–8.

266  London, Antwerp, Merchant Adventurers 57. Statutes, 7 Edward IV, c.3, 3 Henry VII, c.  11; J. Oldland, ‘The finishing of English woollens 1300–1500’, in R. Netherton and G.R. Owen-Crocker, eds., Medieval clothing and textiles, vol. 3 (Woodbridge, 2007), 111–12. 58. Statutes, 3 Henry VIII, c. 11; 5 Henry VIII, c.3; 27 Henry VIII, c.13. 59. Oldland, ‘Finishing of English woollens’, 112–13. 60. Ramsey, ‘Merchant Adventurers’, appendix, Accounts of Sir Thomas Kitson (1512–40). 61. Sutton, Mercery, 334–5. 62. Quinton and Oldland, ‘London Merchants’, 124. 63. TNA, E 122/82/3. 64. Sutton, Mercery, 411. 65. P.H. Ramsey, ‘Two early Tudor cloth merchants—Sir Thomas Kitson and Sir Thomas Gresham’, in M. Spallanzani, ed., Produzione commercio e consumo dei panni di lana (Florence, 1976), 388. 66. Ibid, 389. 67. Ramsey, ‘Merchant Adventurers’, Appendix. 68. Ramsey, ‘Two early Tudor cloth merchants’, 72–88. 69. J. Oldland, ‘The allocation of merchant capital in early Tudor London’, EcHR, 63 (2010), 1079. 70. Blanchard, ‘Gresham’, 760–4. 71. J. Vanes, The ledger of John Smythe, 1538–1550, vol.  28 (Bristol Record Society, 1974), 132–3; D. Sacks, The widening gate: Bristol and the Atlantic economy 1450–1700 (Berkeley, 1991), 74–7. 72. V. Harding, ‘The population of London, 1550–170, a review of the published evidence’, London Journal, 15 (1990), 112–3. 73. Oldland, ‘Variety and quality’, 225 − 33; Oldland, ‘Wool and cloth’, 29. 74. Sutton, ‘The shop-floor of the London mercery trade, c.1200–c.1500’, 33–7. 75. LMA, Reps., 5, f. 109v. 76. J. Oldland, ‘The wealth of the trades in early Tudor London’, London Journal, 31 (1996), 127 − 55; Oldland, ‘Allocation’, 1058 − 80. 77. H. Kleineke, ‘ “Morton’s fork”?—Henry VII’s “forced loan” of 1496’, Ricardian, 13 (2003), 315–27; I.W. Archer, ‘The burden of taxation on ­sixteenth-century London’, Historical Journal, 44 (2001), 607. 78. J.C. Stahlschmidt, ‘A London subsidy temp. Henry IV’, Archaeological Journal, 44 (1887), 56–83; Oldland, ‘Allocation’, 1067 − 68. 79. Ibid, 1068. 80. B.M.S. Campbell, ‘The land’, in R. Horrox and W.M. Ormrod, eds., A social history of England (Cambridge, 2006), 202. 81. Oldland, ‘Wealth of the trades’, 131 − 32. 82. R.S. Schofield, ‘The geographical distribution of wealth in England, 1334 − 1649’, EcHR, 2nd series, 18 (1965), 504. 83. J.C.K. Cornwall, Wealth and society in early sixteenth century England (London, 1988), 69. 84. Oldland, ‘Richard III’, 21–30. 85. C. Cipolla, Before the industrial revolution (New York, 1980), 282−3. 86. C.H. Williams, ed., English historical documents 1485 − 1558 (London, 1967), 201. 87. J. Oldland, ‘The wealth of early Tudor craftsmen in London based on the lay subsidies’, in M. Davies and A. Prescott, eds., London and the kingdom: Essays in honour of Caroline M. Barron (Donington, 2008), 195−211.

13 Export Expansion, 1470–1555

Exports rose from 37,447 cloths annually in 1466–70 during the midfifteenth century depression to 117,322 cloths in 1541–5, and reached a one-year peak in 1553–4 of 150,563 cloths. The extent of this growth owed much to a favourable economy and an improved trading environment as well as the efforts of alien merchants who sent English cloth across Europe, to the Levant and the New World. Success continued to rest on the value of unfinished standard broadcloth, but it was supplemented by coloured and fine broadcloth, kersey, cheaper dozens and narrow Devonshire dozens, cottons and frieze.

An Improved Trading Environment The European economy improved. This seems to have been led by an increase in international trade and expansion in the money supply that greased the wheels of commerce.1 Contributing to this growth were new overland trade routes, growth in fairs and markets, and increased efficiencies in wholesale distribution.2 After 1500 the rise in population stimulated growth; many cities grew in size as did the wealth of its merchants, and agricultural incomes rose as wages fell.3 In general, warfare declined, although civil war in Flanders in the 1480s and 1490s impeded the recovery of the English cloth trade. The end of the Hundred Years’ War in 1453, for example, opened up some north-south trade routes, and laid the ground for increased commerce between England and France. The final revocation of the Calais Bullion and Staple Ordinances in 1473 reduced friction between England and Burgundy, immediately benefiting Antwerp’s trading position, and Merchant Adventurers’ privileges were reaffirmed in 1474.4 Antwerp became the centre of northern European trade, gathering to its marts, linen, fustian, silver and copper from South Germany; trade goods along the Rhine; Dutch grain; and the Italian trade in silks, armour and weapons. Around 1500 Hungarian copper was traded in Antwerp as were Portuguese spices and drugs.5 But of all the commodities that passed through Antwerp, English cloth was probably the most important, accounting for one third of the city’s imports in

268  Export Expansion, 1470–1555 the early Tudor period.6 Flemish revolts were the death knell for Bruges as the emperor ordered Hanseatic, Portuguese, Spanish and Italian merchants to leave the city in 1488: most of them eventually moved to Antwerp. Bruges’ collapse was a windfall for English cloth merchants who had for over a century been prevented from trading cloth there. Bruges’ international trade was now restricted to English and Spanish wool and some light draperies from south-west Flanders.7 The development of efficient overland transportation routes stimulated trade at the Brabant fairs.8 This reversed the pattern set in the thirteenth century with the decline of the Champagne fairs and Italians switching to maritime trade from the Mediterranean to England and Flanders. By the sixteenth century it had, once more, become economical to sell even cheap Hondschootte says in Italy. The principle routes from Antwerp were now farther east, crossing over the Alps at either the Saint-Gotthard pass into Milan and Genoa, or the Brenner Pass into Venice, which was less than 20 per cent of the distance by sea. Most traffic passed down the Rhine to Cologne and Frankfurt and then spread out through southern Germany, Switzerland and eastern France. Carting companies, working on commission and using convoys of large Hesse waggons, established safe, insured, well-financed routes with warehouse facilities and fixed rates. These became speedier and more reliable than sea routes. Overland routes opened up new markets in southern Germany and Eastern Europe for both English broadcloth and kersey.9 Italian merchants depended less on seaborne traffic, and those ships that still ventured to northern Europe tended to go to Antwerp. The last Florentine galley fleet arrived in England in 1478; Venetian galleys came less frequently, with their last voyage in 1532. The Genoese, in decline as they had lost the alum trade to the Florentines, left Southampton for Antwerp.10 From 1466 to 1489 Spanish merchants were allowed to trade at denizen rates, and consequently took over much of the Anglo-Iberian trade from English and Genoese merchants.11 While there still remained a strong Italian community in early Tudor London, Italians increasingly relied on commission agents to buy English cloth, particularly kersey which was bought while still on the loom and dyed to specified colours.12 This had a catastrophic effect on Southampton long term, although London merchants continued to use the port until 1520.13 Southampton’s share of the cloth trade fell from 18 per cent around 1470 to 4 per cent in 1540. Edward IV, Richard III and Henry VII did much to encourage the cloth industry and free trade, although economic concerns were usually secondary to their political interests. Edward’s 1464 re-coinage had stimulated exports, and piracy was significantly reduced.14 He lifted the ban on the import of English cloth to Pisa in 1466, signed a treaty with Naples, and assisted the Florentine and Venetian trade by granting generous licences. In 1466 he allowed Spanish merchants to trade cloth at

Export Expansion, 1470–1555 269 denizen rates of duty. But most importantly, he finally signed the Treaty of Utrecht with the Hanseatic League in 1474 ending a twenty-five year period of conflict which re-opened the Baltic trade, although he gained no concessions for English merchants who continued to find that the welcome extended to the Hanse in London was not reciprocated overseas. At the same time Edward mended relations with France, signing the Treaty of Picquigny in 1475.15 Treaties were signed in Henry VII’s reign with Denmark, Portugal, Spain, Brittany, Florence and Pisa.16 That trade did not surge forward, in spite of all these treaties, was because Henry VII, for political reasons, hindered as well as encouraged trade in his first ten years as Maximilian of Austria gave succour to the pretender Perkin Warbeck. English merchants were forbidden to trade with Antwerp and the Low Countries from 1493 to 1496, forcing them back to Calais. Commercial agreements signed towards the end of the century further freed up trade, and accordingly, exports bounded forward at the turn of the century, rising from 54,644 cloths in 1498–9, to 70,170 in 1499– 1500 and then 82,600 in 1500–1, and thereafter rarely looked back. The treaty, known as the Intercursus Magnus, was signed between Henry and Archduke Philip of Burgundy in 1496, allowing free trade in cloth everywhere except Flanders. But then Philip imposed an import duty on cloth which kept Merchant Adventurers at Calais until 1498. Only in 1499 was the treaty finally reaffirmed.17 The cloth trade was once more transferred to Calais in 1505–6, as the Duke of Burgundy again tried to impose duties on English cloth.18 It was not until 1506 that ongoing friction between Burgundy and England was finally settled with the Intercursus Malus that reaffirmed the 1496 treaty. The agreement with Brittany in 1496 and with France at the Convention of Boulogne in 1497 seems to have had a similar effect on Exeter’s trade, which tripled between 1498 and 1502. The rising tide of the European economy raised nearly all boats until around 1500. English wool exports rose in the 1460s and then remained steady until 1490, while more draperies were blending English with Spanish wools for their better cloths.19 Output of the traditional Flemish draperies of Ghent, Ypres and Leuven had fallen 70–80% from the beginning of the century.20 Yet production at Mechelen rebounded in the late-fifteenth century as it found new Germanic markets along the Rhine and Danube for its high-quality cloth.21 Moreover, the Dutch industry was growing. The continued weakness of English direct trade with the Baltic provided an opportunity for Netherlands’ cloth to expand in this market.22 Holland, Zeeland and Brabant merchants gained greater access to the Baltic grain trade, and this opened up new markets for their cloth.23 Leiden produced 20–24,000 cloths annually from 1476 to 1530, relying on fine English wools.24 Some Flemish nouvelles draperies that had converted to Spanish wools continued to effectively compete with English draperies. Spanish wool imports of around 6,000 sacks in

270  Export Expansion, 1470–1555 the early-sixteenth century were similar to English wool exports, and far more than Scottish exports of 1,500–2,000 sacks.25 In addition, coarse wools and fells from Newcastle and elsewhere were providing coarse wools for the cheaper draperies, amounting to another 1,500 sacks. English wool exports recovered to pre-recession levels, and did not continue their slow decline until the sixteenth century. Less expensive cloth from Diksmuide and Poperinghe in south-west Flanders, as well as draperies in Brabant, the Meuse Valley and the Rhine region revived, and lowquality cloths from northern Brabant prospered at the Frankfurt fairs.26 Exported cloths from the nouvelles draperies had been generally priced higher than English broadcloth. Now some Poperinge, Armentières, Nieuwkerk, Naarden, Dixmude and Tourcoing cloths were priced lower, as the English broadcloth had become heavier, of higher quality and more expensive. This was a complete strategic reversal from the late-fourteenth century when England shipped few luxury cloths to northern Europe.27 Many Low Countries’ draperies found it increasingly difficult to compete, especially after 1520. Wervik, Kortijk and Comines draperies were now shadows of their former selves.28 Leiden cloth production, for example, fell from 25,000 cloths annually around 1520 to below 10,000 at mid-century.29 Even the traditional draperies at Bruges, Ghent and Ypres were forced belatedly to use Spanish wools for their lesser cloths in the 1540s.30 A few draperies continued to prosper: Armentières remained an important producer throughout the sixteenth century, and Menin cloth production grew in the 1540s.31 By 1550 European fashion was turning to lighter cloths. The increasing weight of English woollens and their high cost were probably a catalyst for the revival of very light cheap worsteds that found rapidly growing markets in southern Europe. The industry was led by Hondschootte, but many other Flemish and Brabant draperies turned to the production of lighter worsteds and serges, and cloths mixing wool with linen, cotton, silk and goat’s hair. Production of Low Countries’ woollens probably remained steady until 1530 after which time they steadily declined, and light draperies exceeded woollens.32 By the 1560s it has been estimated that 200,000 light woollen cloths and 60,000 mixed cloths were exported from the Netherlands, and a significant amount were shipped to England, compared with 137,000 English cloths exported.33 By the midsixteenth century the output of light draperies in the Low Countries was estimated to have exceeded woollens by 76 per cent.34 Woollens exported from the Netherlands were still worth 80 per cent more than worsteds and mixed cloths, but market forces were clearly starting to favour these new, lighter cloths.35 Even around 1560, when the English industry dominated the market for woollens, 70,000 pieces of Low Countries woollens were exported from Antwerp worth 1,400,000 guilders, compared with 90,000 English cloths coming into the market, 67,000 of which were reexported worth 3,120,000 guilders.36

Export Expansion, 1470–1555 271

Changes in the Composition of English Exports Around the mid-fifteenth century, although we cannot be precise, price and quality began to rise. To leverage the competitive advantage from lower cost, high-quality wools, English merchants appeared to have increased broadcloth weight as wool prices continued to fall.37 Through the poundage accounts we can trace the gradual increase in the price of the average coloured broadcloth exported from London, mostly by Italians, from 30s in mid-century to 60s in 1488–9, by which time cheaper westerns and bastards were in decline.38 The average price of broadcloths, mostly coloured, in the London poundage accounts in 1508–9 was almost 68s.39 Unfortunately, there are few references to cloth weight in the fifteenth century but it seems to have risen. At Coventry in 1451 cloth had to contain not less than 30lb of yarn to make a dozen, equivalent to 60lb for a full broadcloth, well above the weight of fourteenth-century broadcloth. A standard mid-sixteenth century finished broadcloth weighed 64lb. Reading cloth in 1519 used 113lb of wool which would have produced a much heavier cloth.40 It has been estimated that by 1450 standard English broadcloth may have weighed around 47lb, up from 40lb in the 1390s, now almost as heavy as the far higher-quality Ghent Dickedinnen cloth that weighed 51lb in 1462, and was 6 per cent less in cloth area.41 English clothiers continued to increase the weight of broadcloth over the next century to 64lb by 1550, a further 35 per cent increase, although most of the increase in weight in standard broadcloth had probably occurred by the end of the fifteenth century. As the European economy revived at the end of the fifteenth century, prices for the highest-quality wools rose much faster than for average wools, further widening the price differential between standard English broadcloth and the finest continental cloth. The price of Ghent Dickedinnen cloth, £7.719 Flemish groats in 1446–50, had almost doubled to £14.667 fifty years later.42 The kersey transformation was even more dramatic, now primarily a higher-quality cloth, 18 yards in length. It was becoming an important part of the English cloth trade as early as the 1460s, mainly as a result of the export by Italians who in 1465–6 were exporting as many kerseys as broadcloth on an equivalent basis.43 Twenty  per cent of the cloths registered at the Brabant fairs in 1495–8 were kerseys; they were well established in Venice by 1513, and there are records of their sale as far east as Alexandria in 1510.44 East Devon kersey clothiers were exporting coloured kerseys through Exeter, as did John Greenway of Tiverton early in the sixteenth century.45 In the later-fifteenth century coloured kerseys were usually valued at 13s 4d a cloth, but in 1505 the standard customs price of 20s a cloth was set, the same as 60s for a broadcloth, as three kerseys were deemed equivalent to broadcloth. Merchant Adventurers shipped 16,268 kerseys to Antwerp in April-May 1535 compared with

272  Export Expansion, 1470–1555 13,340 short broadcloths and 347 long broadcloths.46 The average price of kersey in Antwerp in 1551 was 33s and 3 Flemish groats compared with 100s for the average short broadcloth.47 Since the statute dimensions of kersey was 37 per cent of a western white broadcloth, then the quality of a coloured kersey was not much less than a short broadcloth. The very successful Gresham dynasty of London mercers specialised in kersey. Richard Gresham shipped 2,880 kerseys, John Gresham 2,521, and William Gresham 1,140 kerseys to the Sinksen mart in 1535, 40 per cent of the kerseys shipped. As with broadcloths there was a wide quality range. From 1538 to 1544 the Antwerp commission agents, van der Molen, paid 38–48s for Winchcombe kerseys from around Newbury, 36–48s for second-grade kerseys, and 6–8s less for northern kerseys.48 Thomas Gresham in 1548 bought cheap northern kerseys for 24–34s, most western kerseys for 34–36s, and Winchcombe kerseys for 40s.49 In the sixteenth century merchants found markets for fine broadcloths: whites made in Worcester and the western parts of Essex and Suffolk; blues from Coventry and coloureds from Reading and Kent. These extrafine, long cloths might be considered a new category as they were heavier than most, if not all, continental woollens, and were fetching far higher prices than standard broadcloth. These luxury fine-quality cloths can be traced back to the early-fourteenth century. The Great Wardrobe was buying expensive, imported, long, coloured broadcloths, accounting for 40  per cent of cloth expenditures in 1331–2, rising to 56  per cent in 1347–9, and they still accounted for 38 per cent of expenditures on woollen cloth in 1392–5.50 Long cloths became less important in the fifteenth century as Great Wardrobe luxury long-cloth purchases fell, London clothmaking declined, and there was no export market for such luxurious cloth. The finest cloths the Italians were buying in the 1440s, in small numbers, came from Ludlow and Northampton.51 As with broadcloth, in the sixteenth century most fine long cloths were heavier than they had been in the mid-fifteenth century. While Ghent’s fine cloth had remained unchanged, fine cloths from Armentières and Mechelen matched or even exceeded the weight of long Worcesters, blending English and merino wools.52 Most of the growth in long-cloth exports probably occurred in the second quarter of the sixteenth century, and they came from Worcester which made whites; and dyed cloths from Reading and around Cranbrook in the Kentish Weald.53 William Mucklowe, a Worcester mercer, took 478 cloths to the 1511 Brabant fairs: he sold three and a half long whites at Antwerp’s Sinxsen mart for between £6 16s and £7, and fifty-three and three quarters standard whites for an average of £4 4s.54 Thomas Howell paid 3s 4d a yard for a fine white Coggeshall 40 yards long, worth £6 13s in the 1520s.55 In 1548 Thomas Gresham shipped twenty-nine long white Worcesters worth £7 3s 4d each and fifty short Worcesters worth £3 6s 8d to the Pasche mart. From May  1549 to April  1550, 8,787 long cloths were

Export Expansion, 1470–1555 273 sold at Antwerp, compared with 49,667 short cloths.56 Long cloths were only 7 per cent of the number of cloths; but since Thomas Gresham paid over twice the price for long Worcesters than short Worcesters, the value of long cloths may have been 15–20 per cent of total value of English exports to Antwerp.57 Cranbrook’s industry was well established by the 1520s as the 1524–5 subsidies testify to the wealth of the town’s leading clothiers.58 Thomas Kytson in 1535 bought two Kentish russets weighing 100lb for £6 16s 8d each, paying another pound for having them sheared, rowed and dressed and then bought another two russets for £7 6s 8d, again having them finished for another pound.59 The Cranbrook clothier, Stephen Draner, had 19 cloths worth £5–7, and four fine cloths worth £10–15 each, in inventory at his death in 1540.60 At Reading the dimensions of its long cloths were regulated by 1520, and its dyeing and finishing trades were well established.61 Reading cloths required 65lb of weft and 48lb of warp thread (forty warp to sixty weft ratio).62 At mid-century fine Kentish, Sussex and Reading cloths were the heaviest in the country, 90lb compared with 84lb for long Worcesters.63 Thomas Howell was buying fine long Kentish cloths, mostly russets in 1526 and 1527 to send to Spain, paying £5–7 a cloth, compared with the short Suffolk and Essex coloured broadcloths that cost him between £2 15s and £3 15s.64 At the other end of the price spectrum there was a small export market for Devonshire and Yorkshire dozens, Welsh and Lancashire cottons, penistones and frieze whose prices remained low even as broadcloth and kersey prices rose. White straits, at 5s a strait, were still the principal cloth exported from Devon in the early-sixteenth century.65 In the fifteenth century Italians increased their purchases of Welsh cottons and frieze. At London, in 1488–9, the value of cottons and frieze was 8 per cent of all their exported cloths. They were around 5.2 per cent of the value of cloths during April-June 1509, 14.9 per cent in 1520–1, rising to 20 per cent in 1553–4.66 Cottons and frieze were only a small part of the Antwerp trade, accounting for only 3.5 per cent of the value in 1551, with frieze exports worth almost double the value of cottons.67 Hanseatic merchants exported small quantities of cottons as wrappers, 20–100 goads per shipment, on which they seem to have paid poundage by the mid-sixteenth century. As quality rose, merchants attempted to control fraudulent production practices.68 In 1464 an act had regulated cloth sizes and sealing, specified that wool given to carders and spinners was of specified weight and to be paid in ready money, and that cloth be fulled only with teasels and not cards.69 In 1472 the London mayor’s court set up a committee with three shearmen, three fullers and seven aldermen to prepare ordinances to address fraudulent practices in the industry.70 These included unlawful re-stretching of the cloth after fulling when the cloth was placed on the tenter, and covering up poor shearing by powdering the cloth with flocks.

274  Export Expansion, 1470–1555 The ordinances and regulations passed in the next few years were eventually reinforced by the passage of the first comprehensive act to deal with cloth quality in 1484.71 Quality problems were always the same and were concerned with cloth finishing: cloth shrinkage when the cloth became wet, fading colour and the addition of wool and other materials in the finishing process to obscure patches where the cloth was too thin. The most important fraudulent practice, and the most difficult to monitor, was cloth shrinkage. When cloth was taken off the loom and mechanically fulled, it lost up to 50 per cent of its surface area. It was then stretched on the tenter to even its width, and by an act of Henry VIII in 1514 it was permitted to increase length by a yard and width by a quarter of a yard, reduced to an eighth of a yard in 1549.72 It was not easy to determine if cloth had been excessively re-stretched, unless it was re-soaked, a process known as ‘trial by water’. At York in 1505 civic regulations required that cloth be soaked and left to dry for six days, and the cloth still had to be 24 yards long and 7½ quarters wide, or one yard shorter and the same width than it had been after fulling.73 Alnagers, the officials traditionally responsible for collecting the cloth subsidy and enforcing quality regulations, were naturally reluctant to go to the trouble and time to re-wet the cloth even though the fine was £5 set in 1514 for fraudulent stretching. Many must have been bribed to turn the other cheek. Consequently, clothiers frequently stretched the cloth well beyond its accepted length with little expectation that they would be caught, undoubtedly hurting the reputation of English cloth at the Antwerp mart where most of the cloth was sold. There was also a problem with the final shearing process that raised the nap of the cloth and then sheared it, if refuse wool called flocks, chalk, starch and other materials were added to the cloth to cover up imperfections. The principle problem with dyeing was failing to fix the colour, causing the cloth to run if wet, or fade with time. London drapers, merchant tailors and haberdashers forced ordinances on the dyers in 1501 and 1502, setting fines for ‘fugitive dyeing’, and requiring dyers to provided samples of woaded cloth, hats and caps to merchants to set standards.74 In 1532 a statute ‘concerning the true dyeing of woollen cloths’ regulated that ‘no person shall dye or alter any woollen cloth, or hats, or caps, unless the same be perfectly boiled, grained or maddered upon the woad with good cork or orchil’; and the use of brazilwood was forbidden because it was fugitive, but it was held over to the next parliament.75 It finally became law in 1549 when, for a range of colours, cloth had to be first dyed with woad before re-dyed with madder. The list of approved colours was re-set in 1557.

The Export Triumph The number of exported cloths based on the petty customs accounts tripled from the 1460s to the 1540s (Table 13.1). Yet while these customs

3,930 6,536 6,561 2,30577 1,213 1,478 3,786 2,32783 7,260 13,504 10,732 13,428 8,481 6,995 7,482 3,816 4,513 2,647 NA

77,271 46,611 60.3 84,803 52,390 61.8 86,592 62,257 71.9 90,099 63,084 70.0 82,269 61,854 75.2 93,534 76,136 81.4 94,087 75,503 80.2 109,278 91,731 83.9 117,322 99,535 84.8 147,161 132,766 90.2 150,563 135,594 90.1

14,382 20,778 23,239 34,534 36,057 35,760 35,678 43,311

48.8 55.5 64.1 68.5 66.5 71.5 62.7 69.2

29,474 37,447 36,537 50,441 54,198 50,005 56,945 62,583 4,612 3,219 3,140 3,025 2,440 2,176 2,344 2,816 2,282 4,271 3,490

2,050 1,989 NA76 5,44078 5,27880 5,218 6,632 5,783 9,329 5,622 4,840 4,087 3,782 4,533 4,429 6,344 5,384 2,577 3,915

1,048 1,542 683 2,46279 1,855 2,564 3,926 3,961

16,155 21,255 20,705 32,185 29,191 25,892 29,513 35,668 58.0 55.2 56.7 56.7 59.2 60.9 57.4 55.8 53.9 67.2 74.1

54.8 56.8 56.7 63.8 53.9 51.8 51.8 57.0 17,638 16,984 21,621 20,411 18,457 20,402 24,274 30,747 25,616 44,509 27,903

8,818 5,807 3,415 8,226 13,439 13,740 15,100 17,175 22.8 20.0 25.0 24.8 22.4 21.8 25.8 28.1 21.8 30.5 18.6

29.9 15.5 9.3 16.3 24.8 27.5 26.5 27.4

14,830 20,987 15,861 18,559 15,137 16,190 15,847 17,523 28,472 3,279 11,023

4,501 10,386 12,417 10,030 11,568 10,373 12,332 9,740

19.2 24.7 18.3 20.6 18.4 23.3 16.8 16.0 24.3 2.3 7.3

15.3 27.7 34.0 20.0 21.3 20.7 21.7 15.6

National Per National Per National Per denizen cent of Hanse cent of other cent of national national aliens national

3,195 44,803 1,726 46,832 1,502 49,110 1,195 51,128 779 48,675 1,129 56,942 574 53,966 732 61,008 795 63,234 871 97,962 2,066 111,637

1,453 712 831 2,656 2,143 839 1,680 2,133

National London Per Southampton Bristol Exeter Hull cent of national

Source: Carus-Wilson and Coleman, Export; J.D. Gould, The great debasement: currency and the economy in mid-Tudor England (Oxford, 1970), 175–7; Munro, Struggles’, 304–5.

1461–5 1466–70 1471–5 1476–80 1481–5 1486–90 1491–481 1496– 150082 1501–5 1506–10 1511–15 1516–20 1521–5 1526–30 1531–5 1536–40 1541–4 1549–5084 1553–4

Period

Table 13.1 English cloth exports, in annual equivalent broadcloths, 1461–1554, nationally, by major ports, and by denizen, Hanse and other aliens (year ending Michaelmas)

276  Export Expansion, 1470–1555 accounts are remarkable for their longevity and completeness they underestimate the amount of cloth sold. They excluded many cheaper cloths, mainly narrow cottons and frieze whose exports were growing and were subject only to poundage.85 Since duty was levied on the standard broadcloth or their equivalents, cloths were woven longer to reduce the effective rate of duty, especially after 1500.86 Fine, long broadcloths, which became an important export in the second quarter of the sixteenth century, were set to be 28–31  yards in length, but in practice were often as long as 40 yards.87 It is probable that cloth exports were 5 per cent greater than the customs accounts suggest from 1480 to 1499, and 10 per cent thereafter. The customs accounts also understate the English achievement in that they do not reflect the rising value of cloths shipped. For London it has been estimated that while the number of cloths rose 500 per cent from the 1420s to the 1530s, their value rose more than 900 per cent.88 From 1400 to 1450 cloth sold by denizens and Hansards was mostly lower-quality broadcloth and straits. Other aliens exported somewhat higher-quality, mostly coloured cloth, but Italians also exported a lot of inexpensive westerns and bastards.89 A note attached to a Sandwich poundage account for 1465–6 revealed eighteen different cloths: a standard coloured cloth was valued at 40s, but cloths ranged from 20s for four straits to 66s 8d for a Northampton, 120s for half-grain cloth, and 160s for cloth dyed in grain.90 Cloth exports rebounded from the long mid-fifteenth century depression only in the late 1470s. Sales in the 1480s and 1490s of more than 50,000 cloths annually were up dramatically from the low point of 29,000 cloths between 1461 and 1465, but hardly exceeded the previous highs in the 1440s. Sales only exploded after 1499. In the last quarter of the fifteenth century the primary thrust was selling white unfinished broadcloth through the Brabant fairs, with coloured kersey an important but secondary cloth. Broadcloths were full length, rather than dozens which had constituted a considerable share of fourteenth-century exports. In the first half of the sixteenth century, while broadcloth remained perhaps 70 per cent of the trade, much of the growth was through extending the range of cloths. Supplementing unfinished whites and regular kersey were higher-quality short cloths (short worcesters, castlecombes and stroudwaters, for example); coloured short cloths primarily destined for Spain (and a few from there to the New World), higher-quality kersey from Newbury, and then fine long whites and coloureds that now competed with the best continental woollens. At Antwerp’s Sinxsen mart, in 1535, Merchant Adventurers sold 13,340 short broadcloths, 347 long broadcloths, 16,268 kerseys, 284 worsteds, 314 dozens, 20 stockbreds and 25 Florentines.91 Aliens other than Hanse merchants exported far more kerseys than broadcloths in the sixteenth century: for example, between 1543 and 1545 Italians shipped 518.5 balls of kerseys overland from

Export Expansion, 1470–1555 277 Antwerp compared with 146.5 balls of broadcloth (five broadcloths to a ball, twenty kerseys).92 There was one short-lived disruption in the late 1540s that may have encouraged sale of cheaper, lower-quality cloth when exports surged from 117,000 cloths annually in 1541–4, to 137,000 in 1549–50 as the depreciated coinage lowered the price of cloth, resulting in unprecedented demand in Antwerp. The market collapsed in 1550, peaked for a single year in 1553–4, before settling back for the rest of the century at levels closer to 1540.93 Share of English exports held by English merchants remained relatively steady throughout the period at between 50  per cent and 60  per cent of the trade. Alien merchants therefore participated equally in growth, extending markets for English broadcloth, kersey and some coarser cloth to eastern and northern Europe, the Levant and the New World. It was only in the late 1540s that non-Hanseatic alien exports declined, and in the 1550s the Hanse were largely pushed out of the trade. From 1470 to 1500 Hansard share increased while that of other alien merchants declined as expanding trade routes through Cologne and Frankfurt favoured Hanse merchants whose exports rose more quickly than denizens.94 Cologne merchants became increasingly important to the English cloth industry as the Baltic trade languished. Cologne temporarily left the Hanse in order to preserve its English cloth trade in the late 1460s and early 1470s: and between 1475 and 1478, Cologne accounted for 60 per cent of total Hanse exports.95 Non-Hanseatic aliens paid higher petty customs duties than either denizen or Hansards: on the standard broadcloth they equated to about 2 per cent of market value for denizens and 6 per cent for Italian merchants.96 As long as Italians had dominated the sea routes to Iberia and the Mediterranean they could often absorb these high taxes. But the growth of Antwerp as an emporium for English cloth meant that aliens could frequently buy their cloth more cheaply in Antwerp, and when the Italians, towards the end of the century, abandoned sea routes and shipped English cloth overland from Antwerp to the Mediterranean, it made sense to buy much of their English cloth at the Brabant fairs. London drapers were among the principal beneficiaries of this transition as they had been the primary suppliers of finished cloth to the Italians. We can see in the customs particulars that drapers were increasingly operating through Antwerp from the 1450s onwards.97 In the fifteenth century, trade with the Baltic and Gascony had fallen off, and Spanish merchants had expanded their share of the Iberian trade. A treaty with Castile in 1466 reduced cloth duties to the levels of denizen merchants, which lasted until 1489.98 As a result Castilians increased their share of the cloth trade from 2–4 per cent to 14 per cent, restricting English merchants’ access to the Iberian market, and replacing Italians as the second-largest group of alien merchants after Hansards.99 Spain and

278  Export Expansion, 1470–1555 Portugal were England’s largest market after the southern Netherlands, and were particularly important for Bristol. Bristol sent 950 cloths to Spain and 471 to Portugal, more than 60  per cent of its cloth exports between September  1479 and July  1480: Ireland accounted for 378½ cloths, and Bordeaux had been reduced to 276 cloths.100 At the end of the fifteenth century Portugal took around 3,000 cloths from England, about 5 per cent of total cloth exports, and Spain between 10 per cent and 20 per cent.101 Anglo-Spanish trade revived with a new treaty with Spain in 1515 and especially during the 1520s, as Charles, uncle to the English queen, sought Henry’s help in his struggle with France. All southern ports benefited from better Spanish relations, and many leading London merchants, particularly drapers, were shipping cloth from both London and Southampton.102 Some merchants established residence in Spain; Robert Thorne, Thomas Howell, Roger Barlow and Thomas Maillard in Seville; Thomas Travers and Nicholas Wilford in Bilbao; William Ostriche in San Lucar de Barrameda; John Sweeting in Cadiz. Thomas Howell was to spend twenty-six years on and off in Seville. Thomas Maillard and Roger Barlow were selling cloth to the West Indies. In 1526 and 1527 the draper Thomas Howell sent approximately 500 dyed and finished cloths to Spain, most of them from Suffolk, with some from Essex and Kent.103 Most of the cloths were finished and dyed.104 Another draper, the alderman Humphrey Monmouth, was buying between 300 and 500 Suffolk cloths in 1527–8 that he sold to alien merchants presumably for shipment mostly to Iberia.105 In 1530 Henry granted merchants in southern Spain a licence to form the Andalusia Company to better manage their interests.106 Trade ebbed with the Reformation and dwindled once English merchants came under investigation by the Inquisition.107 Other alien cloth duties were lowered to denizen levels for seven years, as of April  1538, and poundage was removed.108 This naturally stimulated exports, especially by Italians. Other alien exports tripled in the eight years from 1537 to 1545 over the prior eight years, but once the higher duties were reinstated, other alien cloth exports fell dramatically, so that by 1549–50 other aliens’ share of exports had fallen to 2.3 per cent.109 Trade with the Baltic revived. Whereas only ten or eleven English ships passed through the Sound in 1503, this had risen to twenty-nine in 1528, 51 in 1537 and more than 200 between 1536 and 1542.110 The prime reason for the growth was English demand for grain, ship’s stores and particularly ship’s cables, but growing amounts of cloth must have been sold to offset this trade.111 More than 200 English ships left England for Baltic and North Sea ports in 1528.112 English cloth dyed at Hamburg grew from less than 1,000 cloths in 1536–7 to about 5,000 cloths by mid-century.113 London grew at the expense of most other ports, raising its share of exports from 55 per cent in the later 1460s to 70 per cent in the 1510s

Export Expansion, 1470–1555 279 and 90 per cent at mid-century. Cloth assembled in London for shipment to other ports, primarily Southampton, was included in London customs accounts between 1473 and 1495, inflating London’s exports during that period.114 It was perhaps unsurprising that at the beginning of the sixteenth century many of Bristol’s leading cloth merchants moved to London where they continued to prosper in the cloth trade. Among them were Robert Thorne, Thomas Howell, Paul Withypoll (who became a London alderman) and George Monoux, a Bristol mayor, who was twice elected mayor of London. Other eastern ports—Hull, Boston and Ipswich— declined as provincial merchants found it more difficult to compete with London, and as Hansards concentrated their trade at the London Steelyard.115 Ipswich cloth exports, for example, had grown dramatically from less than 1,000 broadcloths in 1400, to reach 5,000 cloths in the 1440s, but had fallen below 1,000 cloths once again by 1470.116 Southampton declined as the Italians used the port less frequently, although London merchants to some extent made up for their departure.117 Bristol which had been the leading cloth exporter in the mid-­fourteenth century saw its trade decline in the sixteenth. Its trade had always been with southern Europe, Ireland and, in the fifteenth century, Iceland; and therefore it played no part in the Baltic trade or the growing trade with the southern Netherlands. With the loss of Gascony, Bristol’s trade became dependant on trade with Spain and Portugal. These were profitable markets as they were easily accessible, Castile had no significant cloth industry and there was demand for quality cloth by a wealthy aristocracy. In the 1480s, 31 per cent of Bristol merchants traded with English and Irish ports, 63 per cent with Spain and Portugal, and only 6 per cent with northern Europe; and the richest merchants all traded with Spain or Portugal.118 Competition with Spanish merchants, who mostly traded at London, intensified, as from August 1466 until 1489, they were taxed as denizens. In 1485–6, 57 per cent of Bristol’s cloth exports were to Spain, and 22 per cent to Portugal. Although Spain remained Bristol’s primary export market, the denizen Spanish trade was now dominated by alien and English merchants trading in London. Portuguese trade was more important for Bristol than London merchants, as about 45 per cent of Bristol merchants trading with the continent sent goods to Portugal.119 A few ports outside the capital prospered in the early Tudor period. Exeter became the third port in the country, as trade with France expanded, selling cloth mainly in Normandy, Brittany and Gascony, but also shipping some cloth to Iberia.120 Exeter and Dartmouth cloth exports remained strong until the mid-1540s. Exeter merchants shared the trade to Brittany, Normandy and Gascony with London, exchanging cloth for linen, canvas and wine, plus a wide range of miscellaneous items. Exeter dealt in a whole range of cloths, coloured kerseys from Tiverton and Cullompton, coloured broadcloths from Taunton and a variety of inexpensive narrow cloths from Devon and Cornwall.121 It

280  Export Expansion, 1470–1555 may well have been that Exeter and Dartmouth customs understated the extent of the trade. Cromwell was advised in 1535 that he should revise the customs regulations, and this led to the revisions for narrow cloths in 1536.122 The main problem was that many cloths were passed off as Cornish cloths that paid no customs because of their low quality, and other cheap cloths were passed off as cottons that were only subjected to poundage. However, wools were brought in from other counties to raise cloth quality, and Devon cloths, like Tavistocks, were taken to Cornwall, and then shipped from Devon ports as Cornish cloth. To eliminate fraud and encourage the legal export of these cheap cloths, all Devon cloths were re-valued downwards. Straits, which had always been counted as four to a broadcloth, were now five for coloureds and six for whites. Coloured kerseys, 12–13  yards long, were now five to a broadcloth and white kerseys were six. Seven Totnes dozens were equivalent to a broadcloth as were eight Tavistocks; and twelve Molton dozens, Barnstaples, coarse whites and russets were now equivalent to a broadcloth. On a far smaller scale, Chester trade expanded in the early Tudor period, mostly with Spain exchanging Manchester and Cheshire cottons for iron, but also with Brittany, and with Ireland from where it imported cheap Irish cloth, although much of this trade was now going to Liverpool.123 Textile production was the most important occupation in Chester, both weaving cottons, and finishing cloth from the surrounding area. Lastly, Yarmouth declined in spite of its healthy worsted exports until the 1530s, as its herring industry languished after the Black Death.124

Notes 1. B. Yun, ‘Economic cycles and structural changes’, in T, Brady, H. Oberman, A. Heiko and J. Tracy, eds., Handbook of European history 1400–1600: Late middle ages, renaissance and reformation (Leiden, 1994), 113–25. 2. S. Jenks, ‘The distribution revolution of the fifteenth century’, in Huang, A.L and C. Jahnke, Textiles and the medieval economy: Production, trade and consumption of medieval textiles, 8th to 16th centuries (Oxford, 2015), 230–52. 3. Yun, ‘Economic cycles’, 129–31; C. Cipolla, Before the industrial revolution (New York, 1980), Table A1. 4. R. Davis, ‘The rise of Antwerp and its English connection, 1406–1510’, in D.C. Coleman and A.H. John, eds., Trade, government and economy in preindustrial England: Essays presented to F.J. Fisher (London, 1976), 10–15. 5. H. Van der Wee, The growth of the Antwerp market and the European economy (fourteenth-sixteenth centuries), vol. 2 (The Hague, 1963), 76–83. 6. P. Ramsey, Tudor economic problems (London, 1968), 55. 7. Van der Wee, Antwerp, 76–7. 8. J.H. Munro, ‘The Low Countries’ export trade in textiles with the Mediterranean basin, 1200–1600: A cost-benefit analysis of comparative advantages in overland and maritime trade routes’, The International Journal of Maritime History, 11 (1999), 1–30.

Export Expansion, 1470–1555 281 9. W. Endrei, ‘English kersey in eastern Europe, with special reference to Hungary’, TH, 5 (1974), 91–3. 10. A. Ruddock, Italian merchants and shipping in Southampton 1270–1600 (Southampton, 1951), 214–15. 11. W.R. Childs, Anglo-Castilian trade in the later Middle Ages (Manchester, 1978), 88–90. 12. G.D. Ramsay, ‘The undoing of the Italian mercantile colony in sixteenth century London’, in N.B. Harte and K.G. Ponting, eds., Textile history and economic history (Manchester, 1973), 22–7; M.E. Bratchel, ‘Italian merchant organization and business relationships in early Tudor London’, in S. Subrahmanyam, ed., Merchant networks in the early modern world (Aldershot, 1996), 1–27. 13. A. Ruddock, ‘London capitalists and the decline of Southampton in the early Tudor period’, EcHR, 2nd series, 11 (1949–50), 137–51; H.S. Cobb, ‘Cloth exports from London and Southampton in the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries: A revision’, EcHR, 2nd series, 31 (1978), 601–9. 14. C. Ross, Edward IV (London, 1974), 366–7. 15. H.L. Gray, ‘English foreign trade from 1446 to 1482’, in E. Power and M.M. Postan, eds., Studies in English trade in the fifteenth century (New York, 1966), 29; E.M. Carus-Wilson, The expansion of Exeter at the close of the Middle Ages (Exeter, 1963), 10–11. 16. S.B. Chrimes, Henry VII (London, 1972), 236–8; R.B. Wernham, Before the Armada: The emergence of the English nation 1485–1588 (New York, 1966), 62–76. 17. Wernham, Before the Armada, 68–9. 18. Again cloth was diverted from Antwerp in 1508, this time to Middleburg. 19. J. Munro, ‘Spanish merino wools and the nouvelles draperies: An industrial transformation in the late medieval Low Countries’, EcHR, 58 (2005), 467–74. 20. Munro, ‘Struggles’, 288, Tables, 5.5, 5.6. 21. W. Mertens, ‘Changes in the production and export of Mechelen cloth, 1330–1530’, in E. Aerts and J. Munro, eds., Textiles in the Low Countries in European economic history, Studies in social and economic history, vol. 19 (Leuven, 1990), 114–23. 22. J.D. Fudge, Cargoes, embargoes, and emissaries: The commercial and political interaction of England and the German hanse 1450–1510 (Toronto, 1995), 167. 23. Van der Wee, Antwerp, vol. 2, 120–2. 24. Munro, ‘Struggles’, Table  5.6; H. Brand, ‘A medieval industry in decline: The Leiden drapery in the first half of the sixteenth century’, in M. Boone and W. Prevenier, eds., Drapery production in the late medieval Low Countries: Markets and strategies for survival (14th-16th centuries) (LeuvenApeldoorn, 1993), 121–5. 25. I. Blanchard, ‘Northern wools and Netherlands markets at the close of the middle ages’, in G.G. Simpson, ed., Scotland and the Low Countries, 1194– 1994 (East Linton, 1996), 80, 88. 26. Van der Wee, West European, 405–9. 27. Munro, ‘Struggles’, 297; Blanchard, ‘Northern wools’, 81. 28. Munro, ‘Spanish’, 474; I. Blanchard, The international economy in the ‘age of the discoveries’, 1470–1570: Antwerp and the English merchants’ world (Stuttgart, 2009), 151, 178. 29. Brand, ‘Leiden’, 147. 30. Munro, ‘Spanish’, 473. 31. Blanchard, International, 151; W. Brulez, ‘The balance of trade of the Netherlands in the middle of the 16th century’, Acta Historiae Neerlandica, vol. 4

282  Export Expansion, 1470–1555 (Leiden, 1970), 24. Armentières used a blend of two-thirds Spanish, onethird English wools for their oultreffin cloth in 1546. The town produced 25,000 cloths in 1572. 32. Blanchard, International, 178. 33. Brulez, ‘Balance of trade’, 40–2. 34. Munro, ‘Struggles’, 298. 35. J. Munro, ‘Money, wages and real income in the age of Erasmus’, Collected works of Erasmus, vol. 12 (Toronto, 2003), 677. 36. Brulez, ‘Balance of trade’, 20–48. 37. J. Oldland, ‘Wool and cloth production in late medieval and early Tudor England’, EcHR, 67 (2014), 29. 38. J. Oldland, ‘Variety and quality of English woollen cloth exported in the late Middle Ages’, Journal of European Economic History, 39 (2010), 224–6, 248–50. 39. TNA, E 122/81/1, 2. 40. C.A. Jackson, ‘The Berkshire woollen industry 1500–1650’ (Unpub. Ph.D. thesis, University of Reading, 1993), 124–5. 41. J.H. Munro, ‘The origins of the English “new draperies”: The resurrection of an old Flemish industry, 1270–1570’, in N. Harte and D. Coleman, eds., The new draperies (Oxford, 1997), 49. 42. [email protected]; see John Munro’s statistical tables for European textile history: Production and trade statistics, Table 9. 43. TNA, E 122/194/17, 18; Oldland, ‘Variety and quality’, 233. 44. J.H. Munro, ‘Industrial transformations in the north-west European textile trades, c.1290–c.1340: Economic progress or economic crisis?’ in B.M.S. Campbell, ed., Before the Black Death: Studies in the ‘crisis’ of the early fourteenth century (Manchester, 1991), 134, note 87; Endrei, ‘English kersey’, 90. 45. Carus-Wilson, The expansion of Exeter at the close of the Middle Ages, 18, 20. 46. O. De Smedt, De Engelse natie te Antwerpen in de 16e eeuw, vol. 1 (Antwerp, 1950−54), 430. 47. Ibid, 434. 48. F. Edler, ‘Winchcombe kerseys in Antwerp (1538–44)’, EcHR, 7 (1936), 58. 49. London, Mercers Hall, Thomas Gresham day book. 50. TNA, E 101/402/13. K. Staniland, ‘Clothing and textiles in the court of Edward III’, in J. Bird, H. Chapman and J. Clark, eds., Collectaneo Londoniensia: Studies in London archaeology and history presented to Ralph Merrifield, London and Middlesex Archeological Society special paper, no. 2 (1978), 230; J.R. Oldland, ‘London clothmaking, c.1270–c.1550’ (Unpub. Ph.D. Thesis, University of London, 2003), 48. 51. TNA, E 101/128/30, 31, 34. 52. Munro, ‘Struggles’, 314. 53. Zell, Industry, 154–61. 54. A.D. Dyer, The city of Worcester in the sixteenth century (Leicester, 1973), 106–7; Birmingham Reference Library, Zachary Lloyd Collection, 51/1, f. 3. 55. London, Drapers’ Hall, Thomas Howell ledger, f. 50v. 56. Smedt, De Engelse, vol. 1, 433–4. 57. London, Mercers’ Hall, Thomas Gresham day book. 58. Zell, Industry, 153. 59. Cambridge University library, Hengrave, 78.2, f. 151. 60. Ibid, 158–63. 61. Jackson, ‘Berkshire woollen industry’, 24–5. 62. Ibid, 124–5.

Export Expansion, 1470–1555 283 63. Statutes at Large, vol. 5, 5&6 Edward VI, c. 6. Four years later the weight for Kentish cloths was reduced to 86lb, and 75lb for long Worcesters; see Statute, 4&5 Ph.&Mary, c. 5. 64. Thomas Howell ledger, ff. 43–64. 65. TNA, E 122/41/6, 42/2. 66. TNA, E 122/81/1, 2, 83/5, 86/2. 67. Smedt, De Engelse, vol. 1, 434. 68. J. Oldland, ‘Making and marketing woollen cloth in late-medieval London’, London Journal, 36 (2011), 101–2. 69. Statutes, 4 Edward IV, c.1. 70. LMA, Journal, 8, 14r. 71. Statutes, 1 Richard III, c. 8; J. Oldland, ‘London’s trade in the time of Richard III’, Ricardian, 23 (2014), 5–8. 72. Statutes, 6 Henry VIII, c. 9; 3&4 Edward VI, c.2. 73. A. Raine, ed., York civic records, vol. 3, 1504–1536, vol.  106 (Yorkshire Archaeological Record Series, 1942), 21. 74. LMA, LBM, ff. 25v-26; LMA, Journal, 10, ff. 274, 277–9; LMA, Reps, 1, f. 99v. 75. Statutes, 24 Henry VIII, c. 2. 76. No account after Michaelmas 1471. 77. Accounts available for 1477, 1479 and 1480. 78. Account available 1478–80. 79. Accounts available from August 1466 onwards. 80. Account for most of 1484–5 is missing. 81. No account for 1494–5. 82. No account for 1495–6. 83. Accounts survive for only 1496–7 and 1497–8. 84. The totals of the denizen, Hanse and other alien exports do not exactly match the national totals as they are taken from the TNA, E 122 accounts, see Gould, Great debasement: Currency and the economy in mid-Tudor England (Oxford, 1970), 175. 85. J. Oldland, ‘The expansion of London’s overseas trade from 1475 to 1520’, in C. Barron and A. Sutton, eds., The medieval merchant (Donington, 2014), 82–8. In 1536 there was a revision in the petty custom levied on cheaper cloths which now included all Devon and Cornish cloths; see TNA, SP1/113, ff. 129–40. 86. P. Ramsey, ‘Overseas trade in the reign of Henry VII: The evidence of the customs accounts’, EcHR, 2nd series, 6 (1953–4), 177–8; E.M. Carus-Wilson and O. Coleman, England’s export trade 1275–1547 (Oxford, 1965), 14. 87. Smedt, De Engelse, vol. I, 433 − 4. 88. Oldland, ‘London overseas trade’, 87. 89. Oldland, ‘Variety and quality of English woollen cloth exported in the late Middle Ages’, Journal of European Economic History, 39 (2010), 248. 90. D. Burwash, English merchant shipping 1460 − 1540 (Toronto, 1947), 203. 91. Smedt, De Engelse, vol. 1, 430. Stockbreds were dozens from Stockbridge in Hampshire. Florentines were woven as combination twills, with either the warp or weft predominant, so giving rise to the highly smooth face required in superior linings; see Kerridge, Manufactures, 15. 92. Brulez, ‘L’exportation’, 479–80. 93. F.J. Fisher, ‘Commercial trends and policy in sixteenth-century England’, EcHR, 10 (1939–40), 96. 94. T.H. Lloyd, England and the German hanse, 1157–1611 (Cambridge, 1991), 267–9.

284  Export Expansion, 1470–1555 95. Lloyd, Hanse, 281–3; Fudge, Cargoes, 168–9. 96. Ramsey, ‘Overseas trade’, 76. 97. E. Quinton and J. Oldland, ‘London merchants’ cloth exports, 1350–1500’, in R. Netherton and G. Owen-Crocker, eds., Medieval clothing and textiles, vol. 7 (Woodbridge, 2011), 136–7. 98. Chrimes, Edward IV, 363; Ross, Henry VII, 237–8. 99. Childs, Anglo-Castilian, 87–91. 100. E.M. Carus-Wilson, ed., The overseas trade of Bristol in the later Middle Ages (Bristol Record Society, 1937), 218–89. 101. Childs, Anglo-Castilian, 91; W. Childs, Anglo-Portuguese trade in the fifteenth century’, TRHS, 6th series, 2 (1992), 212–3. 102. G. Connell-Smith, Forerunners of Drake: A study of English trade with the Spanish in the early Tudor period (London, 1954), 56–80. 103. London, Drapers’ Hall, Thomas Howell ledger, ff. 50, 64v, 65. 104. Ibid, ff. 17, 18. 105. J. Strype, Ecclesiastical memorials relating chiefly to religion, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1822), 367; R. Britnell, ‘The woollen textile industry of Suffolk in the later Middle Ages’, Ricardian, 13 (2003), 94. 106. Ibid, 81–99. 107. Ibid, 100–26. 108. Lloyd, Hanse, 269–70. 109. Gould, Great Debasement, 175. 110. Lloyd, Hanse, 287–9. 111. Ian Blanchard suggests that in the 1530s English cloth had become too expensive and so the cloth trade stagnated, but the evidence is limited; see Blanchard, International, 207–8. 112. Blanchard, International, 118. 113. Lloyd, Hanse, 388. 114. Cobb, ‘Cloth exports’, 601–9. 115. Lloyd, Hanse, 383–4. 116. N.R. Amor, Late Medieval Ipswich: Trade and industry (Woodbridge, 2011), 119. 117. Ruddock, Italian merchants and shipping in Southampton 1270–1600, 206–31; Ruddock, ‘London capitalists and the decline of Southampton in the early Tudor period’, 137–51. 118. Childs, Anglo-Castilian, 87–8; J. Oldland, ‘Bristol clothmaking’, Brill online, Encyclopedia of medieval dress and textiles of the British Isles (2016). 119. Childs, ‘Anglo-Portuguese trade’, 210. 120. W. Childs, ‘Devon’s overseas trade in the late Middle Ages’, in M. Duffy, S. Fisher, D. Greenhill, D.J. Starkey and J. Youings, eds., The new maritime history of Devon (Exeter, 1992), 83. 121. Carus-Wilson, The expansion of Exeter, 17–20. 122. L&P, vol. 9, # 1073; TNA, SP 1∕113, ff. 129–40. 123. J. Kermode, ‘The trade of late medieval Chester, 1500–1550’, in R. Britnell and J. Hatcher, eds., Progress and problems in medieval England (Cambridge, 1996), 286–307. 124. A. Saul, ‘English towns in the late Middle Ages: The case of Great Yarmouth’, Journal of Medieval History, 8 (1982), 82–6; J. Oldland, ‘ “Fyne worsted which is almost like silk”: Norwich’s double worsted’, TH, 42 (2011), 190.

14 Location of the SixteenthCentury Woollens Industry

The expansion in both the domestic and export markets had resulted in major changes in the geographic distribution of the industry since the late-fourteenth century as rural clothmaking strengthened. This begs the question: why was clothmaking more successful in some rather than other areas, and what did this have to do with the ultimate success of English clothmaking? This is not easily answered as a number of factors might contribute to an areas’ success, but, of course, some were more important than others.1 As was pointed out many years ago the industry after the Back Death flourished in areas where there was surplus labour, especially for spinning yarn. Yarn preparation accounted for approximately 60 per cent of the work hours to produce a standard broadcloth, so an army of wool sorters, carders and spinners was required to keep many weavers busy.2 Underemployment was generally in pasture rather than arable areas, or when partible inheritance had made landholdings so small that their owners had to seek secondary employment. Clothmaking thrived on the Wiltshire chalk and limestone land, for example, where pasture farms made cheese and butter, and raised sheep; and in the southern Suffolk wood-pasture region, again with small farms, that was suitable for dairying, and was adjacent to the sheep and barley area. Both these areas had relatively large populations, farming methods and social structure that favoured rural clothmaking.3 In Wiltshire large-scale sheep farming of the chalklands complemented the small-scale pasture farms of the clay vale where small family-dairy farmers with enclosed pastures welcomed the supplementary employment that clothmaking provided.4 Before the Black Death the price or availability of labour was not a factor, but better opportunities for women in towns forced weavers to find spinners in the suburbs, and many followed them there. Rural costs were lower because industrial, household and agricultural work could be intertwined. So labour cost moved textile production from the large town to the small town and village. Labour cost became a greater factor as textiles became a national market rippling from London, and markets competed with one another using lower-cost labour. In the sixteenth century low-priced cloth moved to the west and north where both wool and

286  Sixteenth-Century Woollens Industry labour costs were low, and a distribution system had developed to sell these cloths. Wool was a lesser factor in spite of its cost and importance to quality, because there was a highly developed distribution system of wool markets, and staplers, woolmen and woolbroggers who sorted and distributed wool. Graziers were often able to adapt their farming and breeding practices to provide the wools required to support a local industry. Berkshire wools improved at the end of the fifteenth century to suit Reading broadcloth and Newbury kerseymakers. Suffolk was able to easily access Lincolnshire wools, and Wealden clothmakers did not suffer as they bought wools from the Romney marsh, London staplers and elsewhere. Having said that, the quality of Cotswolds wool sustained the West Country, March wools the Worcester industry, and the decline of Yorkshire wools made it more difficult for northern clothiers to make quality cloth. Coarse cloth came to be made in those areas growing the cheapest wools. The only other raw materials that affected industry location were dyes and mordants that were imported. This favoured large urban dyers until the sixteenth century when clothiers turned their wooldyeing skills into a competitive advantage. After labour and wool the third factor was entrepreneurship. A successful clothmaker encouraged others so that a cluster of clothiers developed making the same kind of cloth, and gradually a reputation developed. Concentration along river systems, the Stour that bordered Suffolk and Essex, the Stroudwater in Gloucestershire and the Avon in Wiltshire suggests that success begat success. Energetic Flemish clothmakers may well have established the Colchester industry, and we can see entrepreneurship at work at Castle Combe in Wiltshire.5 The success of Salisbury making rays or Coventry’s remarkable ability to sell cloth through so many distant ports suggests that a few enterprising clothmakers or merchants made a critical difference. Sometimes the death of a clothier meant that the industry withered as at Newbury and Lavenham in the sixteenth century. The organisation of clothmaking might be an important factor in towns. Success at Coventry in the fifteenth and in Reading and Worcester in the sixteenth century seems to have been partly because the town favourably structured its industry to make high-quality cloth efficiently. The Welsh cottons industry came to be dependent on Shrewsbury and Oswestry, and Lancashire on Manchester and Bolton finishers. A highly structured urban industry often added cost and made it resistant to change, especially when clothiers and rural clothmaking disrupted the fifteen-century industry. Export demand could be decisive as merchants sought out the cloth they could sell. It was the primary reason for the success of East Midland towns in the thirteenth century, Somerset and Colchester clothmaking in the fourteenth, Suffolk coloured cloth in the fifteenth, and fine, long

Sixteenth-Century Woollens Industry 287 broadcloth from Worcester and the Kentish Weald in the sixteenth century. Somerset fourteenth-century clothmaking was dependant on Bristol, but Wiltshire grew faster in the fifteenth century as London became a magnet. The pulling power of London shaped the sixteenth-century industry. Suffolk, Reading and the Kentish Weald’s success in the earlysixteenth century developed because they could more easily colour cloth to merchants’ requirements than more distant clothmakers. London became an important determinant of success for even coarse clothmakers as it was the principal distribution hub for the whole country. The fulling mill was a minor factor, especially once most cloth was millfulled. West Country clothiers built their operations around the undershot fulling mill, and this helped them obtain efficiencies making standard, unfinished broadcloth. The overshot mill might provide an advantage to the large-mill owner along slow-moving rivers of eastern England. Towns that had no fulling mills close by, as seems to have been the case at London, York and Norwich, faced difficulties when mechanical fulling replaced foot-fulling for making quality cloth in the fifteenth century. In summary, factors leading to success were complex. Darwinian competition over 200  years after the Black Death ensured that only those regions, towns or villages that were either low cost, better organised or committed to produce high-quality cloth efficiently and consistently were likely to succeed.

Geographic Distribution Two sets of figures indicate the geographic distribution of the industry: the alnage particulars from 1465 to 1480, and the fines levied in London for infractions of the mid-sixteenth century cloth acts from 1554 to 1585 (Tables 14.1 and 14.2). Both are useful, but come with major drawbacks. For the period 1467–78 alnagers were required to submit their accounts to the exchequer; and for nearly all counties, for some years, their summary reports have survived. It would therefore seem possible to trace changes in the regional distribution for clothmaking from the 1390s to the 1470s, but there are several caveats. From 1468 to 1473, 48,212 cloths were alnaged compared with 39,348 cloths exported from 1396 to 1400, so the domestic market is hardly represented, and the West Country figures appear to be mostly a fictitious under-representation.6 The summary numbers in Table 14.1 are very rough because they were taken from only a single year and there were considerable annual fluctuations. But more importantly many of the accounts were fraudulent, at least in their detail, and their accuracy depended on the economic interest and honesty of the alnager. Counties like Devon and Cornwall that produced substantial quantities of narrow cloths were underestimated, and there was no report for Cumberland even though low-priced Kendal cloth had a national reputation.

Table 14.1 Number of cloths presented to the alnager for a selected year between 1468–9 and 1472–3, and summary of alnaged cloths, 1394–1401 Counties

South-east London and Middlesex Kent Surrey/Sussex Berkshire Oxfordshire Total south-east Eastern Cambridgeshire Huntingdonshire Norfolk

Annual number of cloths for a year 1468–73 (per cent of national)7 983 1,027 769 1,293½ 200 (approximately) 4,275½ (10.9)

Suffolk Essex Hertfordshire Bedfordshire Buckinghamshire Total eastern

41 30 830 (Norwich 557, rest of county 273) 5,188 2,627½ 249½ 69 68 9,103 (23.1)

South-west Hampshire Wiltshire Somerset Dorset Devon Cornwall Total south-west

1,450½ 4,310 4,981½ 707½ 1,036½ 30 (approximately) 12,516 (31.8)

West Bristol Gloucestershire Worcestershire Herefordshire Shropshire Staffordshire Shropshire/Staffordshire Total west Midlands Northamptonshire Northants/Rutland Rutland Warwickshire Leicestershire Nottinghamshire Derbyshire Total Midlands

3,586½ 1,288 477½ 339½ 110 108½ 5,910 (15.0) 780½ 10 1,200 66 69 40 2,165½ (5.5)

Annual number of cloths 1394–1401 (per cent of national) 1,359 897 884 852 283 4,275 (8.9) 242 80 903 2,557 1,922 126 67 55 5,952 (12.3) 2,615 6,124 11,862 736 2,208 43 23,588 (48.9) 4,424 984 447 274 471 6,600 (13.7)

193 2,609 99 214 93 3,208 (6.7)

Counties

Annual number of cloths for a year 1468–73 (per cent of national)7

North Lincolnshire Yorkshire Northumberland Total north Total

Annual number of cloths 1394–1401 (per cent of national)

286 4,972 120 5,378 (13.7)

471 4,029 95 4,595 (9.5)

39,348 (100.0)

48,212 (100.0)

Source: Heaton, Yorkshire, 84–8, TNA, E 358/8, 9.

Table 14.2 Persons fined in London under the 1549, 1552 and 1557–8 cloth acts, by region, 1555–85 Place

1555–64

1565–74

1575–84

14

64

67

145

South-east Kent Surrey/Sussex/Hampshire Berkshire

239 68 15

186 6 16

75 49 34

5009 123 65

East Anglia Essex Suffolk

22 141

18 251

5 234

45 626

West Country Wiltshire Somerset Devon/Dorset Wales Bristol Gloucestershire Worcestershire Shropshire/Stafford Oxfordshire

153 45 157 1 7 255 44 34 38

206 36 79 2 2 92 7

343 35 111

16

3

702 116 347 3 14 429 52 34 57

Midlands Warwick/Northampton/ Leicester

11

6

3

20

North Lancashire/Cheshire Yorkshire Cumberland/Westmoreland/ Northumberland

74 65 4

112 175 14

58 440 66

244 680 84

1,387

1,288

1,611

4,286

London8

Total

5 82 1

Total

Source: TNA, E 159/335, 337, 338, 339, 350, 355, 357, 359, 360, 361, 363, 366, 368, 370, 371, 375, 376, 378, 380, 381, 384, 387, 389, 390.

290  Sixteenth-Century Woollens Industry It has been proven that for the West Country many of the particulars were fictitious, the names copied from other years and the number of cloths alnaged by an individual obviously incorrect.10 This can be demonstrated by analysing the names and figures reported by one alnager, Richard More, for Wiltshire, Bristol, Somerset and Devon; and there was also deliberate falsification in the West Riding accounts. We have no way of knowing whether More’s accounts have any basis in reality. In 1475–6, for example, he probably realised that the market was improving and that he should show higher returns, so he arbitrarily doubled the totals for Bristol, Wiltshire, Somerset and Devon. Given the strength of unfinished West Country cloth, a decline from the 1390s seems improbable. In Somerset, for example, it would appear that the 1390s alnager was scrupulous in ferreting out much of the cloth produced in the county, whereas Richard More was fixing the figures. It is unlikely that production fell from 11,862 to 4,981½ cloths given the strength of West Country clothmaking in the later-fifteenth century. Richard More raised the Somerset figure to 11,236 in 1475–6, probably closer to reality.11 In Wiltshire the rapid growth in clothmaking in the western part of the county since the 1390s should have produced an increase in production rather than the decline shown. Consequently, we have to be on our guard when using the accounts, treating each one on its merits and using other evidence. Not all accounts seem to be fraudulent because the detail provided can be checked from one year to another, and the names verified from other sources. For Bristol we have the apparently accurate Day Books for 1466–7, the year before Richard More took over, and also for 1483. There are detailed accounts for Suffolk and Essex that appear to be accurate. Suffolk clothmakers from forty towns and villages across the county alnaged cloth in the four years from 1465–6 to 1468–9.12 The alnage does show the rise of Suffolk, and to a lesser extent Essex, Berkshire, Kent and Yorkshire’s West Riding, and we can track the decline of many fourteenth-century cloth towns. Unfortunately, there are no returns from Lancashire, Cumberland and Westmoreland where, from other sources, we know there was growth. The 1550–85 London fines’ statistics have their own set of problems. Since London controlled 90 per cent of exports and much quality domestic cloth moved through the city, the fact that it is just London’s fines may not be too critical, but the figures probably understate Bristol, for example, whose searchers would have checked and fined the cloth made and traded there. Clothiers, particularly in rural areas, had the choice of taking their cloth to the local town, or having it sealed in London. It seems that clothiers selling their cloth in London often found it more convenient to have it searched there. London searchers checked all cloths that did not already have a seal testifying to their conformity to the law.13 This meant that, if there were zealous searchers in other areas, these

Sixteenth-Century Woollens Industry 291 would be under-represented in London’s fines. Some towns—Worcester, Shrewsbury and Bridgewater, for example—passed acts to control cloths made or finished there: and after the passage of the act on Lancashire cottons and frieze these cloths rarely turn up in London records, except for Manchester frieze.14 Reading obtained a borough charter in 1542, as did Exeter in 1550 and Worcester in 1555, and this may have resulted in closer supervision of their cloth industries.15 Coventry and Bristol were also probably under-represented in the fines statistics even though their cloth industries had declined. Consequently, the London fines underweight many larger towns, over-weight Kent with its heavy dyeing fines, and under-estimate both southern kerseys, which for long periods of time seemed to have passed unregulated, and Lancashire cottons and frieze. The fines suggest that Wiltshire was the leading county, and that Yorkshire was now second, followed by Suffolk and Gloucestershire (Kent being over-weighted by dyeing fines). Lancashire, Kent and Devon were now much more important than they had been a century earlier. Somerset seems to be of lesser importance, but it may have been that some of its production was searched at Bristol. The twenty towns and villages responsible for the largest number of fines were: Wakefield, Yorkshire (270 fines); Halifax, Yorkshire (154); Tiverton, Devon (127); Leeds, Yorkshire (123); Cranbrook, Kent (120); Stroudwater, Gloucestershire (117); Manchester, Lancashire (110); Boxford, Suffolk (107); Westbury, Wiltshire (92); Benenden, Kent (81); Kendall, Westmoreland (80); Hadleigh, Suffolk (78); Nayland/Stoke Nayland, Suffolk (68); Salisbury, Wiltshire (66); Barfold/East Barfold, Suffolk (51); Dedham, Suffolk (45); Bolton, Lancashire (42); Trowbridge, Wiltshire (38); Reading, Berkshire  (37); and Bradford, Wiltshire (33). Worcester was probably the leading cloth town at the time, but fines would have been levied locally.

West Country Broadcloth The West Country retained its dominance, adroitly making the adjustment from supplying cloths for Bristol merchants in the mid-fourteenth century to becoming the principal source of standard white, unfinished broadcloth for the Antwerp market. We are led to believe from the alnage records that Somerset production had halved, from almost 12,000 in the 1390s to less than 5,000 in the 1470s. Based on the preceding discussion, if there was any decline, it was minimal. Production was still spread across Somerset, from towns like Wells, Bridgewater, Taunton, Frome and Bath to small villages such as Pensford, unchanged from the prior century.16 At Wells almost 30 per cent of those admitted to the freedom in the 1460s and 1470s were clothmakers, higher than at the end of the fourteenth century. In 1515 Somerset was the second wealthiest county in the country after Middlesex, which undoubtedly reflected the buoyancy of its cloth industry.17 Most clothiers were making standard unfinished

292  Sixteenth-Century Woollens Industry broadcloth, but kerseymaking was growing in the west of the county. The industry spread geographically as there was now clothmaking at Ford, just across the border from Castle Combe in Wiltshire, at Taunton in the west selling its cloth at Exeter and Bristol, and in the north around Bridgewater.18 Bridgewaters were coarser broad dozens and straits that were exported from Southampton in 1465–6 and from London in 1488– 9.19 An act to search and seal cloths made in Bridgewater, Chard and Taunton was passed in 1555.20 Wiltshire’s fifteenth-century expansion was in north and west of the county with the rise of rural clothmaking. In the 1390s rural west Wiltshire had accounted for only 10.6 per cent of production; in 1414, 26.4 per cent; and in 1467, 77.3 per cent, and even this may be an underestimate since Richard More’s figures for west and north Wiltshire were undoubtedly low. The farm of the alnage in 1467 was £178, equivalent to 10,680 cloths at 4d a cloth for the subsidy, compared with £120 in 1408 when it had been raised 20 per cent over 1403. All the evidence suggests that clothmaking continued to grow in the north around Castle Combe and Malmesbury, in the south-west along the Wylie, and most importantly at Bradford, Trowbridge, Westbury and Steeple Ashton along the Avon and its tributaries.21 The first half of the sixteenth century saw the rise of the great clothiers, led by William Stumpe of Malmesbury who knew Henry VIII, bought Malmesbury abbey and converted its nave for the use of the parish, and saw his own son knighted.22 At Salisbury, perhaps 25  per cent of the adult male population was employed in textiles in the 1420s.23 Salisbury made mid-priced coloured half-cloths, striped rays and cheap narrow cloths called osettes. Salisbury faced competition from more efficient rural clothiers; was by-passed as a market centre as more cloth now went directly to London, whose merchants now looked to Wiltshire for white broadcloth rather than dyed and finished cloth that Salisbury made; and ray became less fashionable towards the end of the century.24 Salisbury turned to making white broadcloth and some kersey and remained an important cloth town in the sixteenth century.25 Gloucestershire increased in importance, rural areas more than offsetting a decline at Gloucester. Gloucester’s industry had grown after 1350, some of its cloth exported, but it is likely that by 1450 its industry was of only local significance. In a 1455 rental summary, of those giving their occupation, there were still 24  per cent occupied in clothing and footwear.26 An important industry had grown up to the south along the Stroud and the Little Avon, whose rivers were suitable for fulling, and its hard water for dyeing.27 Dursley was becoming an important cloth town. There were beds of fuller’s earth, and plentiful supplies of teasles for raising the nap.28 By Henry VII’s reign Stroudwaters, particularly its red broadcloth, was well known on the continent. Cirencester was the market town for this cloth. John Stoby in 1459 sent thirty-six broadcloths

Sixteenth-Century Woollens Industry 293 to be fulled, dyed and finished along Stroudwater; and John Benet in his 1497 will, disclosed that he had fulling mills and made bequests to churches and employees along the Stroudwater.29 John Tame was a rich Cirencester clothier who in 1480 began to rent land around Fairford to breed sheep; and his son was able to acquire several Gloucestershire manors, obtaining a knighthood in 1516.30 In the sixteenth century standard white, unfinished broadcloth spread across the western counties, stretching from Taunton in western Somerset to Salisbury in eastern Wiltshire and then north through western Wiltshire to Gloucestershire and Worcester. Coloured cloth, particularly red, was produced in the Stroudwater district of Gloucestershire and at Castle Combe in Wiltshire. In western Somerset some cloth was dyed for export through Exeter.31 In the mid-sixteenth century the West Country was still by far the most important clothmaking district. The London mercer Thomas Kytson specialised in unfinished white broadcloths in the 1530s, buying cloth from sixty-five clothiers in Wiltshire and forty-four in Somerset.32 William Stumpe of Malmesbury was already one of the four richest men in the town in 1524, and went on to build his business until his death in 1552. He bought Malmesbury Abbey in 1545 for £1,500, whose buildings he turned into weaving rooms that helped produce perhaps 3,000 Malmesbury cloths annually.33 There were also two other rich Malmesbury clothiers in the 1550s, Matthew Kyng, whose daughter married a Stumpe, and John Hedges. All three represented Malmesbury in parliament.34 The Stroud valley in Gloucestershire had continued to grow in the sixteenth century, and was specifically excluded from the 1555 act that, in one of its clauses, attempted to return clothmaking to the towns.35 Bristol’s cloth exports were around the same in the first decade of the sixteenth century as they had been a century before, and had almost doubled from the depressed 1460s. Unlike London, Bristol merchants exported almost all their cloth in their own ships. Castilians bought Bristol’s good-quality coloured cloth, ‘Bristols’.36 In July-September  1483, for example, half of the value of Bristol’s exports was coloured broadcloth worth £3 each, the rest mostly cheap Welsh narrow cloth.37 Bristol weavers, as in other declining cloth towns, took steps to protect their members. They passed ordinances in 1465 to prevent women weaving, and to restrict employment of foreigns and aliens.38 In 1490 weavers were in some disarray as they petitioned civic government for their support as they tried to maintain the integrity of their reputable broadcloth, ‘broadmedes’. They had little control over their members, their ordinances unenforceable as they seem to have lost their right-of-search and regulation of apprenticeship. Some weavers were making broadcloth from yarn made from ‘flokkes and thrumms’, narrow-cloth weavers had little experience and were using illegal yarn, while others were employing as apprentices children and young men from Ireland who only stayed for a year or two.39

294  Sixteenth-Century Woollens Industry Bristol’s share of the cloth trade declined with the loss of Gascony, and as London’s trade with Spain and Portugal strengthened. As Languedoc became the chief source of woad, Spain of oil and Portugal of the costly kermes dye, all of which were critical to the country’s cloth industry, it was inevitable that London merchants with their superior distributive networks would focus on trading cloth to these markets, returning with necessary raw materials. Bristol also lost some share of the French market to Exeter whose primary export was cheap straits. A few Bristol merchants unsuccessfully tried to break into the Mediterranean to offset the declining Gascony trade, but this was an Italian monopoly. Robert Sturmy’s small fleet, attempting to trade with the Levant, was attacked by the Genoese in 1457, with a loss of £6,000 and his own life. Bristol remained a regional centre for dyeing and finishing, and retained a reduced presence in Spanish and Portuguese markets in the sixteenth century. Bristol clothmaking was still important as weavers were the fourth largest occupation after tailors, fullers and shearmen, based on the apprenticeship registers between 1532 and 1552, and accounted for 14 per cent of occupations in the 1530s.40 As early as 1518 the sheriff complained that clothworkers had no work and 800 houses were vacant. A  1530 petition claimed that 900 houses had fallen down, and that this was attributable to the fact that its leading clothmakers, who had once been mayors, sheriffs and bailiffs, and exported large quantities of broadcloth, now lost business to rural clothiers who had access to locally grown, lower-priced wools.41 Worcester made the finest West Country broadcloths, using fine Shropshire and Herefordshire wools. At Worcester in 1466 it was stated that ‘it is used and accustomed great clothmaking to be had within the said city and suburbs of the same, and so occupied by great part of the people there dwelling’.42 But its great success lay in the future, as it may have been the country’s leading cloth town in the sixteenth century, employing half its citizens.43 The town was able to have an act passed in 1533 to restrict country production to a few Worcestershire boroughs, and to set up a process for searching and sealing cloths.44 Short worcesters were shorter and a little heavier than the standard Cotswolds shortcloth.45 Worcester’s finest long cloth worth £7–9 was purchased by Thomas Gresham in 1548 compared with standard-quality broadcloth worth £3 6s 8d.46 Nearby, Hereford had lost its cloth industry in 1527 when its fulling mills were destroyed.47

Home Counties Broadcloth In northern Essex rural clothmaking was expanding rapidly as its agriculture became more pastoral after 1400, and its high population density provided sufficient labour: ‘it was the locally particular combination of technical enablement, marketing opportunity, and an amenable social

Sixteenth-Century Woollens Industry 295 structure which helped bring about the development’.48 The industry was small scale, located primarily in villages, with weavers selling the cloth to fullers who finished them. Interestingly, Colchester appears to be an exception to the rule that fourteenth-century cloth towns had declined in the fifteenth because 1,393 cloths were alnaged in 1467–8 compared with 850 for sixteen months in 1394–5, while clothmaking in smaller towns and villages had declined.49 Clothmakers early in the century transitioned from making dozens to full broadcloth and developed a reputation for blues, musterdevillers, ‘new’ greys and murrey greys that cost half as much again as the russets it had made half a century before.50 Colchester’s success for most of the century was attributable to the strong presence of both Hanseatic merchants trading at Ipswich from both Baltic towns and Cologne, and Colchester merchants penetrating the Baltic. In contrast with the growth of unfinished cloth traded at Antwerp, Colchester followed a different path, specialising in a limited range of coloured cloths sold directly to Hanse towns. There was some industry concentration so that a few clothmakers, some of whom were acting as clothiers, dominated the industry.51 Towards the end of the century Colchester’s trade shifted once more as Hanse merchants stopped trading through East Anglian ports, forcing Colchester merchants to trade more extensively with London merchants. Clothmakers now made russets that were much higher quality than those made a century before and blues.52 Colchester clothmaking now seems to have been in decline as it faced increasing competition from coloured cloth from Lavenham and other Suffolk small town and villages, while a few smaller northern Essex towns saw a re-emergence in the sixteenth century with increased acceptance of their fine, long, white cloths.53 Suffolk was to become a major supplier of coloured shortcloth for the London market, much of it then sent to southern Europe until the Spanish inquisition strangled the trade. The transition from straits to broadcloths was well under way in the 1460s and 1470s, as shown in the Suffolk alnage particulars.54 Recent research has indicated that Suffolk had dyers throughout the county in the first half of the fifteenth century, so this skill may have attracted merchants and clothiers later in the century looking for quality coloured cloth.55 All forfeited cloth in August 1465 was coloured, straits, kersey and broadcloth.56 At the end of the fifteenth century, based on debt litigation, Suffolk clothiers were selling their cloths primarily to mercers who were probably buying unfinished cloth, and only secondarily to grocers and drapers who were more likely to be buying coloured cloth.57 London and Colchester merchants were undoubtedly instrumental in this strategic redirection of the Suffolk industry, providing some of the development capital and marketing expertise.58 It would appear therefore that, at this time, merchants were buying both unfinished and finished cloth, some of which was finished in London and some exported either finished or unfinished. Even in the

296  Sixteenth-Century Woollens Industry 1520s the London draper Thomas Howell was buying both finished and unfinished cloth. It was probably only in the mid-sixteenth century that nearly all Suffolk standard broadcloth was dyed in Suffolk, and then it was mostly blue cloth. Suffolk industry, by the end of the fifteenth century, was concentrated along the Stour which formed the Sussex/Essex border, and its tributaries. Its production was twice that of Essex in the 1470s. The leading centres in 1466 were Lavenham, Bildeston, Hadleigh, Bury St. Edmunds and Long Melford.59 Suffolk had now established itself as one of the leading clothmaking counties. The 1460s and 1470s alnage show it as the leading county, but this is probably only because the Wiltshire and Somerset returns were understated. The greatest of all Suffolk clothmaking families were the Springs of Lavenham. In 1465 Thomas II was only the fifth largest clothier in Lavenham. Thomas quickly came to dominate clothmaking in the town, accounting for 30  per cent of its production from 1472 to 1478. When he died in 1486 he gave £100 to his sons William and James, and his daughter Marion, and 100 marks to his spinners, fullers and weavers. Three hundred marks went to rebuilding the Lavenham church steeple.60 What remained, after these and other specific bequests, was to be divided between his wife and eldest son. Thomas III was to expand his operations beyond Lavenham to include many other surrounding villages over the next forty years. The importance of clothmaking can be clearly seen from the 1522 survey in the Babergh Hundred whose market town was Sudbury and included many clothmaking towns and villages, among them Lavenham, Long Melford, Glemsford, Nayland and Stoke by Nayland.61 The 1522 survey shows the wealth that clothmaking had brought to the 103 leading clothiers who on average had moveable wealth of £104 compared with twelve dyers with £4, forty fullers and 108 weavers with £3 and twenty-six shearmen with £2.62 At Lavenham more than half the population was involved in clothmaking, and its leading clothier, Thomas Spring III, was, at his death in 1523, the second wealthiest in the county after the Duke of Norfolk.63 Bury St. Edmunds was the fourteenth wealthiest town in 1524–5, Lavenham was the fifteenth even though its population was probably only 1,100, Hadleigh was twenty-seventh, Long Melford fiftythird, Sudbury fifty-ninth and Nayland sixty-fourth.64 With the death of Thomas Spring III, Lavenham clothmaking unsurprisingly declined as his sons became merchants and country gentlemen.65 The London draper Thomas Howell in the 1520s had bought mostly Suffolk and Essex cloth for sale in Spain, bartering woad for cloth. He acquired cloth in a range of colours, not just blue, but yellow, green, red, tawny, violet, russet and blue-brown.66 Spanish demand for coloured cloth declined after the Reformation, forcing Suffolk clothiers to find a new market at Antwerp, for cloth woven from dyed blue wools. The data from London fines suggest that, in the later-sixteenth century, as much as 80  per cent of Suffolk

Sixteenth-Century Woollens Industry 297 standard broadcloth was various shades of blue (from darker blue, to azure, then lighter plunket). While most clothmakers continued to make coloured cloth, Coggeshall and Glainsford specialised in branded, white, fine broadcloth called handywarps, their warps still spun with a distaff and spindle.67 Suffolk was also known for its coarser vesses. The dimensions and weight of set cloths, or vesses, made in Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk, were set in 1468. They were both broadcloths and narrow straits.68 The 1483 cloth act specifically excluded all cloths valued at 40s or less, including vesses, and were therefore not subject to the same finishing standards set for quality broadcloth and kersey.69 In 1522 Suffolk vesses were specifically exempted from the 1514 law that finished broadcloth was not to shrink more than a yard, on the grounds that they were ‘to be worn in far countries, and not in England, and be of small prices, not above forty shillings a cloth, that do not hold the length nor breadth when they be wet, which the buyers do know well when they buy them, so that therein there is no deceit’.70 In 1535 vesses were again exempted from the law that required weavers to weave their mark into the cloth, and again set dimensions for standard broadcloths and kersey. However, vesses were not always cheap cloths.71 In the 1520s, Thomas Howell, the London draper, shipped twenty-one vesses to Spain in 1526 and 1527 worth 52–58s, not far less than standard Suffolks that were worth 60–63s. Vesses by the mid-sixteenth century had to conform to the regulations on quality, dimensions and weight of other Suffolk cloth, as the 1549 act and the subsequent cloth act in 1552 made no mention that vesses were to be excluded from regulations for the length, breadth and weight of Suffolk cloth. In the 1557–8 cloth act, coarse shortcloth from Suffolk, Norfolk and Essex sold for less than £6, and was to be at least 6½ quarters wide.72 Bury St. Edmunds was a significant clothmaking town and its Risbygate market and September fair was a trading centre for Suffolk cloth, especially from nearby Lavenham. Thomas Spring II left money to repair the road between Lavenham and Bury.73 A study of Bury wills between 1441 and 1530 shows that clothworkers were the primary occupational group; textile trades accounted for 17 per cent of all occupations, with weavers the largest craft and fullers the fifth largest.74 At Suffolk’s local port, Ipswich, clothmaking had been the largest occupational group at the turn of the fifteenth century, making straits for the burgeoning export market, and this may have continued as exports peaked in the 1440s.75 Its industry declined as exports failed to revive after the mid-century recession.76 The highest-quality coloured broadcloth was made in the Kentish Weald and at Reading in the sixteenth century. The Kentish Weald had replaced Canterbury as the centre of the Kentish cloth industry by the 1470s, with production and wealth concentrated at Cranbrook and its

298  Sixteenth-Century Woollens Industry adjacent parishes in the central Weald.77 Wealden clothiers made both short and long broadcloths and vesses, but its reputation undoubtedly rested on its expensive coloured long cloths, especially russets and tawneys.78 Early Wealden clothiers were landowners, sons following their fathers into the business, thus combining cloth manufacture with farming.79 Wealden clothiers were usually well capitalised and educated and had served an apprenticeship to a clothier. By the 1520s there were already a few rich clothiers, the richest of them in Cranbrook.80 Maidstone, just outside the Weald, was a distribution centre for wool and a marketing centre for Wealden cloth, especially kersey; and there was a large and expensive overshot fulling mill just outside the town.81 The fines show clearly that London merchants were determined to maintain the quality of Kentish dyeing, as eighty of the 241 dyeing fines from 1554 to 1585 were from Kent.82 At Reading Henry VII had granted a charter in 1485 that gave the mayor and burgesses authority to supervise cloth manufacture.83 It was certainly the growing importance of the cloth industry at Reading that made it the twelfth wealthiest town in 1524–5, up from fortieth in 1334: with two clothiers among six citizens expected to contribute £50 to the 1522 loan.84 In 1520 clothiers’ concerns with quality led to an agreement with weavers, fullers and shearmen to standardise and improve working practices.85 This probably set the stage for the careful management of the industry that established its reputation for high-quality broadcloth. By mid-century a few clothiers dominated the industry: Thomas Aldworth, for example, operating a dyehouse and weaving workshop, and holding a partial interest in a fulling mill and burling workshop.86 One Reading draper, John Quarles Sr., was a warden of the London Drapers’ Company in 1550–1, and a Merchant Adventurer.87 Abingdon had a modest cloth industry throughout the late-medieval period, alnaging 385.5 cloths in 1394–5.88 It was also under abbey control, but never showed the entrepreneurship and finishing skills exhibited at Reading, and its industry seems to have declined in the sixteenth century in spite of attempts to resuscitate it.89

Kersey and the Coarser Cloths Kerseymaking was important across a wide swath of southern England and in Yorkshire. The southern kersey district was centred in Newbury, Berkshire and throughout Hampshire but extended eastwards to Midhurst and Petworth in Sussex and Farnham, Guilford and Godalming in Surrey. Most kersey for export was unfinished (white) or dyed watchet (lighter blue than azure, darker than plunket), although a few were russets. Newbury had become the centre for quality sorting kerseys as the Winchcombe and Dolman clothier families had established an international reputation for their cloths, and as a result, the town may well have become the main collection point for kerseys that met their standards.

Sixteenth-Century Woollens Industry 299 There is a list of clothiers, in the last year of Henry VIII’s reign, who made fine kerseys that were longer than the traditional 18-yard kersey, in small towns and villages from Andover, Romsey and Havant in Hampshire, through southern Berkshire, and as far east as Guilford and Godalming in Surrey and Petworth in Sussex.90 But most were within a short distance from Newbury which suggests that Newbury clothiers organised kersey production in the surrounding region and finished some of the cloth.91 The first John Winchcombe was a weaver who died in 1519, leaving workshops and two fulling mills to his son, John Winchcombe the Elder. In 1522 his goods were valued at £632, equivalent to 24 per cent of the assessments for the Newbury area, and he lived until 1557, by which time his lands produced an income of £158 a year.92 The other important clothier family was the Dolmans. The first Thomas Dolman was John Winchcombe’s foreman, dying in 1531, but it was his son, Thomas Dolman, who built up the family fortune.93 In 1549 Thomas Gresham purchased 1,400 kerseys from John Winchcombe, 1,550 from Thomas Dolman and 549 from another Newbury clothier, Thomas Benet.94 Winchcombes were fine kerseys with the highest reputation and carried a premium price. There seems to have been far less criticism of quality kerseys than broadcloth in the 1540s.95 English merchants agreed among themselves to sell Winchcombes at Antwerp in 1540 provided that they would also buy twice the number of lesser kerseys.96 In 1544 the king’s council was advised to send Winchcombes to Antwerp because ‘they will, with great gains, make great heaps of money; and beside that, neither cloth, lead nor other thing will be trusted’.97 In 1549 the British envoy at Antwerp advised that the best way to repay a loan was to send 1,000 Winchcombe kerseys.98 Specialised manufacture of coarse cloth had moved to the pastoral highland zone in the north and west; to Devon and Cornwall, Wales, Cheshire, Lancashire, Cumbria and the West Riding as cheap labour, cheaper wools and good sites for fulling mills became critical to their production. The West Riding was producing far more cloths than York by the end of the fifteenth century. Ripon was still an important cloth town, while Halifax had become the chief cloth town in south-west Yorkshire. Durham Priory was sourcing cloth from the West Riding rather than York in 1485, and the prior was also buying cloths from London in the following year.99 Halifax clothiers were now selling cloth at London’s St. Bartholomew’s fair.100 A York writer in 1561 explained that ‘the lak of cloth making in the sayd cite as was in old tyme accustomed, which is now encreased and used in the townes of Halyfax, Leedes and Wakefield, for that not only the commodytie of the water-mylnes is ther nigh at hande, but also the poore folke as speynners, carders and other necessary work-folkes for the sayd webbing, may ther beside ther hand labor, have rye, fyre, and other relief good cheape, which is in this citie very deare and wanting’.101

300  Sixteenth-Century Woollens Industry The Yorkshire West Riding and Westmoreland had become the centre for cheaper broadcloth by the mid-sixteenth century, and was one of the few areas in the country now making broad dozens. The Yorkshire 1468–78 alnage particulars show the emergence of West Riding clothiers as York’s industry stalled. Yorkshire alnage particulars for the 1468–78 period contain falsifications: the 1469–70 report was mostly copied from the previous year as was 1475–8 from 1471–3. But they do show that the alnager thought it worthwhile to cover production throughout the West Riding because it accounted for close to 60 per cent of the county’s woollens by 1480. Halifax had become the major producer in the West Riding, replacing Ripon. There were growing links between London and West Riding merchants, and West Riding clothiers would have diverted some of their cloth, that had previously been sold to the Hanse merchants in Hull, to their headquarters at the London Steelyard.102 The area was responsible for a new cloth, penistone, a dozen slightly narrower than the standard broadcloth, which was made in the area around Barnsley, and was probably similar in construction to Lancashire cottons.103 Thomas Kytson started buying penistones for export in 1531, paying 14–15s a cloth. His wife used penistone to make children’s gowns and servants’ jackets.104 By the mid-sixteenth century northern cloth output was expanding: the alnage for Yorkshire and Hull was farmed for £95 a year in 1547, compared with £65 for Gloucester, Bristol and Gloucestershire.105 Eighty per cent of Yorkshire fines levied from 1550 to 1585 in London for infractions to the cloth acts were from cloths made in Wakefield, Leeds and Halifax, and 14 per cent of all fines were either for northern dozens or penistones. Leeds, Wakefield and Kendall made coloured dozens and white penistones. Output may have been as great as 5,000 broadcloths a week in Leeds and Wakefield by the end of the sixteenth century, which would have made Yorkshire the leading clothmaking county.106 West Riding kersey was less important than dozens, and was usually sold unfinished, although some were dyed watchet or in the latest russet colours. Halifax made mostly kerseys and some penistones, and appears to have been the fastest growing town in the West Riding.107 Directly west in north-east Lancashire, kerseys were made in Cole, Burnley, Padiham and Blackburn.108 Cumbrian Kendals can be traced back to the fourteenth century when the cloth was considered of such low quality that it was exempted from regulation.109 But by the end of the fifteenth century production had increased and they were sold nationally. In Grasmere parish the number of fulling mills rose from six in 1453 to eighteen in the sixteenth century.110 In 1501, at York, Kendal men could sell their cloth in the inns, and Kendal, Ripon and Knaresborough cloth was to be sold only at one location at the Thursday market.111 But by the later-sixteenth century Kendal clothiers were making white and coloured kersey and therefore the region was integrated into the West Riding cloth district.112

Sixteenth-Century Woollens Industry 301 The other county where mainly coarse cloth production grew rapidly was Devon. A total of 120 fulling mills have been discovered from 1350 to 1500 in Devon and Cornwall, with three quarters of them after 1400.113 The great expansion was after 1480 with the main catalysts being the expansion of Exeter’s exports to France and the growth of kerseymaking in many small towns, such as Tiverton, Ottery St. Mary, Crediton and Cullompton. There also seems to have been growth in the production of cheap, narrow cloths in north and west Devon.114 Clothmaking benefited from numerous Devon ports—Exeter, Dartmouth and Plymouth in the south and Barnstaple in the north—that encouraged regional clothmaking; Tavistock feeding Plymouth; Totnes cloth sent to Dartmouth; and South Molton cloth to Barnstaple. Exeter developed an important fulling and finishing industry.115 Little can be said of the fifteenth-century Cornish industry because its poor-quality cloth fell under the radar. However, there seems to have been some growth in the east as it came within the orbit of the Devon industry, contributing to exports through Plymouth.116 Devonshire dozens helped make Devon the county with the greatest increase in wealth per acre from 1334 to 1515.117 In a survey of small towns, twenty-four out of twenty-eight Devon towns had grown between 1377–81 and 1524–5, whereas most of the country’s small towns had declined.118 Devon had forty-eight small towns, more than all other counties; a few of them, for example, Cullompton and Ottery St. Mary, that were strikingly prosperous.119 After Devon came Kent, with fortyfive small towns; Suffolk with thirty-two; and the West Riding of Yorkshire and Somerset with thirty-one, all centres of the cloth industry.120 Richer soils in eastern Devon made that part of the county wealthier than western parishes.121 Narrow dozens were woven either with traditional or kersey yarns, but both had the same dimensions and weight. Devonshire dozens were standardised in 1513 to be 12 yards in length so its kersey was 6  yards less than kersey made elsewhere in southern England.122 Devon therefore became the only area of the country that still depended on coarse narrow straits for its success. Devonshire kerseys and straits were the major export from Exeter and Dartmouth in the early sixteenth century, straits selling for only 5s a cloth. Exeter with its flourishing finishing industry, exported many coloured straits while Dartmouth exported whites.123 Some Devon kersey was of very high quality, especially at Tiverton and Cullompton, and at Crediton whose kersey gave rise to the expression, ‘as fine as Kirton spinning’.124 Parliament attempted to regulate coarse cloth quality as its importance grew. White Devon straits had to be 15  yards in length before fulling after 1514, and sealed with the weaver’s mark. No refuse wools, called flocks, were to be used in weaving these cheap cloths unless they were kendals, carpenal-whites, tavistocks, Cornish cloths, cottons, linings or frieze.125 The use of flocks in Devon, Cornwall and Yorkshire was obviously pervasive as it was a by-product of making regular cloth, and there

302  Sixteenth-Century Woollens Industry was always demand for such inexpensive cloth. Henry VIII set up a commission in 1533 to examine irregularities in making West Riding cloth, but clothiers were reluctant to cooperate. Nothing was done because the practice was so widespread and would have put so many out of work.126 The 1552 cloth act sought to set size and weight dimensions for all coarse cloths. Cottons and frieze were companion products, narrower cloths than straits or kerseys, woven from coarse wools, primarily woven in Wales, Cheshire and Lancashire that required specialised finishing. These were inexpensive, but still quality cloths. Frieze was a rough, heavy product that was used to make cloaks worn by common people, but could also be used for doublets. Cottons might be as heavy as regular broadcloth; and its uses were as wrappers for other cloths, for petticoats, and coat linings. In 1541 cottons were required to be folded rather than rolled so that ‘buyers can plainly see the breadth and goodness’.127 Cottons were usually sold by the goad, a goad being a yard and a half. The London draper, Thomas Gilbert’s 1486 inventory indicates that he ran two stores, one for quality broadcloth, and the other inexpensive broad and narrow cloth.128 His cottons were all either white or black, his frieze tawny. According to the preamble to the 1543 statute on Welsh cloth, the Welsh cloth industry was moving from the southern towns in Camarthen, Cardigan and Pembroke to mid and north Wales.129 This may have been a reflection of the decline of Bristol and dominance of London. Shrewsbury drapers, and merchants from Oswestry and other border towns, now bought Welsh cottons and frieze to be finished and then sent to London.130 A petition from the late 1550s explained how cottons’ weavers operated as they complained about statutory attempts to regulate cloth length: ‘the makers of them are for the most part poor people dwelling amongst the mountains of Wales and many times two or three of them do lay their stock together to make one piece, and then when it is ready, most commonly the owners with the weavers and the walkers (fullers) do come with the same to the market of Oswester, being ten, twenty, thirty or forty miles distant from their dwelling, and then they sell for ready money, for they never get any credit, and at the receipt of the money, the walker takes his wages, the weaver his wages, and then the poor owners divide the rest. And in the same market, or in some other market near unto their dwellings, they bestow the money again on wool, and so keep themselves in work. By reason whereof it would be very inconvenient to set them to one certain length’.131 Cheshire and Manchester cottons started to compete with Welsh cottons early in the sixteenth century and were a major competitor by midcentury.132 Unlike Welsh cottons their length and weight was far more standardised.133 Thomas Kytson was buying Cheshire cottons as early as 1513.134 Bristol was exporting Manchester rather than Welsh cottons in 1545–6: non-Hanseatic aliens exported 643, and denizens 2,013

Sixteenth-Century Woollens Industry 303 Manchester and northern cottons, valued at 10s each.135 Cottons and frieze accounted for 12 per cent of the value of cloth shipped. The chief market for these inexpensive, coarse cloths must have been domestic, yet cottons were an important export cloth, frieze less so. Thomas Kytson sold large numbers of cottons each year from 1512 to 1513 until 1532, and small quantities of frieze.136 Cottons were a far more important part of non-Hanseatic alien trade from London; approximately 5.2 per cent of the value of cloths during April-June 1509, 14.9 per cent in 1520–1, rising to 20 per cent in 1553–4.137 At Bristol, cottons (or Welsh straits, as they were called) accounted for less than 2 per cent of value of cloths shipped in 1503–4.138 In 1576 roughly equal quantities of Manchester/Cheshire and Welsh cottons were exported from London, about 80,000 goads.139 Based on later-sixteenth century inventories, the typical Lancashire cottons weaver was both farmer and manufacturer, buying wool from broggers, or yarn from yarnmasters and then selling cloth to merchant clothiers for finishing and sale.140 He was balancing industrial and agricultural work, and this seems to have been the case for almost all clothmakers, weavers or clothiers. A small number might be considered clothiers, with inventories of wool, yarn and cloth and employing some outside labour. A few were dyeing their wools. Fullers were always independent, and there were specialist dyers, finishers and yarnmasters. A  few cloth finishers were buying up country cloth to be finished. There were a small number of large clothiers who were controlling the whole process except fulling, and they tended to be close to the largest centre for clothmaking, Manchester. The cloth sold in London was handled by merchant clothiers who might spend a month taking cloth to Blackwell Hall or Southampton, selling it and then returning north.141 For the most part, those producing and those selling were different trades but they were both called clothiers: and the production system was complex with many specialising on a single craft, while others were clothiers with sufficient capital to control much, but rarely all, of the production system. Cottons, frieze and linings were the only products that, to some extent, the two cloth acts in the 1550s failed to end discussion of their lengths, widths and weight. The problem with Welsh cottons was that they were made to different weights for different purposes and traditionally there had never been any widely accepted length. Consequently, the length and weight provisions of the 1552 act were revoked in 1557–8; Welsh cottons now only having to be at least 1lb a yard and linings 1.125lb a yard. Parliament revisited Lancashire cottons and frieze in 1565, making minor adjustments to their lengths and weights and authorising alnagers in Manchester, Rochdale, Bolton, Blackburn and Bury to supervise the act, thereby limiting any further supervision of these narrow cloths in London.142 By the mid-sixteenth century London merchants affected cloth markets across the country as cloths came to London for export, to serve growing

304  Sixteenth-Century Woollens Industry local demand, or to be re-distributed across the country. The only large exception to this concentration was Devon and Cornwall whose industry was centred on local ports. The industry had become segmented, with clothmaking regions and villages making very specific cloths that had gained a national reputation. Whether it was broadcloth, either full length or dozens; straits and kersey a foot wide; or cloths ¾ yard wide, there was both specialisation and competition. Most cloth was made mostly in small towns and villages as clothiers had brought together the necessary skills, even in finishing and dyeing some coarser cloths. The only large provincial towns still prospering from weaving cloth were Worcester, Reading and Norwich; although Salisbury, Bristol and Coventry continued to make quality cloth but less than in the fifteenth century. London and several provincial towns finished regional cloth, and a few towns specialised in the finishing of cottons and frieze. Towns like Bury St.  Edmunds, Maidstone and Manchester were marketing centres for local cloth. Cheaper cloths were made in all clothmaking regions as they used the excess refuse wools from weaving quality cloth; specialised coarse cloths had steadily moved to the hilly areas of the far west and north where labour, wools and fulling were lower cost. By 1550 E ­ ngland’s wool advantage was narrowing as its average quality was declining while continental draperies had access to competitive merino wool that was steadily improving, and new light draperies used longer wools. The traditional woollens industry was to become even more price competitive later in the century, and this was to favour the Yorkshire industry, with its low-cost structure, over Suffolk and the West Country.

Notes 1. For a comprehensive review of all the factors affecting the cloth industry, see N. Amor, From wool to cloth: The triumph of the Suffolk clothier (Bungay, 2016), 58–88. 2. W. Endrei, ‘Manufacturing a piece of woollen cloth in medieval Flanders: How many work hours?’ in E. Aerts and J. Munro, eds., Textiles in the Low Countries in European economic history (Leuven, 1990), 14–23. 3. J. Thirsk, ‘Industries in the countryside’, in F.J. Fisher, ed., Essays in the economic and social history of Tudor and Stuart England (Cambridge, 1961), 70–88. 4. J.N. Hare, ‘Growth and recession in the fifteenth-century economy: The Wiltshire textile industry and the countryside’, EcHR, 52 (1999), 3; Thirsk, ‘Industries in the countryside’, 73–5. 5. E. Carus-Wilson, ‘Evidences of industrial growth on some fifteenth-century manors’, EcHR, 2nd series, 12 (1959–60), 190–205. 6. Munro, ‘Struggles’, 306–7. 7. The Northumberland figures are for 1441–2, and Hertfordshire for 1447–8. 8. These are provincial cloths that were brought to the searcher mostly by London merchants. 9. Eighty fines were for faulty dyeing which raised the county numbers.

Sixteenth-Century Woollens Industry 305 10. E.M. Carus-Wilson, ‘The aulnage accounts: A criticism’, in idem, Venturers, 279–91. 11. Ibid, 280. 12. Britnell, Colchester, 187–9; R. Britnell, ‘The woollen textile industry of Suffolk in the later Middle Ages’, Ricardian, 13 (2003), 97–9; N.R. Amor, ‘Merchant Adventurer or jack of all trades? The Suffolk clothier in the 1460s’, Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology, 20 (2004), 414–16, 434. 13. Statutes, 4 & 5 Phil. & Mary, c. 5. 14. Statutes, 25 Henry VIII, c.18; 2&3 Ph. & Mary, c. 12; 8 Eliz. c. 7. 15. R. Tittler, ‘The emergence of urban policy, 1536–58’, in J. Loach and R. Tittler, eds., The mid-Tudor polity c.1540–1560 (London, 1980), 93. 16. J. Hare, ‘Pensford and the growth of the cloth industry in late medieval Somerset’, Somerset Archaeology and Natural History, 147 (2004), 176. 17. R.S. Schofield, ‘The geographical distribution of wealth in England, 1334– 1649’, EcHR, 2nd series, 18 (1965), 504. 18. Hare, ‘Pensford’, 176; E.M. Carus-Wilson, The expansion of Exeter at the close of the Middle Ages (Exeter, 1963), 20–1. 19. Oldland, ‘Variety and quality’, 249. 20. Statutes, 2&3 Ph. & Mary, c. 12. 21. Hare, ‘Growth’, 12–15; E. Carus-Wilson, ‘The woolen industry before 1550’, in E. Crittall and R.D. Pugh, eds., VCH Wiltshire, vol. 4 (London, 1959), 133–7. 22. G. Ramsay, The Wiltshire woollen industry in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (London, 1965), 31–6. 23. Bridbury, Clothmaking, 69. 24. Carus-Wilson, ‘Woolen industry before 1550’, 124–6; A. Sutton, ‘Order and fashion in clothes: the king, his household, and the city of London at the end of the fifteenth century’, TH, 22 (1991), 266. 25. Carus-Wilson, ‘Woolen industry before 1550’, 140; Ramsay, Wiltshire, 19–22. 26. R. Holt, ‘Gloucester in the century after the Black Death’, in R. Holt and G. Rosser, eds., A reader in English urban history 1200–1540 (London, 1990), 147. 27. Carus-Wilson, ‘Evidences’, 191–7. 28. R. Perry, ‘The Gloucestershire woolen industry 1100–1690’, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, 66 (1947), 105–9. 29. Carus-Wilson, ‘Evidences’, 194–6. 30. H.F. Holt, ‘The Tames of Fairford’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 27 (1871), 118–9, 138. 31. Carus-Wilson, Exeter, 19–20; Hare, ‘Pensford’, 176–7. 32. Carus-Wilson, ‘Woollen industry’, 39–40; C. Brett, ‘Thomas Kytson and Somerset clothmen, 1529–1539’, Somerset Archaeology and Natural History, 143 (1999), 31–2; C. Brett, ‘Thomas Kytson and Wiltshire clothmen, 1529–1539’, Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine, 97 (2004), 39–40. 33. Ramsay, Wiltshire, 32–3. William Stumpe and John Hedges sold castlecombes to Thomas Kytson in 1535, see Brett, ‘Wiltshire’, 43. 34. Ramsay, Wiltshire, 37–40. 35. Statutes, 1 Mary, c.7; Perry, ‘Gloucestershire’, 78–80. 36. W. Childs, Anglo-Castilian trade in the later Middle Ages (Manchester, 1978), 94–5. 37. TNA, E 122/20/1. 38. Bickley, Bristol, 127–9. 39. Ibid, 123–7. 40. Calendar of the Bristol Apprentice Book, vols. 14, 33 (Bristol Record Society, 1949, 1980); D. Sacks, The widening gate: Bristol and the Atlantic economy, 1450–1700 (Berkeley, 1991), 58.

306  Sixteenth-Century Woollens Industry 41. J. Vane, Documents illustrating the overseas trade of Bristol in the sixteenth century, vol. 31 (Bristol Record Society (BRS), 1979), 28–9. 42. A. Dyer, The city of Worcester in the sixteenth century (Leicester, 1973), 93. 43. Ibid, 94, 118. 44. Statutes, 25 Henry VIII, c. 12. 45. Statutes, 5&6 Edward VI, c. 6; Dyer, Worcester, 95. 46. London, Mercers’ Hall, Thomas Gresham day book. 47. G.D. Ramsay, The English woollen industry, 1500–1750 (London, 1982), 29. 48. L. Poos, Rural society after the Black Death: Essex 1350–1525 (Cambridge, 1991), 64, 71. 49. Britnell, Colchester, 80, 188–9. Coggeshall, Dedham and Braintree that alnaged 324, 322 and 210 cloths, respectively, in 1467–8. It may have been that some of the cloth alnaged at Colchester were woven elsewhere and then dyed and finished in Colchester. 50. Ibid, 164–8. 51. Ibid, 183–6. 52. Ibid, 178. 53. Ibid, 183. 54. Britnell, ‘Suffolk’, 98. 55. Amor, Wool to cloth, 178–9. 56. Britnell, ‘Suffolk’, 97. 57. Amor, Wool and cloth, 203–6. 58. Britnell’s analysis of debt litigation in Colchester between 1445 and 1464 seems to show that, after London, Colchester traded most frequently with Stoke and Nayland in Suffolk; see Britnell, ‘Suffolk’, 99. 59. Britnell, ‘Suffolk’, 98. 60. D. Dymond and A. Betterton, Lavenham. 700 Years of textile making (Woodbridge, 1982), 68. 61. J. Patten, ‘Village and town: an occupational study’, AHR, 20 (1972), 1–16. 62. J. Pound, The military survey of 1522 for Babergh Hundred, vol. 28 (Woodbridge: Suffolk Record Society, 1986). 63. Dymond and Betterton, Lavenham, 25; B. McClenaghan, The Springs of Lavenham and the Suffolk cloth trade in the XV and XVI centuries (Ipswich, 1924), 48. 64. Dymond and Betterton, Lavenham, 26; A. Dyer, ‘Ranking lists of English medieval towns’, CHUB, 765–7. 65. McClenaghen, Springs, 84. 66. London, Drapers’ Hall, Thomas Howell ledger, ff. 43–64. 67. Handywarps were woven in Coggeshall, Bocking and Braintree in Essex, and Glaynesford in Suffolk. Their weight was reduced from 3lb/yd. in 1552 to 2.5lb/yd. in 1557. Worcester also wove handywarps. 68. Statutes, 8 Edward IV, c.1. Broadcloth was to be 28 yards and 27 inches ‘by the crest’ (unfulled), and 7 quarters wide, weighing at least 38lb. Straits were 14 yards and 14 inches long, 3 quarters and half a quarter wide, weighing 9½lb. The alnager was to seal the cloths. 69. Statutes, I Richard III, c. 8. 70. Statutes, 6 Henry VIII, c. 9; 14&15 Henry VIII, c. 10. 71. Statutes, 27 Henry VIII, c. 12. 72. Statutes, 4&5 Ph. & Mary, c.5. 73. Gottfried, Bury, 101, esp. note 89. 74. Ibid, 111–13. 75. N.R. Amor, Late medieval Ipswich trade and industry (Woodbridge, 2011), 58–62, 119. 76. Ibid, 163–71.

Sixteenth-Century Woollens Industry 307 77. Ibid, 141–2. 78. Zell, Industry, 165. 79. Ibid, 190–1. 80. Ibid, 153, 220–1. 81. Ibid, 160, 205. 82. TNA, E 159/335, 337, 338, 339, 350, 355, 357, 359, 360, 361, 363, 366, 368, 370, 371, 375, 376, 378, 380, 381, 384, 387, 389, 390. 83. C. Jackson, ‘The Berkshire woollen industry, 1500–1650’ (Unpub. Ph.D. thesis, Univ. of Reading, 1993), 22. 84. Dyer, ‘Ranking lists’, 7–70; Jackson, ‘Berkshire’, 42. 85. Jackson, ‘Berkshire’, 88. 86. C. Jackson, ‘Boom-time freaks or heroic industrial pioneers? Clothing entrepreneurs in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Berkshire’, TH, 39 (2008), 152. 87. Jackson, ‘Berkshire’, 31. 88. M. Yates, Town and countryside in western Berkshire, c.1327–c.1600 (Woodbridge, 2007), 82. 89. C. Jackson, ‘Clothmaking and the economy of sixteenth-century Abingdon’, Oxoniensis, 67 (2002), 59–78. 90. TNA, E 101/347/17. 91. Newbury, and Winnersh in Berkshire; Andover, Whitchuch, Kingsclere, Basingstoke, Sherfield and Mattingley in Hampshire; see Jackson, ‘Berkshire’, 44. 92. Ibid, 42, 98. 93. Ibid, 100–1. 94. P. Ramsey, ‘The Merchant Adventurers in the first half of the sixteenth century’ (Unpub. D. Phil. thesis, Univ. of Oxford, 1958), 184. 95. Ramsey, ‘Merchant Adventurers’, 190–1. 96. F. Edler, ‘Winchcombe kerseys in Antwerp (1538–1544)’, EcHR, 7 (1936), 60. 97. L&P, vol. 19, part 2, # 723. 98. W.J. Ashley, An introduction to economic history, vol. 2: The end of the Middle Ages (London, 1893), 229. 99. J.T. Fowler, Extracts from the account rolls of the abbey of Durham, 103 (Surtees Society, 1901), 649–50. 100. Heaton, Yorkshire, 76. 101. Heaton, Yorkshire, 54–5. 102. J.N. Bartlett, ‘The expansion and decline of York in the later Middle Ages’, EcHR, 2nd series, 12 (1959), 30. 103. Kerridge, Manufactures, 20. 104. CUL, Hengrave Hall deposit, 78/2, f. 160–160v. 105. CPR, 1550–53, 304; 1553, 308. 106. Heaton, Yorkshire, 79. 107. Ibid, 76–7. 108. N. Lowe, The Lancashire textile industry in the sixteenth century, Chetham Society, 3rd series, 20 (Manchester, 1972), 4. 109. Statutes, 2 Henry IV, c. 19. 110. A.J.L. Winchester, Landscape and society in medieval Cumbria (Edinburgh, 1987), 118. 111. A. Raine, York Civic Records, vol. 2, 1487–1504, 103 (Yorkshire Archaeological Record Series, 1941), 165–6, 175. 112. Eleven Kendal kerseymakers received London fines in the 1570s. 113. H.S.A. Fox, ‘Devon and Cornwall’, in AHEW, 740. 114. Statutes, 4 Henry VIII, c. 2, 6 Henry VIII, c. 8. Devon straits were 15 yards long and a yard and half a quarter yard before fulling, weighed 14 pounds, and were usually white or russet.

308  Sixteenth-Century Woollens Industry 115. Carus-Wilson, Exeter, 22–3. 116. J. Hatcher, ‘A diversified economy: later medieval Cornwall’, EcHR, 2nd series, 22 (1969), 226; J. Hatcher, Rural economy and society in the Duchy of Cornwall 1350–1500 (Cambridge, 1970), 169–71; Fox, ‘Devon and Cornwall’, 740–2. 117. Schofield, ‘Geographical distribution’, 504. 118. C. Dyer, ‘Small towns 1270–1540’, CHUB, 536. 119. J. Sheail, ‘The regional distribution of wealth in England as indicated in the 1524/25 lay subsidy returns’ (Doctoral thesis), vol. 1, List & Index Society, Special Series, 28 (1998), 80; Dyer, ‘Small towns’, 507. There were five fulling mills at Ottery St Mary at the turn of the sixteenth century; see Fox, ‘Devon and Cornwall’, 742. 120. W.G. Hoskins, Devon (London, 1954), 63. 121. J. Cade and M. Brayshaw, ‘The taxable wealth and population of Devon parishes in 1524/25: An application of GIS and computer cartography’, History and Computing, 8 (1996), 105–21. 122. Statutes, 5 Henry VII, I c.2. 123. TNA, E 122/422/2; Carus-Wilson, Exeter, 22–3. 124. Kerridge, Manufactures, 25. 125. Statutes, 6 Henry 8, c. 8, 9. 126. Heaton, Yorkshire, 134–5. 127. Statutes, 33 Henry VIII, c.3. 128. TNA, PCC, Prob.2/12. 129. Statutes, 34–35 Henry VIII, c.11; J. Geraint Jenkins, The Welsh woollen industry (Cardiff, 1969), 108. 130. T.C. Mendenhall, The Shrewsbury drapers and the Welsh wool trade in the XVI and XVII centuries (Oxford, 1953), 2–8; Kerridge, Manufactures, 19. 131. BL, Cotton ms., Titus B, v, f.242. 132. J. Kermode, ‘The trade of medieval Chester, 1500–1550’, in R. Britnell and J. Hatcher, eds., Progress and problems in medieval England: Essays in honour of Edward Miller (Cambridge, 1996), 293. 133. Statutes, 5&6 Edward VI, c. 9. 134. CUL, Hengrave Deposit, 78/1. 135. S. Flavin and E. Jones, eds., Bristol’s trade with Ireland and the continent 1503–1601 (Bristol Record Society, 2009), 457–545. 136. Ramsey, ‘Merchant Adventurers’, appendix, accounts of Sir Thomas Kitson (1512–40). 137. TNA, E 122/81/1, 2, 83/5, 86/2. 138. Flavin and Jones, Bristol’s trade, 1–102. 139. Lowe, Lancashire, 69. 140. Ibid, 20–42. 141. Ibid, 60–1. 142. Statutes, 8 Eliz. c. 12.

15 Crossroads

For the woollens industry the 1550s was the end of an era. It concluded a century of almost un-interrupted export growth that resulted in ­England’s dominance of the lucrative continental quality woollens market which Leake, in his 1577 treatise on the cloth industry, described as ‘the precious jewel of all Europe’.1 During that decade what came to be named ‘the old draperies’ were re-organised and their course set for the next century. From this time any discussion of woollen textiles had to consider the impact of imported and domestic ‘new draperies’, the broad range of lighter, cheaper and often smaller-in-size worsteds and serges. A new working relationship among clothiers, cloth merchants and government was established. The re-valuation of the coinage was to make English cloth more expensive on international markets; the Merchant Adventurers Company re-organised itself to eliminate its small traders; Hanse trade was significantly diminished; merchants aggressively started to find new export markets for their cloth; clothiers were made subject to quality control regulations that were enforced and their freedoms were reduced; cloth export duties were raised to make them comparable to those on wool, and more English and immigrant clothmakers started to make lighter worsteds to compete with imported ‘draperies légères’. The second half of the century has been rightly perceived as one of greater government control over the economy, but in the context of the woollens industry it might be clearly seen more as the government and Merchant Adventurers working together to re-organise trade and manage clothiers to further their own interests.2 Government achieved some of its social and economic objectives. To slow the conversion of arable to pasture it stabilised exports after a half-century of rapid growth and hindered any further geographic expansion of cloth production. It had some success in reducing imports of raw materials essential to the industry to improve the trade balance, and at the same time benefited financially from the increase in customs rates. Leading Merchant Adventurers maintained their control over London government and reduced competition in international trade, while clothiers found it more difficult to make fortunes in a more competitive and controlled business environment. Steps

310  Crossroads were taken to improve quality control by holding clothiers responsible for meeting set standards and aggressively fining fraudulently made cloth when it was discovered. This re-calibration of the industry was also a reflection of London’s economic strength, and its usefulness to the royal government in financial matters.

Mid-Century Crisis By mid-century Tudor government faced economic problems, stemming from inflation and population growth, that was depressing living standards and raising concerns for social stability. There was sporadic rioting in the 1540s and revolts across southern England in 1549. The latest estimates for deflated per capita growth show an increase from 1526 to 1546 but then a decline for the rest of the century.3 Prices had doubled from the 1520s to the 1550s while agricultural wages had only risen 50 per cent.4 Population expansion, from an estimated 2.774 million in 1541 to 3.011 million in 1551, was forcing up grain prices; many towns were in decay while the countryside was industrialising, and there was discontent from rising taxation to finance foreign wars that reduced incomes.5 The common perception was that the negative social and economic consequences from sheep farming and clothmaking had come to outweigh its benefits.6 As William Cecil complained in 1564, ‘by convertyng of so many people to clothyng, the realme lacketh not only artificers, which were wont to inhabit corporate towns, but also laborers for all common workes’.7 Gentry saw wealthy graziers, clothiers and merchants pushing up the price of land, and resented the higher social status these upstarts sought. Each cloth was made from the wool of about sixty sheep, and each shepherd might manage 400 sheep, so large swings in demand placed immediate pressure on pasturage. Unequalled export expansion of the 1540s had led to attempts to tax both sheep and cloth in 1549, although the act was repealed in 1550 as it met with opposition from landlords and proved almost impossible to collect.8 Government had to make do with another act against any further conversion of land to pasture.9 Rural society was concerned that their commons were overstocked with sheep and their rights to use them undermined; agricultural employment opportunities were reduced as pasture replaced arable; entry fines were raised as land values increased; and wages were falling behind prices.10 There were harvest failures in the three years 1549–51, and again in the two years 1556–7. Inflation was reflected in woollens’ prices.11 There had been some rise through the 1530s, but then they escalated dramatically in the late 1540s. Thomas Kytson paid, on average, 58s 10d for his Wiltshire white broadcloths in 1529–30, 63s 10d in 1538–9.12 The London Drapers’ company claimed that Suffolk broadcloth, priced between 66s 8d and 73s 4d in 1547, had doubled to between 140s and 146s 8d in 1551, and that other

Crossroads 311 woollens had risen almost as much.13 In the four years 1546–50, the price of Thomas Gresham’s kerseys rose 52 per cent, and broadcloths 19 per cent from 1546 to 1548.14 Currency depreciation by both Henry VIII and Edward VI devalued coinage which made exports cheaper and imports dearer. The value of the coinage at Antwerp halved between 1542 and 1551.15 Many felt that this distorted the economy, encouraging farmers to convert to pasture at a time when population growth raised demand for arable crops. An English merchant writing to William Cecil probably expressed a widespread feeling when he complained in January 1551 that ‘the exchange engenders dear cloth, dear cloth dear wool, dear wool many sheep, many sheep much and dear pasture, much pasture is the decay of tillage, from which springs dear corn and dearth in almost all things’.16 Financial factors seem to have been secondary until 1549 as rising cloth prices seem to have been offset by gradually falling exchange rates at Antwerp, so it did not act as a break on exports. Historians have reasonably argued that currency depreciation had little effect before 1549, as the sterling exchange rate fell only 18 per cent from 26s 8d in January 1544 to 22s in November 1548.17 Exports continued to rise in 1549–50 as coinage depreciation had a stimulative effect.18 Availability of money, relatively low interest rates and the weakening of usury laws may have pushed up prices and facilitated trade.19 The currency then collapsed at Antwerp from 18s in November 1550 to 12s 9d in July 1551.20 Exports responded dramatically to falling prices at Antwerp. This last export surge was from 103,754 cloths in 1537–8 (84,674 from London) to 147,161 cloths in 1549–50 (132,766 from London).21 For seven years from February  1539 to 1546 duties for other aliens were reduced to denizen levels, with immediate and dramatic impact.22 Non-Hanseatic alien exports, which had been only 13.8  per cent of the national total from 1530–1 to 1537–8, rose to 25  per cent from 1538–9 to 1543–4. The effect of the tax reduction was remarkable considering it was only equivalent to 2.4  per cent the value of a 1539 Wiltshire broadcloth.23 Perhaps the reduced price was sufficiently enticing for Italians to export cloth themselves, saving themselves the markup that English merchants had been charging them, and consequently encouraging them to develop new southern markets for English cloth, particularly kerseys. Large quantities of English kerseys passed through Venice and Ancona to the Levant during this period: at least 50,000 kerseys and 7,000 broadcloths were shipped annually from Antwerp to Italy from 1543–5.24 In the two years before the tax was raised to the old levels, non-Hanseatic alien exports even exceeded denizen exports, so it appears that Italians were cutting into denizen trade. Adventurers brought their concerns to the government’s attention, and the lower tax rate was not renewed. When the duty was revised upwards Italian exports fell to virtually nothing as denizens took over their former role as exporters of Italians’ cloth, and

312  Crossroads some Italians left London.25 Fortunately, it seems that recently acquired markets were not lost as exports remained stable, and the gently falling exchange rate encouraged Italians to continue their purchase of cloth at Antwerp. Hansards were also successful as their exports rose substantially from 1547 to 1550. It has been suggested that the boom was a result of good German harvests and the need for military clothing.26 Any growth in the Baltic cloth trade, important because the government needed to import cables and other naval supplies, would have come from the export of cheaper cloths.27 In 1550–1 exports declined to 128,148 cloths. There was one further chart-topping year in 1553–4 when exports peaked at 150,563 cloths. Then exports settled back to levels close to the early 1540s for the remainder of the century.28

Merchant Adventurers and Government Restructuring of the Industry By mid-century, with London accounting for 90 per cent of exports and imports, and the Merchant Adventurers Company, in effect, controlling London’s government, economic policy for the cloth industry could be hammered out between the Company and the crown. As was generalised for the later-sixteenth century, ‘the great industrial and commercial expansion of the time was financed and directed behind artificial barriers which confined investment and control to some two or three score of great London merchants, a few enterprising courtiers like Burghley and Leicester, and a few progressive-minded industrialists and landowners. Extensive economic control and a measure of social conservatism were achieved at the price of a free hand for big business’.29 From February 1550 Sir William Paulet, first Marquess of Winchester, became the Lord Treasurer and was to hold that post until he died in 1572. It was his understanding of the crown and city’s needs as he was a London draper himself, together with his work ethic and ability to negotiate with all and sundry, that made possible government cooperation with the city and its Adventurers.30 The richest men in London were for the most part involved in the cloth trade, were Adventurers and aldermen.31 In 1559 the only aldermen known for other occupations were goldsmiths and a stapler. The Company was a national company with its official seat of government in Antwerp but it ruled the city when its interests were at stake, even though it was not one of the city’s guilds from which all aldermen were selected. The Company at mid-century was dominated by its leading members, approximately 100. It saw an opportunity with the downturn in business in 1550–1 to reduce the influence of its weaker and non-London members. In 1554, after an internal struggle, the entry fee of 10 marks in place since 1497 was raised to 100 marks for outsiders or £100 Flemish for clothiers and cloth finishers.32 This was to cement control among

Crossroads 313 its leading members and over time reduce membership and concentrate wealth. This wealth was evident from the loans made by London, £10,000 to Mary in 1553, and £30,000 from the Merchant Adventurers to Elizabeth in 1559.33 The best example of the quid pro quo between the city and the crown was the London mercer, Thomas Gresham’s plan to solve the crown’s debt and currency problem in exchange for the withdrawal of trading privileges from the Hansards.34 At the end of 1551 there was a government issue of finer coin, although base coin remained on the market. In February  1552 Hanseatic privileges were rescinded, giving the Adventurers almost total control over the cloth trade at the Brabant fairs.35 In March Thomas Gresham was faced with a government debt of £90,000 with no cash to pay for it. Credits from the cloth trade accrued in Antwerp were used to lower the debt, and merchants were browbeaten to accept a lower rate of exchange in England than they could have negotiated in Antwerp. Finally, the government devalued the currency by 50 per cent and the exchange rate rose.36 The consequence was that ‘this damaged the credit of English merchants in the Netherlands, while at the same time the hoarding of specie in England made it difficult for them to export currency to meet debts at Antwerp or Calais. Clumsy and illtimed efforts by the government to bring about a deflation in the summer of 1551 produced complete financial confusion in England. When the deflation did take effect it had the result of raising the price of cloth in the Netherlands, and hopes of a recovery in that market were thus killed’.37 Merchant Adventurers immediately benefited from Hanseatic restrictions as Hanse exports fell 37 per cent from 1549–50 to 1553–4. Gresham was able to raise the value of the currency from 13s Flemish to 25s Flemish in 1553. While many merchants were unhappy at the time, a powerful competitor had been weakened, and the re-valued currency made imports cheaper. Hansards did not withdraw without a fight.38 Their rights were restored by Mary. However, London regained its favour with the queen, Gresham regained his office as the crown’s agent in Antwerp, and the Hanse was forbidden to trade its cloth at Antwerp in 1555. The Hanse organised an unsuccessful boycott of English goods in 1557. Its congress failed to ratify an agreement in 1560 which allowed the Hanse a diminished stake in the cloth trade. The Italians were also caught in a Privy Council edict in 1556 which prevented all aliens from trading at the Brabant fairs from July to November. In 1557 they were licenced to buy only half the cloths they had planned and to sell none of them at Antwerp.39 Denizen merchants’ share of London’s cloth trade had risen from a half at the beginning of the decade to three quarters at its end. The crisis at Antwerp in the early 1550s made merchants aware of their over-dependence on the Brabant fairs, and the removal of the Hanse meant it was more difficult to reach some markets that the Hanse had served. Merchants and members of the government, including William

314  Crossroads Cecil, William Paulet and other earls invested in the Russia Company in 1553 to trade cloth and other merchandise for needed raw materials that had been purchased from the Baltic.40 It could now compete directly with the Hanse for shipbuilding materials, particularly cordage. It received its charter in 1555. So began the search for new markets for English cloth that became increasingly urgent as Antwerp declined. In the 1550s there were also expeditions to Morocco and along the north-African coast. This was only a small first step because in 1565 only 596 cloths were shipped to Russia from London and 890 to Barbary out of a total of 40,058 cloths exported.41 Merchant Adventurers were unable to prevent Elizabeth, Cecil and Paulet increasing customs duties on cloth in the 1558 book of rates, from 14d to 6s 8d a cloth for denizens and from 2s 9d to 14s 6d for alien merchants, on the basis that wool and cloth should be valued equally. They had been able to withstand government pressure to raise duties in the early 1550s. It had been argued that the coarseness of English cloth meant that any duty increase would depress sales, many in the working class would be unemployed, less foreign coin would be earned, and it would be more difficult to maintain the navy.42 Merchants and others continued to argue against the increase but probably realised that they could not avoid this tax grab which was so profitable for the crown, and they may have been threatened with renewed Hanse competition.43 After protests to the Privy Council, merchants were fobbed off with a duty reduction of one cloth free with ten, called a ‘wrapper’.44 Merchant Adventurers were also complicit in the restoration of the currency in 1560.45 The result was that ‘Elizabeth’s policies became closely involved with the fortunes of the Adventurers who now paid such a high proportion of her customs revenues’.46 Merchant Adventurers were also successful in their ongoing struggle with London’s Clothworkers Company that had been able to secure passage of acts since 1487 that required that all white broadcloths and coloured cloth over a certain value be exported finished. Successive acts until 1542 raised these valuations as cloth became more expensive. In 1547, with the rapid rise in cloth prices, the act was provisionally suspended on the request of the Merchant Adventurers. To avoid its reintroduction in parliament, Adventurers bought licences to sell unfinished cloth.47 In 1564 they were given a licence to ship 30,000 cloths annually; for more they had to seek additional licences. This contest over cloth finishing was to continue for the rest of the century, with merchants usually successful in limiting the number of cloths that had to be exported finished.48 Clothworkers had one notable success in 1565 when parliament required that all Suffolk and Kentish cloth be exported finished.49 One government concern that was of little interest to merchants, and particularly Merchant Adventurers who primarily dealt in unfinished cloth, was to return clothmaking to towns. The 1552 cloth act stated

Crossroads 315 that drapers or clothiers could only practice if they were licenced by justices of the peace, or their cloths would be forfeit.50 In 1553 an act was passed removing any impediments to urban clothmaking, perhaps an inducement for clothiers to move to towns.51 The following year clothiers operating outside a city, borough or market town were prevented from owning more than one loom, and weavers were restricted to two looms and apprentices. No weaver could practice his trade unless he had served an apprenticeship of seven years.52 A 1557 act reduced a clothier to a single loom, weavers to two looms and fullers to no loom at all.53 These regulations limited clothiers’ ability to manufacture cloth on their own premises outside towns, and therefore preventing any further concentration of production in factories. Now, those wanting to be clothiers had to operate from towns, unless they lived in Yorkshire, Cumberland, Northumberland and Westmoreland. In the 1557 act cloths had to be sealed in towns, and rural clothmaking was limited to certain areas unless the clothier had been in business for seven years or had served an apprenticeship. Excluded from the act were clothiers operating in the far north, including Yorkshire’s West Riding, Stroudwater in Gloucestershire, Wales and Cornwall, Suffolk and Kent or Hampshire. Those who were currently clothmakers could continue.54 In 1558 clothmaking was allowed in those areas of Essex that had traditionally made cloth.55 It was not until 1574 when restrictions on clothiers in Wiltshire, Somerset and other parts of Gloucestershire clothiers were lifted.56 Government aspirations to return clothmaking to towns, by having cloths sealed there and clothiers and weavers operate there without restrictions, was a failure. It did, however, reduce any further concentration of cloth production in a few clothiers’ hands, and many weavers regained their independence.

Urban Cloth Finishing Cloth finishing remained strong in many towns even as many of its weavers had departed. This was particularly true for London which was clearly the largest centre for finishing and dyeing in the country. Weavers were a small, impoverished trade by the end of the fifteenth century, with alien and native weavers finally amalgamating in 1497.57 In contrast, shearmen and fullers became more prosperous and finally merged in 1527 to become the Clothworkers Company, the last of the twelve merchant companies from among whose members city aldermen were chosen.58 By mid-century they may well have been the second largest company in the city after the merchant tailors, based on admissions to the freedom between 1551 and 1553.59 In 1549–50 an annual assessment for poor relief showed that clothworkers were still less wealthy than mercers, grocers, drapers and merchant tailors, but were making greater contributions than seven other merchant companies.60 There is some evidence that London Dyers, the leading minor company in the

316  Crossroads city, were less successful in the sixteenth century than they had been in the fifteenth, probably a result of several factors: improved dyeing capabilities of provincial clothiers, competition from Southwark dyers and the craft’s internal problems.61 The growth of London cloth wholesaling by its drapers, merchant tailors and haberdashers provided considerable work for its finishers and dyers. Cloth was generally finished to a higher standard for the domestic retail market than the export market. The rich merchant tailor, James Wilford, brought a red cloth to the Clothworkers’ court in 1547 complaining about its finish. He was told that ‘it was rowed (sheared) to the merchants prose and not to the prose of retailing’.62 Merchant tailors counted shearmen among their membership, and even a few drapers were shearmen. A conflict between clothworkers and merchant tailors erupted over shearing, as clothworkers claimed to supervise finishing within the city, but all attempts on the part of the clothworkers to review the quality of tailors’ shearing were rebuffed as the city rejected any attempt by one craft to supervise another’s work. In 1547 the claims and counter claims of the two companies were debated before the court of aldermen, with dissension continuing until 1551. It was agreed that merchant tailors could not hire more cloth-finishing apprentices than clothworkers, and had to tell the clothworkers how many cloth-finishing apprentices they hired. Clothworkers could only search merchant tailors’ premises for defects in finishing if accompanied by a merchant tailor.63 Finishing and dyeing remained important in many provincial towns. At Norwich worsteds were woven, dyed and finished within the city, as shearing and calendaring were critical to their luxury feel. Large numbers of shearmen and calenderers were admitted to the freedom until 1550.64 The surviving worsted weavers’ books show that worsted shearmen were assiduously checking the quality of shearing across the length of the cloth.65 Shrewsbury’s main industry was the finishing and sale of Welsh cottons, frieze and shorter cloths called rugs. A similar industry was probably already active in Oswestry.66 Lancashire and Cheshire cottons and frieze were finished at Manchester, Bolton and Chester. Finishing broad and narrow woollens remained important industries at some provincial ports, notably Exeter and Bristol. At Bristol 300 dyers, fullers and shearmen were enrolled as apprentices between 1532 and 1551 compared with only 122 weavers and 299 tailors.67 At Exeter cloth was finished outside the town’s walls around the overshaft fulling mills by the Exe.68 Reading had an important dyeing and finishing industry as its cloth was made from dyed wool, and it probably sold much of its cloth to London drapers and tailors for the domestic as well as the export market. The leading Cranbrook clothiers owned dyehouses and had their own tenter grounds.69 At York dyers still remained among the greater crafts in 1517.70 At Coventry shearmen were the third occupation after capping and weaving, and dyeing was seventh in 1522.71 Even

Crossroads 317 in larger towns that only served the local region, dyeing and finishing remained among the leading trades. At Northampton in 1524 fullers and dyers were among the twelve leading occupations, and shearmen were the twelfth occupation at Leicester between 1510 and 1540.72 Marketing centres, such as Maidstone for the Kentish Weald and Bury St. Edmunds for Lavenham, were finishing centres. Based on a survey of wills at Bury St. Edmunds between 1441 and 1530, the most frequent occupation was weaving (forty wills), but there were fifteen fullers’ wills, seven dyers’, six clothmakers’, four shearmen’ and twenty drapers’.73

Control Over the Clothiers Merchant Adventurers’ success at managing the overseas cloth trade and Thomas Gresham’s gifted re-organisation of government debt and the currency is well known, but merchants’ achievement in forcing clothiers to improve quality is less understood. Merchant Adventurers benefited from widespread antagonism towards graziers and clothiers to secure passage of three acts that scrupulously defined the characteristics of all the cloths, and how their quality should be maintained. Secretary Petre in the 1550s cautioned that ‘every man sought to be weaver or clothmaker, causing a scarcity of other artificers’.74 Of all the acts passed in the 1550s and 1560s to manage the rural economy leading to the famous 1563 Statute of Artificers, the cloth acts of 1549, 1552 and 1558 probably proved to be the most significant and the only ones that were broadly enforced.75 Merchant Adventurers, with some justification, blamed clothiers for their poor cloth quality. There seems to be evidence for declining quality control as more cheap cloth flooded the market. In March 1541 the sections of the 1535 Act relating to the width, and marking and sealing of kerseys was suspended until June 1542 in response to the request of kersey clothiers.76 No reason was given, but it is probable that the regulatory machinery was not up to the task as kerseymaking spread and demand increased. The register of the Antwerp notary’s Hertoghen contains numerous instances of rebates forced on English merchants, usually because they had sold cloths that were shorter than indicated on the seal.77 When the market became saturated in 1550 and prices fell, Adventurers claimed that cloth quality was so poor that better prices could not be offered to clothiers.78 They complained at Star Chamber in April 1550 that they were ‘finding great fault with the multitude of clothiers lately increased in the realme, affirming that as long as every man that would, had liberty to be a clothier, as they have now, it was impossible to have good cloth in the realme, for he that is not brought up in that faculty must trust his factors, and so is commonly deceived, and now the good making is decayed’.79 When clothiers and Merchant Adventurers were called before the council, merchants claimed that one reason for low prices was ‘the naughtiness of the making’.80

318  Crossroads The three mid-century, major cloth acts of 1549, 1552 and 1558–9 were, in combination, more comprehensive and original than those that had gone before.81 On the surface they covered much of the ground that had been covered before as the length and breadth of the major cloths had been set in 1535, the allowed re-stretching of cloth after fulling had been last regulated in 1514, and an act on dyeing had almost passed in 1532, and sealing cloth had been a feature of several acts.82 The 1549 act was very much a repetition of previous regulation, listing fraudulent practices and assessing fines, and might have been expected to have been largely unenforceable, as were previous acts.83 However, what made it stick was a totally new enforcement mechanism to complement alnagers. Searchers were to be appointed annually by two justices of the peace in the countryside, and in towns by two officers in cooperation with wardens of clothworkers. The newly appointed searchers could now check the cloth where it was made as well as where it was sold, and also had the power to check cloth on clothworkers’ premises every quarter. Half the fines would be given to the crown, and it is the exchequer records recording these fines that have survived for London. Clothiers were therefore forced to present cloths to two sets of officials, the alnager and the searcher. It seems from the fines levied that London earnestly went about carrying out the law as it proved to be remunerative for both the government and the searchers. The 1549 act failed to solve the problem of checking excessive stretching on the tenter. It still remained cumbersome to re-wet all the cloths, wait for them to dry, before the amount of shrinkage could be detected. The need to solve the quality problem intensified with the 1551 restoration of the currency which made English cloth more expensive. So unlike previous occasions when the law was either repealed or ignored, parliament set about revising the law. The breakthrough in the 1552 act, and the 1557 act that made minor modifications, was that weight in addition to length and breadth was standardised for all cloths (see Table 2.2).84 This was testimony to the fact that each clothmaking area made distinctive cloths and that a remarkable degree of specialisation had developed. Weight, with very few exceptions, had always been left up to the clothmaker to determine since the number of warp threads and the warp/ weft ratio largely accounted for the fineness of the cloth and its weight. Now weight was set for each cloth and used as a proxy for measuring shrinkage. The clothier who overstretched cloth would usually fail the weight test if his length and width was correct. Fines for reduced length or breadth were greater than for weight, although the fine for weight was raised from 2s to 5s/lb for broadcloth in 1557–8, presumably to make searching more remunerative.85 The clothier made an effort to size the cloth correctly, accepting any resulting fine for low weight. Also the clothier had difficulty accurately estimating wool loss during the various production processes. Somerset clothiers in 1593 were able to prove ‘the

Crossroads 319 impossibility of the same weight of raw material always producing pieces of the same length’.86 The clothier had two choices: give more wool to the weaver or accept a possible weight fine. The records suggest that he frequently chose to save on wool cost, and he rarely had to pay a fine for more than £1. The result was that most of the fines were for minor weight infractions once the 1552 act had been passed (Table 15.1). A measure of the merchants’ determination to raise quality was the process of improvement, the 1552 act correcting the problems of execution in the 1549 act and the 1558 act, allowing input from clothiers who wanted mainly weight reductions. The writers of the 1552 act had defined the cloths with care as only a few cloth weights were reduced in 1558 (importantly West Country whites had their weight reduced from 64lb to 61lb) and two cloths, East Anglian and Kent coarse broadcloth (vesses), and Welsh linings were added. Welsh cottons were no longer to be judged on their length. Regulations in 1557 for clothiers at Blackwell Hall required them to pay a fee of a penny a broadcloth and a halfpenny for each narrow cloth, and to obtain a cocket seal for 2d, so there was not only inconvenience but added expense for clothiers.87 In 1557 London searchers were not permitted to re-search those cloths at Blackwell Hall that had already been sealed, which must have encouraged some towns to operate their own searching. Worcester searched its own cloths, North Devon searched Bridgewaters, and Shrewsbury searched Welsh cottons and frieze that were finished there, as these cloths were subject to special acts of parliament, sponsored by those towns that wanted to control the quality of their own cloths.88 A 1565 act for Lancashire cottons required alnagers and their deputies to have clothmakers mark their cottons and frieze prior to fulling, and have them finished in one of the principal Lancashire towns.89 These cloth acts with minor revisions in subsequent acts, controlled the old draperies until the Civil War.90

Table 15.1 Types of infractions from the 1549, 1552 and 1557–8 cloth acts in London, 1550–2 and 1554–85 Infraction

1550–2

1554–85

Breadth Length Weight Stretching and straining Dyeing Flocking Pressing Sealing

112 1

420 236 3,279 7 241 101

158 17 45 45 162 540

61 4,345

Source: TNA, E 159/329, 330, 331, 335, 337, 338, 339, 350, 355, 357, 359, 360, 361, 363, 366, 368, 370, 371, 375, 376, 378, 380, 381, 384, 387, 389, 390.

320  Crossroads

A New Reality At the same time as government and cloth merchants were regulating ‘old draperies’, unregulated ‘new draperies’ presented new competition. Worsted imports became significant in the 1540s, and imports through London in 1559–60 reveal £17,314 worth of worsteds, £3,630 of says, £3,628 of camlets and £3,087 of mockados for a total of £27,659 compared with only £16,854 of silks, damask, taffeta, sarcenet, satin and velvet.91 By the mid-sixteenth century Norwich worsteds were faced with competition from light draperies from the Low Countries, and were already trying to adapt.92 The 1558 inventory of the London mercer, Gregory Isham, suggests that there was still a large domestic market, particularly for inexpensive, narrow worsteds. In his warehouse he had 358 pieces of worsted worth £274 6s 8d; 28 broad worsteds worth 30s each; and 330 narrow worsteds from 13s 4d to 17s. In addition, he stocked large quantities of imported light draperies; 187 mockadoes worth £121 11s (13s 4d each); 22 says worth £29 13s 4d (£1 6s 8d each); and chamlets worth £192 16s (at 8s and 17s each).93 In 1551 the government provided support for Flemish immigrant weavers at Glastonbury to make worsteds and teach others their skills, but they left soon after Mary came to the throne.94 Low Countries’ immigrants arrived in Norwich in 1554, and there was an increase in dornix weavers who made a mixed linenwoollen fabric. 95 It was, however, in the 1560s that immigrant weavers from the Low Countries arrived in greater numbers.96 The 1550s disruptions in fact stabilised the industry. Exports were remarkably consistent in the second half of the century, while domestic consumption gradually rose with population growth. A  new balance was struck between independent weavers and clothiers who were now more likely to assemble weavers’ cloth and merchandise it rather than prepare the yarn and weave the cloth themselves. There was a reduced number of well-capitalised Merchant Adventurers who continued to control trade with the Low Countries, while other merchants set out to sell cloth to Russia, northern Germany and in the Mediterranean. Government was more watchful and intrusive. This was to sustain the mature industry that heavy woollens had become. There continued to be constant friction between Adventurers and cloth finishers, between clothiers and merchants, with the government trying to arbitrate differences between them, and this resulted in a steady stream of legislation to fine-tune issues outstanding from the 1550s. Clothiers were probably, on average less wealthy; the leading Merchant Adventurers continued to enrich themselves with limited alien completion; and the government benefited from increased revenue from customs. Perhaps society became more stable as there was less social unrest from the harvest failures of the 1590s than there had been in 1549. There was still some innovation in the old draperies, especially in efforts to find new

Crossroads 321 markets for English cloth, but rapid change and entrepreneurship was shifting to worsteds where growth opportunities were greater and there was little regulation. The hive of activity in the 1550s reflected a belated recognition of the industry’s importance and the increasing role that London now played in the national economy. Cecil, Walsingham and others were regularly adjudicating disputes, trying to keep the industry stable and profitable for the crown while at the same time checking any unbridled expansion. The production of wool and making cloth may now have accounted for about a third of the economy, and clothmaking alone provided employment to an estimated quarter of a  million people.97 The rising prosperity of southern England, where the industry was predominantly located and its trade was concentrated, was evident at least to those who collected taxes. London’s population probably doubled in the first half of the century and may have re-doubled in the second half.98 The city’s prosperity continued to be fuelled by the cloth trade and the distribution of imports that cloth revenues paid for. But as the rate of growth in the woollens trade slackened while population exploded, fortunes were now to be made also from manufacturing, inland trade and finance.99

Notes 1. TED, vol. 3, 215. A fuller quote is, ‘Wishinge therefore that our commodityes might be trulye made, whereby it may be kept in estimacion, wherof it is the most precious jewel of all Europe, wherof will ensue great honour to the prince, securitye to the state, and richnesse to our countrye’. 2. G.D. Ramsay, ‘The cloth trade at London in mid-sixteenth century: The Merchant Adventurers and their rivals’, in M. Spallanzani, ed., Produzione commercio e consumo dei panni di lana (Florence, 1976), 377–83; L. Stone, ‘State control in sixteenth-century England’, EcHR, 17 (1947), 116–20. 3. N.J. Mayhew, ‘Prices in England, 1170–1750’, P&P, 219 (2013), 37. 4. P.J. Bowden, ‘Statistical appendix’, in J. Thirsk, ed., Agrarian history of England and Wales, vol. 4 (Cambridge, 1967), 864–5. 5. E.A. Wrigley and R.S. Schofield, The population history of England, 1541–1871: A reconstruction (Cambridge, MA, 1961), 183–4; J.D. Gould, The great debasement: Currency and the economy in mid-Tudor England (Oxford, 1970); C.E. Challis, ‘Currency and the economy in mid-Tudor England’, EcHR, 2nd series, 25 (1972), 313–22; W.R.D. Jones, The midTudor crisis 1539–1563 (London, 1973), 113–48; R. Tittler, ‘The emergence of urban policy, 1536–58’, in J. Loach and R. Tittler, eds., The mid-Tudor polity c.1540–1560 (London, 1980), 74–93; J. Loach, Edward VI (New Haven, 1999), 58–69; R.W. Hoyle, ‘Taxation and the mid-Tudor crisis’, EcHR, 2nd series, 51 (1998), 649–75. 6. W.R.D. Jones, The Tudor commonwealth 1529–1559 (London, 1970), 160–80. 7. TED, vol. 2, 45. 8. M.W. Beresford, ‘The poll tax and census of sheep, 1549’, AHR, vol.  1 (1953), 9–15; vol. 2 (1954), 15–29. 9. Statutes, 5&6 Ed. VI, c. 5. 10. Jones, Mid-Tudor crisis, 115–20.

322  Crossroads 11. M. Zell, ‘Parliament, the textile industry and the mid-Tudor crisis’, in C. Carlton, ed., State, sovereign and society in Early Modern England (Stroud, 1998), 71–5. 12. C. Brett, ‘Thomas Kytson and Wiltshire clothmen, 1529–1539’, Wiltshire Archaeology and Natural History Magazine, 97 (2004), 42. 13. TED, vol. 2, 192. 14. P. Ramsey, ‘The Merchant Adventurers in the first half of the sixteenth century’ (Unpub. D.Phil., University of Oxford, 1962), 18. For kersey prices, see Gould, Debasement, 156–9 and graphs. 15. P. Spufford, ‘Debasement of the coinage and its effects on exchange rates and the economy: In England in the 1540s, and in the Burgundian-Hapsburg Netherlands in the 1480s’, in J. Munro, ed., Money in the pre-industrial world: Bullion, debasements and coin substitutes (London, 1012), 64–6. 16. Knighton, C.S., ed., Calendar of state papers domestic series of the reign of Edward VI 1547–1553 (London, 1992), 219. 17. Stone, ‘State control’, 106; Gould, Debasement, 89. 18. Gould, Debasement, 138–39. 19. Statutes, 37 Henry VIII, c.9. In the 1540s and 1550s the average rate of interest in central London was a reasonable 6.5 per cent. 20. F.J. Fisher, ‘Commercial trends and policy in sixteenth-century England’, EcHR, 10 (1939–40), 99, 103; Gould, Debasement, 89. 21. Carus-Wilson and Coleman, Export, 118–19; Fisher, ‘Commercial trends’, 96; Gould, Debasement, 136. 22. P.L. Hughes and J.F. Larkin, eds., Tudor royal proclamations (New Haven, 1964), vol. 1, #189. 23. Non-Hanseatic aliens paid 2s 9d a cloth; denizens, 1s 2d; Hansards 1s. 24. W. Brulez, ‘L’exportation de Pays-Bas vers l’Italie par voie de terre au milieu du XVIe siècle’, Annales, Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations, 14e (1959), 461–91; W. Brulez, ‘Les routes commerciales d’Angleterre en Italie au XVIe siècle’, in A. Giuffrè, ed., Studi in onore di Ammintore Fanfani (Milan, 1962), 129. 25. G.D. Ramsay, ‘The undoing of the Italian mercantile colony in sixteenth century London’, in N.B. Harte and K.G. Ponting, eds., Textile history and economic history (Manchester, 1993), 26. 26. Stone, ‘State control’, 106. 27. T.H. Lloyd, England and the German hanse 1157–1611 (Cambridge, 1991), 289; I. Blanchard, The international economy in the “age of the discoveries”, 1450–1570 (Stuttgart, 2009), 211. 28. D. Palliser, The age of Elizabeth: England under the later Tudors 1547–1603 (London, 1983), 280. 29. Stone, ‘State control’, 117. 30. G.D. Ramsay, The City of London in international politics at the accession of Elizabeth Tudor (Manchester, 1975), 146–50. 31. Ramsay, City of London, 40–1. 32. Ibid, 46–9; Ramsay, ‘Cloth trade’, 380. 33. Ramsay, ‘Cloth trade’, 377; Lloyd, Hanse, 292–5; Sutton, Mercery, 424. 34. Ramsay, City of London, 51–3; D. Loades, The life and career of William Paulet (c.1475–1572): Lord Treasurer and first Marquis of Winchester (Aldershot, 2008), 108–11. 35. TED, vol. 2, 34–6. 36. Spufford, ‘Debasement’, 64. 37. P. Ramsey, Tudor economic problems (London, 1968), 68. 38. Lloyd, Hanse, 295–307. 39. Ramsay, ‘Cloth trade’, 382–3.

Crossroads 323 40. G.D. Ramsay, English overseas trade during the centuries of emergence (London, 1957), 25–9; T.S. Willan, The early history of the Russia Company (Manchester, 1956), 48–56. 41. B. Dietz, ‘Antwerp and London: The structure and balance of trade in the 1560s’, in E.W. Ives, R.J. Knecht and J.J. Scarisbrick, eds., Wealth and power in Tudor England (London, 1978), 190. 42. CSP, 1547–1553, 219. 43. TED, vol. 2, 223–6; Sutton, Mercery, 423. 44. Ramsay, City of London, 150–2. 45. TED, vol. 2, 193–9; Sutton, Mercery, 424. 46. Sutton, Mercery, 424. 47. APC, 1547–1550, 142–3; Ramsay, City of London, 43–5; Oldland, ‘Clothmaking’, 196–9. 48. G.D. Ramsay, ‘Industrial discontent in early Elizabethan London: Clothworkers and merchants in conflict’, London Journal, 1 (1975), 227–39. 49. Statutes, 8 Eliz. c. 6. 50. Statutes, 5&6 Ed. VI, c. 6. 51. Statutes, 1 Mary, c. 7. 52. Statutes, 2&3 Ph. & Mary, c. 11. 53. Ibid. 54. Statutes, 4&5 Ph. & Mary, c.7. 55. Statutes, 1 Eliz. c. 14. 56. Statutes, 18 Eliz. c. 16. 57. Consitt, Weavers, 114. 58. J. Oldland, ‘The London fullers and shearmen, and their merger to become the Clothworkers’ Company’, TH, 39 (2008), 172–92. 59. S. Rappaport, Worlds within worlds: Structures of life in sixteenth century London (Cambridge, 1989), 97. 60. LMA, Letter Book Q, f.263v. 61. Oldand, ‘Clothmaking’, 167–79. 62. London, Clothworkers’ hall, orders of courts, 1536–1558, f. 196v. 63. Oldland, ‘Clothmaking’, 241–44. 64. J. Oldland, ‘ “Fyne worsted which is almost like silke”: Norwich’s double worsted’, TH, 42 (2011), 181–99. 65. Norwich Record Office, Second Worsted Weavers Book, 1511–1638, MF, 32/2, Case 17d. 66. R.C. Mendenhall, The Shrewsbury drapers and the Welsh wool trade in the XVI and XVII centuries (Oxford, 1953), 5–8. 67. H. Hollis, ed., Calendar of the Bristol apprentice book, part 1 1532–1542, 14 (Bristol Record Society (BRS), 1948); E. Ralph and N.M. Hardwick, eds., Calendar of the Bristol apprentice book, part 2, 1542–1552, BRS, 33 (1980). 68. E. Carus-Wilson, The expansion of Exeter at the close of the Middle Ages (Exeter, 1963), 22–3. 69. Zell, Industry, 207–23. 70. Heaton, Yorkshire, 59. 71. W.G Hoskins, ‘The English provincial towns in the early sixteenth century’, TRHS, 5th series, 6 (1955), 79. 72. Ibid. 73. R.S. Gottfried, Bury St. Edmunds and the urban crisis: 1290–1539 (Princeton, 1982), 111. 74. Ramsay, City of London, 61. 75. M.R. Gay, ‘Aspects of Elizabethan apprenticeship’, in A.H. Cole, A.L. Dunham and N.S.B. Gras, eds., Facts and factors in economic history (New York, 1932), 142–59.

324  Crossroads 6. Hughes and Larkin, Tudor proclamations, vol. I, 198, 300, 306. 7 77. Ramsey, ‘Merchant Adventurers’, 180; Lloyd, Hanse, 292. 78. Ramsey, City of London, 62. 79. APC, vol. 3, 19–20. 80. Ibid. 81. Michael Zell offers a detailed description of the passage of the 1552 act though parliament, and offers a contrary interpretation as he sees it as just another restatement of previous acts, and he does not investigate the 1557–8 act; see Zell, ‘Parliament’, 77–82. 82. Statutes, 6 Henry VIII, c. 9; 24 Henty VIII, c.2; 27 Henty VIII, c.12. 83. Statutes, 3&4 Edward VI, c. 2; Hughes and Larkin, Tudor proclamations, vol. 1, 453. The 1484 cloth act, Statutes, 1 Richard III, c.8, was found to be unworkable within a year, see J. Oldland, ‘London’s trade in the time of Richard III’, Ricardian, 24 (2014), 5–8. 84. Quality improvement should not be overstated because Leake was still critical of quality in 1577, commenting that the acts were not well enforced; see TED, vol. 3, 210–25. 85. In 1552 the fine for incorrect broadcloth length was £1, but there was also a fine of £5 for excessive stretching of cloth. 86. CSP Dom, Addenda 1580–1625, #69. 87. Knighton, Mary, # 591, 270. 88. Statutes, 25 Henry VIII, c. 18; 2&3, Ph. & Mary, c.2; 8 Eliz. c. 8. 89. Statutes, 8 Eliz. c.12. 90. Statutes, 4 James 1, c.2; 21 James 1, c. 18; 3 Charles 1, c.4; 16 Charles 1, c. 4. 91. B. Dietz, The port and trade of early Elizabethan London, vol.  8 (LRS, 1972), 152–5. In addition, there were £6,620 of carpets, bankars and cushion cloths, a large proportion of which must have been made from worsted. 92. Oldland, ‘Fyne worsted’, 191–4. For a brief summary of all the traditional worsteds and new draperies, and their uses, see E. Kerridge, ‘Wool growing and wool textiles in medieval and modern times’, in J. Geraint Evans ed., The textile industry in Great Britain (London, 1972), 28–9. 93. G. Ramsay, John Isham mercer and Merchant Adventurer, vol. 21 (Northamptonshire Record Society, 1962), 159–60. 94. CSP Dom, 213–6, 221–2, 230; E. Green, ‘On some Flemish weavers settled at Glastonbury A.D. 1551’, Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society’s Proceedings, 26 (1880), 17–24. 95. L. Martin, ‘The rise of the new draperies in Norwich, 1550–1622’, in N.B. Harte, ed., The new draperies in the Low Countries and England, 1300– 1800 (Oxford, 1997), 246. 96. B.A. Holderness, ‘The reception and distribution of the new draperies in England’, in Harte, New draperies, 218–9. 97. Oldland, ‘Economic impact of clothmaking on rural society, 1300–1550’, in M. Allen and M. Davies, eds., Medieval merchants and money: Essays in honour of James L. Bolton (London, 2016), 248–52. 98. V. Harding, ‘The population of London, 1550–1700: A review of the published evidence’, London Journal, 15 (1990), 111–28. 99. A.L. Beier and R. Finlay, ‘The significance of the metropolis’, in A.L. Beier and R. Finlay, eds., The making of the metropolis (London, 1986), 1–33; R.G. Lang, ‘London’s aldermen in business: 1600–1625’, Guildhall Miscellany, 3 (1969–71), 242–64.

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Index

Abingdon 149, 298 agriculture 10; land use 7, 215 – 16, 309; livestock prices 7; pastoral farming 4, 62, 64, 144, 214 – 17, 294, 310 – 11; wheat prices 9; wool prices 9, 36 alnage 33, 67, 106, 108, 115, 118, 122, 138 – 43, 147, 148, 149, 150, 157, 169 – 70, 183, 230, 237, 240, 287 – 90, 295, 298, 300, 319 Antwerp 29 – 30, 35, 67, 173, 184, 195, 199, 201, 202, 208, 219, 226, 228, 237, 241, 242, 251 – 3, 254 – 60, 267 – 8, 269, 271, 273, 296, 299, 311, 313; value of cloth trade 8, 270 apprenticeship see guilds Armentières 23, 219, 221, 241, 272 Baltic 11, 132, 135, 146, 147, 148, 153, 181, 192, 196, 197, 198, 255, 259, 269, 277, 278, 279, 295, 312 Barnstable 150, 280, 301 Bath 117, 126, 142, 144, 165, 291 Beaulieu abbey 23, 58, 90, 100, 206 Berkshire 117, 142 – 3, 148, 167, 221, 242, 286, 290, 298 – 9 Beverley 74, 82, 86, 121, 145 – 6, 179, 183 Blackwell Hall see London Bolton 40, 218, 244, 286, 291, 303, 316 book of rates see taxation Boston 74, 85 – 6, 134, 147, 279 Brabant 36, 194, 203, 269, 270; cloth industry 36, 81, 82, 85, 104, 114, 115, 116, 196; fairs 10, 12, 34, 66, 195, 197, 199, 239, 251, 253 – 4, 258 – 9, 268, 271, 272, 276

Bradford, Wiltshire 126, 239, 291, 292 Bradford, Yorkshire 245 Braintree 148, 241 Bridgewater 137, 142 – 3, 145, 291, 292, 319 Bristol 30, 68 – 9, 84, 114, 117, 119, 123, 125, 132, 134, 135, 142 – 3, 144 – 5, 147, 149, 165, 166, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 177, 179, 180, 199, 202, 224, 237, 238, 260, 278, 279, 290, 291, 293 – 4, 300, 302, 304, 316 broadloom 15, 20, 23, 32, 74, 76, 77, 81 – 2, 98, 105, 138, 166, 170, 176, 183 – 4, 222, 224, 237 Bruges 11, 68, 117, 118, 131, 132, 134, 154, 179, 196, 199, 200, 208, 219, 255, 268, 270 burellers 104, 105 – 7, 113, 165, 178 Bures 26, 166 Bury St. Edmunds 148, 238, 296, 297, 304, 317 Calais 195, 269 Cambridge 105 Canterbury 123, 125 – 6, 142, 149 Cappers 182, 316 Castle Combe, castlecombes 28, 219, 221, 225, 229, 238 – 9, 276, 286, 292 Champagne fairs 1, 29, 74, 76, 81, 83, 86, 268 Chelmsford 89 Chester 40, 147, 179, 280, 316 Cirencester 90, 109, 239, 292 Clare 148 cloth assize 24, 36, 39, 42, 68, 82, 106, 116, 137 – 8, 139, 143, 149

352 Index cloth dimensions 36 – 41, 82, 181, 200 – 1, 297, 301, 303, 318 cloth exports and imports see trade cloth farms 82, 83, 88, 89, 107, 113, 118, 119, 142, 152, 183, 203, 238, 292 cloth guilds see guilds cloth halls 154, 169, 238 clothiers 7, 12, 13, 14, 21, 22, 24, 26, 27, 28, 29, 34, 35, 57 – 8, 60 – 2, 64, 65, 69, 84, 88, 91, 98, 123, 142, 147, 148, 165, 167, 168, 171 – 2, 178, 179, 180, 182, 183, 196, 215 – 47, 286, 290 – 1, 302, 304, 309 – 10, 315, 316, 317 – 19, 320; Kent 30, 221, 242, 244; Newbury 30, 220, 221, 224, 242 – 3; Suffolk 30 – 1, 37, 221, 240 – 2, 296; West Country 22, 91, 238 – 40 clothing 2, 3, 8, 9 – 10, 15, 104, 115, 125, 173, 197, 201, 252, 254; hose 4, 13, 36, 53 – 4, 55, 56 – 7, 105, 201, 202; non-clothing usage 56, 87, 138, 205, 206; robes 53 – 4, 56; usage and status 40, 51 – 2, 53, 54, 55, 57, 87, 102, 103, 115 – 16, 154, 155 – 6, 201, 302, 312 cloth marks see sealing (marking) cloth cloth of gold 55 cloth prices 52 – 4, 55, 64, 78, 102, 135, 137, 138 – 9, 144, 150, 201, 205, 208, 219, 241, 253, 271, 272, 276, 297, 301, 303, 310 cloth production 1, 21; bowing 78 – 9, 99; carding 21 – 2, 76, 78 – 9, 99, 100 – 2, 220; combing 21, 100; cost of 32; finishing 83, 109, 119, 123 – 4, 138, 222, 274, 304, 315 – 17; fulling (see fulling); hours in production 31 – 2, 170; quality 317 – 19; shearing 28, 32; spinning 2, 21 – 3, 100, 221, 285, 297; spinning wheel 21 – 2, 76, 78, 99 – 102; wages 32; warp and weft thread counts 23, 79, 100, 108, 119, 318; wool preparation 79 cloth seals see sealing (marking) cloth cloth types: bastards 53, 200, 239, 271, 276; black 53, 82; blanket 36, 102, 104 – 5, 123, 157; bridgewaters 37; burel 82, 88, 105, 107; candlewick 78, 105 – 6; coarse cloth 32, 36 – 7, 52, 98 – 103, 138, 206, 243, 297, 298, 299 – 301;

coggeshalls 23, 37, 221, 272, 297; cogware 138 – 9; coloureds 79, 82 – 3, 86, 115, 117, 138, 145, 146; cottons 2 – 3, 36, 40, 138 – 9, 201, 260, 267, 276, 301, 302; cottons, Cheshire 37, 280, 302, 316; cottons, Lancashire 3, 37, 40, 205, 218, 273, 280, 286, 291, 302 – 3, 316, 319; cottons, Welsh 37, 40, 136, 145, 205, 206, 218, 244, 273, 286, 293, 302 – 3, 316, 319; Devonshire dozens 15, 37, 39, 40, 139, 143, 150, 243, 267, 292, 301; dozens 108, 136, 139, 143, 145, 150, 181, 201, 218, 260, 267, 273, 276, 295, 300; frieze 23, 36, 37, 40, 123, 136, 138 – 9, 147, 181, 201, 205, 238, 244, 260, 267, 273, 276, 291, 301, 302, 316; glainsfords 23, 37, 219, 221, 241, 297; guilfords 53, 123, 135, 136, 137, 148, 238; haberget 82, 89; half-grain 39, 53 – 4, 138, 279; handiwarps 23, 221; kendals 138 – 9, 206, 300, 301; kersey (see kerseys); linings 37, 118, 201, 218, 301, 319; long (fine, superfine) cloth 36 – 7, 39, 52 – 3, 115, 138, 142, 151, 219, 241, 272 – 3, 276, 295, 297; ludlows 53; medleys 53; northamptons 53, 86; ossettes 23, 122, 144; pannus 105, 107, 114; penistone 14, 245, 260, 273, 300; ray 39, 104, 114, 117, 118, 123, 138, 145, 149, 179, 224, 286; rugs 37, 201, 218, 301, 316; russet 36, 78, 88, 102, 105, 116, 146, 148, 157, 201, 273, 295, 298; scarlets 39, 53, 55, 78, 85, 86, 115, 201, 276; stanforts 74, 86, 104; stockbreds 228, 276; straits 23, 39, 40, 53, 135, 136, 137, 138 – 9, 145, 146, 148, 150, 218, 219, 240, 273, 292, 295, 297, 301; tauntons 37; tavistocks 301; vesses 241, 297, 319; wadmal 87, 106, 157; westerns 200, 219, 239, 271, 276; worcesters 23, 33 – 4, 37, 39, 219 cloth weights 6, 36 – 7, 41 – 2, 61, 100, 154, 181, 184, 200, 201 – 2, 206, 227, 271, 273, 318 – 19 Clothworkers Company (London clothworkers) 35, 167 – 8, 170 – 2, 173, 177, 180, 258 – 9, 314, 315 – 16 Coggeshall 89, 91, 148, 219, 241

Index  353 Colchester 27, 33, 89, 117, 120 – 1, 123, 124, 147 – 8, 165, 166, 167, 168, 173, 178, 179, 180, 238, 286, 295 Cornwall 89, 106, 107, 203, 243, 279, 287, 299, 301, 315 Coventry 23, 27, 37, 39, 68, 89, 121, 122, 123, 124, 135, 142 – 3, 147, 165, 167, 168, 170 – 1, 172, 174, 178, 179, 181 – 3, 202, 238, 263, 271, 272, 286, 291, 304, 316 Cranbrook 149, 221, 231, 246, 272 – 3, 291, 297 – 8, 316 credit see finance Crediton 244, 301 Cullompton 231, 279, 301 Cumbria, Cumberland 204, 287, 290, 299, 300, 315 currency see finance customs duties see taxation Dartmouth 137, 143, 150, 279, 301 Dedham 148 Derby 81 Derbyshire 156 Devizes 126, 202, 224 Devon 12, 39, 90, 106, 145, 148, 150, 168, 183, 204, 243, 244, 273, 279, 287, 290, 299, 301 domestic market 3 – 4, 5, 6, 12, 30, 42, 52, 58, 60, 62 – 3, 65, 82, 98, 115, 122, 131, 139, 146, 149, 154 – 5, 192, 201, 205 – 7, 216, 218 – 19, 221, 240, 285, 290, 303, 316, 320 Douai 41, 77, 81, 85, 86 drapery goods 55 Duke of Norfolk 21, 55 dyeing 28 – 32, 79, 83, 165, 221, 229, 242, 274, 298 dyers 20, 28 – 32, 65, 69, 81, 84, 89, 90 – 2, 107, 109, 113 – 14, 117, 119 – 26, 138, 147, 166 – 8, 172 – 4, 176, 177, 178 – 80, 181 – 3, 199, 203 – 4, 208, 221 – 2, 229, 230, 238 – 9, 240, 241, 244, 253, 256, 274, 286, 295 – 6, 303, 315 – 17 dyes’ trade 53, 67, 83, 153; alum 29 – 30, 84, 146, 153, 198 – 9, 221, 268; ashes 29, 84; gall 29; kermes (grain) 29, 53, 79, 84, 294; madder 29, 83, 132, 200, 221, 274; other dyes 84, 274; woad 29, 53, 74, 83 – 4, 114, 179, 181, 221 – 2, 241, 274, 294 English economy 2, 3 – 4, 7 – 10, 16n5, 16n12, 17n17, 64, 66, 74, 79, 176,

192 – 3, 207, 216, 219, 262, 310, 321 Essex 37, 89, 123, 137, 142 – 3, 148, 156, 216, 222, 227, 240 – 2, 272 – 3, 278, 286, 290, 294 – 6, 315 Exeter 121, 137, 143, 150, 175, 176, 179, 202, 244, 269, 271, 279, 291, 294, 301, 316 fairs and markets 74, 80, 84, 85 – 6, 89, 107, 108, 122, 149, 243, 245, 270, 297, 299 finance: Calais staple and bullion ordinances 66, 193 – 5, 200, 267; capital 12, 27, 29, 80, 84, 90 – 1, 117, 119, 122 – 3, 125, 153, 166, 172, 177 – 8, 180, 192, 197, 203, 207 – 8, 218, 223 – 9, 242, 247, 260, 262; credit 15, 80, 108, 183, 192 – 3, 194 – 5, 203 – 4, 206 – 7, 223 – 7, 302, 313; currency 80, 193 – 4, 204, 206 – 7, 258, 268, 277, 311, 318; interest rates 258; inventories 223 – 5 Flanders 10, 11 – 12, 20, 33, 36, 42, 57, 68, 74, 76, 84, 85, 103, 116, 131, 134, 154, 199, 203, 209, 221, 263, 267 – 8, 269, 270 Flemish cloth industry 41, 67 – 8, 74, 76, 81 – 2, 84 – 5, 103, 114 – 15, 116, 131 – 2, 137, 195, 252 Florence 101, 103, 114, 134, 135, 148, 196, 198 – 9, 263, 268, 269 France, northern, cloth industry 81, 85, 103, 269 fullers 24 – 5, 26 – 7, 28, 33 – 4, 65, 68, 69, 81, 84, 88 – 90, 91 – 2, 107, 109, 113, 114, 117 – 21, 123 – 5, 138, 144, 147, 148, 156, 166 – 9, 170, 178 – 84, 203 – 4, 209, 211, 217 – 18, 222, 226, 230 – 1, 237 – 40, 242, 244 – 6, 258, 273, 294 – 6, 302 – 3, 315, 317 fulling 78, 89, 124, 301; burling 24, 32, 34, 175; cost of 25, 32, 91; footfulling 24 – 5, 27, 34, 91, 178, 184; fuller’s earth 24, 144, 292; fulling mills, cost of construction 26 – 7, 90; fulling mills, mill-fulling 24 – 5, 75, 80, 90 – 1, 99, 107, 108 – 9, 121, 123, 124, 137, 145, 148, 15, 151, 181, 184, 230, 239, 242, 287, 293, 294, 298, 300, 301; fulling mills, undershot and overshot 25 – 6, 242, 287; napping 24; shrinkage 24, 175,

354 Index 273 – 4, 297, 317 – 19; tentering 24, 124, 175, 273 furs 55, 135, 255, 256 fustian 3, 51, 55, 57, 98, 199 – 200, 207, 255 – 6, 267 Gascony 134 – 5, 144, 148, 150, 151, 199, 203, 255, 277, 279, 294 Genoa, Genoese trade 74, 134, 198, 203, 268, 294 Ghent 41, 68, 81, 86, 116, 118, 131 – 2, 134, 195 – 6, 269, 270, 271, 272 gig-mills 28 Gloucestershire 37, 142, 145, 170, 221, 224, 228, 239, 246, 291, 292 – 3, 300, 315 government regulation 12, 40, 61, 64 – 9, 81, 201, 203, 218, 227, 245 – 7, 274, 28, 300, 309, 318 – 19, 321; assize 1 – 2, 20, 82, 84; civic ordinances 24, 28, 89, 92, 108, 114, 115, 119, 144, 151, 167, 174, 182 – 3, 274, 293; cloth acts 37 – 8, 66, 142, 221; in Low Countries 68, 79, 101 – 2, 104, 197; statutes 30, 36, 61, 65 – 7, 82, 114, 116, 139, 151, 169, 171, 176, 222, 223, 241, 244, 246, 254, 258 – 9, 273, 274, 291, 292, 294, 297, 301, 302, 303, 310, 314 – 15, 317, 319 Great Wardrobe accounts 36, 42 – 3, 55, 77 – 9, 83 – 4, 85, 104, 105, 114, 115, 116, 122, 135, 138, 151, 272 Greshams, London merchants 34 – 5, 226, 242, 245, 258, 260, 272 – 3, 294, 311, 313, 317 guilds 68 – 9, 80 – 1, 89, 113, 119 – 21, 144, 166 – 9, 177 – 81, 182, 183 – 4; apprenticeship, apprentices 119, 166, 170 – 2, 178, 180, 203, 245, 293, 298, 316; Journeymen 166, 168, 170 – 4, 178, 182; merchant guilds 84, 125 Hadleigh 126, 135, 147 – 8, 225, 231, 240, 291, 296 Halesowen 90 Halifax 31, 244, 291, 299 – 300 Halstead 89 Hampshire 108, 298 – 9, 315 Hanseatic League (Hansards) 132, 137, 197 – 8, 220, 227, 255, 260, 268, 273, 279, 295, 300, 309, 313 – 14

High Wycombe 218 Holland 131 – 2, 194, 196, 199, 203, 269 homespun 9, 12, 15, 56, 88, 143, 155, 192, 219 Hondschoote 41, 268, 270 Howell, Thomas, London draper 29, 34 – 5, 227, 272 – 3, 278, 279, 296, 297 Hull 85, 134 – 5, 137, 145, 146, 184, 279, 300 Huntingdon 81, 117 Iceland 147, 181, 255, 279 immigration (aliens) 30, 65, 115 – 19, 166, 181, 198, 286, 309, 320 Ipswich 91, 279, 295, 297 Ireland 106, 114, 134, 135, 147, 181, 199, 279, 280 Isle of Wight 143, 150 Italy, Italian merchants 8, 30, 54, 101, 198, 219, 253, 268, 273, 277, 311, 313 Kendal 57, 244, 287, 291 Kent 37, 106, 135, 148, 169, 172, 241, 272, 278, 290, 291, 314, 315 Kentish Weald 26, 39, 149, 218, 219, 222, 228, 229, 230, 272, 273, 287, 297 – 8 kerseys 4, 12, 13 – 14, 15, 20, 23, 30 – 1, 35, 40 – 1, 106, 138 – 9, 143, 201, 218, 219, 224, 226, 240, 244, 267, 268, 295, 298, 298 – 9, 300, 311, 317; export of 135, 136, 137, 149, 260, 271, 276, 311; Newbury 34, 35, 37, 218, 298 – 9; northern 116, 229, 300; types of 37 – 8, 150, 201 – 2, 243, 271, 272 Kidderminster 90, 117 Kytson, Sir Thomas 34 – 5, 205, 227, 240, 241, 242, 259, 260, 273, 293, 300, 302, 303 Laleham 23, 29 Lavenham 148, 231, 240, 245, 286, 295 – 7, 317 Leeds 27, 31, 146, 291, 300 Leicester 68, 82, 85, 88, 91, 113, 125, 165, 178 Leiden 196, 197, 219, 270 Lincoln 75, 81, 87, 89, 106, 107, 113, 122, 123, 142, 145, 146, 165, 176, 179, 183

Index  355 linen 2, 3, 8, 10, 12, 18n41, 51, 55, 56 – 7, 98, 104, 106, 134 – 5, 153, 166, 207, 221, 251, 252, 255 – 6, 258, 265n41, 267, 270, 279 liveries 39, 51, 55, 56 – 7, 103, 172 London 29 – 30, 42, 52, 68 – 9, 75, 81, 83, 84, 85, 88, 89, 99, 104, 106, 107, 113, 117, 118, 123, 134, 142 – 3, 144, 147, 150 – 3, 165, 170, 178, 179, 198, 206, 209, 218, 223, 241, 252, 260 – 3, 272, 287, 304, 309, 315, 320, 321; Blackwell Hall 33, 151, 171, 206, 227, 238, 243, 247, 253, 303, 319; cloth exports 8, 131 – 2, 134, 137, 149, 192, 202 – 4, 261 – 2, 278 – 9, 303; drapers 121, 122, 138, 151, 152, 201, 227 – 8, 255 – 6, 259 – 60, 262, 277, 298, 302, 310, 312, 315 – 16; dyers 30, 84, 119, 120, 147, 166 – 7, 173, 203, 315 – 16; fines under cloth acts 290 – 1, 298, 300, 317; fullers 91, 119, 120, 121, 151, 166 – 8, 170 – 1, 173, 203, 255, 258, 273; mercers 122, 152 – 3, 255 – 6, 259 – 60, 262, 315, 320; merchants 28, 166, 184, 203, 225, 226, 255, 259 – 60, 296, 300, 315 – 16; shearmen 167 – 8, 171, 173, 180, 203, 255, 258, 273, 316; weavers, alien 118, 120, 151, 166, 168, 173, 203, 238, 315; weavers, weaving 23, 83, 106, 118, 119, 120, 121, 151, 165, 166, 168, 171, 175, 176, 179, 203, 315 Long Melford 26, 230, 231, 240, 245, 296 Louth 87, 147 Low Countries 14, 41, 60, 125, 131 – 2, 146, 153, 192, 197, 200, 203, 253, 254, 269, 270, 320 Luttrell Psalter 26 Lynn 85, 134, 137, 208 Maiden Bradley 104 – 5 Maidstone 298, 304, 317 Maldon 91 Malmesbury 222, 231, 243, 292 – 3 Manchester 30, 37, 40, 218, 232, 244, 286, 291, 303, 304, 316 Marlborough 126 Mechelen 197, 269, 272 Merchant Adventurers Company, merchant adventurers 12, 14, 35, 66, 98, 193, 199, 200, 203, 205, 218, 227, 228, 229, 237, 247,

253 – 60, 267, 271, 276, 298, 309, 311, 312 – 15, 317, 320 Middleburg 132, 197, 199, 259 Middlesex 157, 291 Mucklowe, William 34 – 5, 272 Nayland 222, 225, 230, 246, 291, 296 New (light) draperies 14, 41, 43, 103, 197, 208, 251, 270, 309, 320 Newbury 171, 276, 286 Newcastle upon Tyne 82, 116, 184 Norfolk 106 – 7, 108, 203, 209 Northampton 81 – 2, 85, 104, 113, 125, 165, 180, 272, 276, 317 Northumberland 315 Norwich 23, 27, 33, 39, 42 – 3, 52, 68 – 9, 81, 106, 108, 114, 119, 125, 147 – 8, 165, 166, 167, 168, 171, 174, 177, 179, 180, 193, 207 – 9, 221, 287, 304, 316, 320 Nottingham 81 nouvelles draperies 32 – 3, 68, 103, 132, 194, 197, 269 – 70 oil (for clothmaking) 21, 29, 146, 147, 222, 224, 294 Oswestry 40, 316 Oxford 74, 88, 89, 113, 138, 143 Pastons 52 Paycockes, clothiers 225, 231 Pensford 13, 142, 144, 237, 291 Picardy 8, 29 – 30, 83 – 4, 114 Plymouth 150, 301 Pontefract 146 Portugal 134 – 5, 199, 260, 269, 277 – 8, 279, 294 Reading 37, 39, 68 – 9, 123, 125, 165, 168, 180 – 1, 219, 227, 271, 273, 286, 287, 291, 298, 304, 316 regulation see Government regulation Ripon 146, 245, 299, 300 Romsey 150 Rotherham 125, 156, 216 Salisbury 33, 68, 105, 117, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 142 – 3, 149, 165, 168, 178, 179, 180, 224, 286, 291, 292 – 3, 304 says, sayetterie 24, 42 – 3, 68, 76 – 7, 78, 80, 87, 100, 103, 104, 106, 114, 177, 207, 320

356 Index sealing (marking) cloth 69, 114, 119, 151, 174, 227, 297, 301, 319 searching cloth 119, 120, 121, 167, 174 – 5, 182, 206, 290, 291 – 2, 293, 294, 316, 318 serges 1, 10, 21 – 2, 41, 58, 75, 76 – 9, 80, 85 – 7, 89, 91, 98, 103 – 4, 114 shearmen 28, 33, 65, 67, 69, 105, 113, 119 – 21, 122 – 3, 124, 125 – 6, 138, 166 – 9, 173, 174 – 5, 179 – 80, 182, 208, 217, 230 – 2, 238, 242, 244, 258 – 9, 273, 294, 296, 298, 315 – 16, 317 sheep 57, 59, 61, 64, 75, 196, 215, 218, 220, 242, 285, 293, 311; fleece weights 58; numbers 3, 4 – 9, 61, 197, 253, 310 Sherborne 105 Shrewsbury 40, 52, 81, 89, 121, 165, 167, 176 – 7, 206, 286, 291, 302, 316, 319 silks 2, 11, 15, 43, 51, 54 – 6, 134, 194, 196, 197, 207, 252, 255, 257, 258, 267, 269, 320 Smythe John 260 Somerset 25, 35, 37, 108, 135, 142 – 3, 144, 150, 221, 225, 227, 237, 240, 260, 286, 290, 315, 318 Southampton 29, 85, 132, 134, 135, 137, 142, 147, 148, 149, 179, 198, 222, 268, 278, 279 Southwark 30, 174, 316 Spain 30, 34 – 5, 135, 197, 199, 203, 240 – 1, 251, 255, 260, 268, 269, 273, 276 – 8, 279, 293, 294, 295, 296 Springs, clothiers 13, 220, 230 – 1, 296 Stamford 75, 85, 104, 106, 165 Staplers 51, 60 – 2, 244, 312 statutes see Government regulation Steeple Ashton 231, 232, 292 Stowmarket 218 Stratford-upon-Avon 89 – 90 Stroudwater, Stroudwaters 26, 28, 221, 229, 239, 246, 276, 286, 291, 292 – 3, 315 Stumpe, William 35, 222, 227, 231, 243, 292 – 3 Sudbury 89, 91, 148, 297 Suffolk 25 – 6, 32, 37, 103, 106, 108, 142 – 3, 14, 169, 222, 224, 225, 226, 227, 229, 230, 232, 238, 272 – 3, 278, 285 – 6, 287, 290, 291, 295 – 7, 304, 310, 314, 315

sumptuary acts 36, 54, 57, 99, 156, 201 Surrey 137, 142 – 3, 148, 298 – 9 Sussex 37, 137, 143, 148, 273, 298 – 9 taunton 90, 145, 279, 291, 292 – 3 taxation 7, 52, 58, 66 – 7, 88, 89, 98, 106, 108, 114, 115, 117, 125 – 6, 156, 167, 176, 204, 216, 222, 262 – 3; book of rates 13, 67, 202, 309 – 10, 314; cloth duties 36, 39, 40, 65, 67, 131, 134, 137, 202, 245, 254, 268, 277 – 80, 311; production ta (see alnage) Tiverton 227, 231, 279, 291, 301 Totnes 89, 150, 280, 301 trade 36, 103 – 5, 179, 254; balance of 8, 204, 262; cloth exports 74, 80, 85 – 7, 115, 131 – 9, 138, 144, 145, 154, 197, 219, 229, 251, 267 – 80, 274 – 81, 311 – 12, 314, 320; cloth imports 82, 84 – 5, 87, 115, 142, 320; denizen 142, 192, 254, 262, 276 – 7, 302; Hanseatic 63, 66, 131 – 2, 153, 253, 276 – 7, 302, 311 – 12; non-Hanseatic alien 36, 63, 66, 131, 192, 198 – 9, 219, 276 – 7, 303, 311 – 12 treaties 12, 67, 194, 198, 199, 219, 259, 268 – 9, 277 – 8 Trowbridge 227, 231, 239, 291, 292 Venice, Venetian trade 134, 198, 202 – 3, 263, 268, 271, 311 wages 3, 6, 7, 8, 32, 53, 80, 98, 120, 144, 155, 167, 170, 171, 172 – 3, 174, 177, 179, 180, 183, 193, 201, 203, 215, 223 – 4, 245, 247, 267, 302, 310 Wakefield 125, 146, 156, 176, 216, 244, 245, 291, 299 Wales 25, 135, 136, 145, 204, 299, 302, 315 Wallingford 149 Warwick 89 Warwickshire 143 weavers 3, 6, 11, 13, 33, 34, 65, 81 – 2, 83, 88, 89, 90, 105 – 6, 107, 108 – 9, 113, 114, 117, 119, 121, 125, 144, 145, 147, 148, 178 – 9, 183, 230, 239, 302 – 3, 315, 316; alien weavers 114, 118 – 20, 320; London weavers (see London); ordinances 22 – 3, 24, 68 – 9, 105, 114

Index  357 weaving 293; cost of 32; tabby-weave 23, 101, 137, 178; thread counts 22 – 3, 39, 221 Wells 142, 144, 165, 291 Westbury 105, 240, 291, 292 West Country 23, 26, 41, 53, 91, 143, 200, 204, 205, 221, 227, 237, 245, 286, 287 – 90, 291 – 4, 304, 318 Westmoreland 315 Wiltshire 25, 3, 37, 135, 145, 150, 156, 206, 216, 227, 239, 240, 260, 285, 290, 291, 292, 310, 315 Winchcombes, Newbury clothiers 35, 222, 228, 231, 242, 243, 272, 298 – 9 Winchester 27, 42, 81 – 2, 83, 88, 89, 99, 101, 107, 109, 113, 117, 121, 122, 123, 124, 142, 149, 178, 179, 180, 205 women’s work 9, 11, 32, 137, 142, 155, 156, 157, 166, 175 – 7, 182, 216, 229, 243, 285, 293 wool 1, 2, 7, 9, 24, 28, 57 – 64, 75, 225, 244, 286, 310; duties 10 – 11, 12, 15, 57, 60, 67, 81, 115, 193 – 4, 241; exports 3, 60, 63 – 4, 80, 115, 194, 252, 253, 270; flocks lambswool, refuse wools 61, 78, 150, 274, 293, 301; prices 6, 9, 36, 40, 41, 56, 60 – 1, 63, 78, 120, 195 – 6; quality of 14, 21, 24, 58 – 60, 63 – 5, 75, 78, 147, 286, 304; Scottish 8, 78, 194; sorting 11, 32, 58 – 9, 62, 78; Spanish 8, 15, 41, 60, 193, 253, 269 – 70; woolmen, woolbroggers 61 – 2

Worcester 33 – 4, 39, 68 – 9, 89, 121, 125, 126, 165, 168, 173, 174, 178, 180 – 1, 272 – 3, 286, 287, 291, 293, 294, 304, 319 worsted 42 – 3, 69, 75 – 7, 78, 83, 87 – 9, 90, 104, 105 – 6, 114, 148, 171, 179, 203, 207 – 9, 238, 310, 319; bedding (chalons) 42 – 3, 83, 89, 106 – 7, 147, 165, 166, 184; cloth dimensions 42, 82; dornix 166, 320; double-worsted 20, 43, 69, 165, 207; exports 10, 114, 137, 153, 208 – 9, 276, 280; and mercers 122, 153, 256; pricing 42; production 1, 9, 20 – 1, 27, 41 – 2, 58, 60, 65, 77, 100 – 1, 156, 167, 174 – 5, 208, 316; usage 1, 2, 6, 13, 15, 42 – 3, 56; wools 60, 63 Yarmouth 69, 114, 134, 142, 166, 208 – 9, 280 York 25, 27, 42, 69, 81 – 2, 107, 113, 116, 117, 119, 120, 122, 123, 124, 125, 135, 139, 142 – 3, 145, 147, 156, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 174, 176 – 7, 179, 180, 183 – 4, 202, 206, 216, 238, 245, 254, 287, 299, 316 Yorkshire 30, 81, 116, 243, 244, 286, 291, 300, 304, 315; East Riding 146, 184; West Riding 142, 145, 156, 184, 204, 206, 216, 230, 290, 299 – 300, 302, 315 Ypres 68, 78, 81, 85 – 6, 103 – 4, 116, 131, 176, 194 – 5, 269, 270 Zeeland 29 – 30, 131 – 2, 194, 199, 269