Page images
PDF
EPUB

13-15="

was an association of merchants from the towns of Rheims, Amiens, and others in North France and Flanders, and even from Paris, who traded with England for English wool.1 Merchants also came for wool from Cologne, and the men of Cologne had a house in London (distinct from the Teutonic Hansa's house) as early as 1157.2 These merchants would supply the towns on the Rhine, for many of these cities had flourishing cloth manufactures.3

§ 76. English Manufactures.

but,

Now, although Flanders has been mentioned as the chief manufacturing centre for Europe, it must not be supposed that England could not manufacture any of the large quantity of wool which it grew. Undoubtedly the people of the Netherlands were at that time the great manufacturers of the world, and were acquainted with arts and processes to which the English were strangers, while for a long time the English could not weave fine cloths nevertheless, there was a considerable manufacturing industry, chiefly of coarse cloths, an industry very widely spread, and carried on in people's own cottages under the domestic system. This industry was encouraged by the Government in occasional, but of course futile, regulations prohibiting the export of wool, in order that it might be used for home manufactures.6 The chief kinds of cloth made were hempen, linen, and woollen coverings, such as would be used for sacks, dairy-cloths, woolpacks, sails of windmills, and similar purposes. The great textile centres were Norfolk (Norwich) and Suffolk, where, indeed, manufacturing industries had existed long before the earliest records. An idea of their importance may be given from the fact that, in the assessment for the wool-tax of 1341, 1 Ashley, Woollen Industry, p. 36.

2 Lappenberg, Hans. Stalhof zu London, Urk., 2.

3 Ashley, Woollen Industry, p. 38.

• Cf. Walter of Hemingburgh, Chronicon, i. 306 (Eng. Hist. Soc., 1848). 5 Cunningham, i. 394.

E.g., the Oxford Parliament of 1258 prohibited export of wool. Cf. Ashley, Woollen Industry, p. 39, and his Econ. Hist., II. ch. iii. p. 194. 7 Rogers, Hist. Agric., i. 568.

8 Burnley, Wool and Woolcombing, 866.

Norfolk was counted by far the wealthiest county in England after Middlesex (including London). There was also a cloth industry of importance in the West of England, the chief centures being Westbury, Sherborne, and Salisbury.2 The linen of Aylsham were also celebrated. That there was even some export of cloth as well as raw wool is clear from Misselden's statement, that in 1354 A.D. there was exported 4774 pieces of cloth, valued at 40s. each, and 806 pieces of worsted stuff, at 16s. 8d. each.

§ 77. Foreign Manufacture of Fine Goods.

But we find rich people used to purchase the fine cloths from abroad -e.g., linen from Liège and Flanders generally, and velvet and silk goods from Genoa and Venice-although there was certainly a silk industry in London, carried on chiefly by women, and protected by an Act of 1455.0 Misselden mentions the import of 1831 pieces of fine cloth, valued at no less than £6 each. But in the England of which we are now speaking, the textile industries were prevented from attaining a full development from the fact that, though general, they were strictly local; and, moreover, those who practised them did not look upon their handicraft as their sole means of livelihood, but even till the eighteenth century were generally engaged in agriculture as well. The cause of this is connected with the isolation and self-sufficiency of separate communities, previously noted. An evidence of the consequent inferiority of English to Flemish cloth is given by the fact that an Act of 1261 attempts to prohibit the import of spun stuff and the export of wool. Needless to say it was useless. The prices of cloth at this period are interesting, as showing the great difference between the fine (ie., foreign) and coarse (home) cloths. The average price of linen is 4d. an ell, being as low as 2d., and as high as 81d. Inferior woollens sold at 1s. 74d. a yard, "russet" at 1s. 4d., blanketing at 1s. On the other hand, scarlet cloth (foreign)

1 Rogers, Six Centuries, 115, 116. Rogers, Six Centuries, p. 105. Rogers, Hist. Agric., i. 570.

2 Rogers, Hist. Agric., i. 570.

• Misselden, Circle of Commerce, 119. 33 Hen. VI., c. 5.

Cloth for
Speaking

rises to the enormous price of 15s. a yard. liveries varied from 2s. 1d. to 1s. per yard. generally for the period 1260-1400, we may give the average price of the best quality at 3s. 34d. a yard from 1260-1350, and 3s. 54d. from 1350-1400; while cloth of the second quality fetched 1s. 44d. in the first period, and 1s. 11 d. in the second.1

§ 78. Flemish Settlers teach the English Weavers.

Norwich.

It is to Edward III., very largely, that the development of English textile industry is due. It is true that, long before, Henry II. had endeavoured to stimulate English manufacture by establishing a "cloth fair" in the churchyard of St Bartholomew 2 at Smithfield. But English industry had developed slowly till the days of Edward, partly, no doubt, owing to the continual disorder of the preceding reigns. Stimulated, probably, by his wife Philippa's connection with Flanders, he encouraged Flemish weavers to settle in England, and also brought back home some Englishmen who had settled in Flanders and were apparently engaged in the cloth manufacture. Such, at any rate, appears to be the case from a perusal of an anonymous work dealing with this action of Edward III., and entitled The Golden Fleece.s The account runs thus

"The wools of England have ever been of great honour and reception abroad, as hath been sufficiently witnessed by the constant amity which, for many hundred years, hath been inviolably kept between the Kings of England and the Dukes of Burgundy, only for the benefit of the wool, whose subjects, receiving the English wool at 6d. a pound, returned it (through the manufacture of these industrious people) in cloth at 10s. a yard, to the great enriching of that state, both in revenue to their sovereign and in em1 Rogers, Hist. Agric., i. 568-593, and ii. 536-542.

2 Ashley, Woollen Industry, 65; Bonwick, Romance of the Wool Trade, 339.

3 The extract is found in Burnley's History of Wool and Woolcombing, p. 61. The Golden Fleece was published anonymously in 1599, but treats of an earlier period also.

ployment to their subjects, which occasioned the merchants of England to transport their whole families in no small numbers into Flanders, from whence they had a constant trade to most parts of the world.

"And this intercourse and trade between England and Burgundy endured till King Edward III. made his mighty conquests over France and Scotland, when he projected how to enrich his people and to people his new conquered dominions; and both these he designed to effect by means of his English commodity, wool; all which he accomplished, though not without great difficulties and opposition; for he was not only to bring back his own subjects home, who were and who had been long settled in those parts, with their whole families (many of which had not so certain habitations in England as in Flanders), but he was also to invite clothiers over to convert his wools into clothing (and these were the subjects of another prince), or else the stoppage of the stream would choke the mill, and then not only clothing would everywhere be lost, but the materials resting upon his English subjects' hands would soon ruin the whole gentry and yeomanry for want of vending their wools. Now, to show how King Edward smoothed these rough and uneven passages were too tedious for this short narrative, though otherwise in their contrivance they may be found to be ingenious, pleasing, and of great use."

We may note also a statute1 of the year 1337, which offers protection to all foreign clothworkers who may settle in England, and, at the same time, in order to encourage home manufactures, prohibits, on the one hand, the export of wool, and, on the other, the import of foreign cloth. After this date large numbers of foreigners seem to have come over here, and complaints against them are frequently made by English cloth manufacturers." But, although Englishmen naturally felt some jealousy of this foreign immigration, it resulted in lasting good to the industry and trade of our country, and undoubtedly increased our wealth very greatly.

2

1 The 2 Ed. III., cc. 3, 4.
'Madox, Firma Burgi, 284 n., col. 2.

2 Ashley, Woollen Industry, 47.

[ocr errors]

The Flemish weavers settled chiefly in the eastern counties, though we hear of two Flemings from Brabant1 settling in York in 1336; and shortly before this time one John Kemp,2 also a Fleming, removed from Norwich, and founded in Westmoreland (1331) the manufacture of the famous Kendal green." The chief centre, however, of the foreign weavers was naturally Norwich,3 the Manchester of those days, with a population of some 6000, and the chief industry was that of worsted cloths, so named from the place of manufacture, Worstead. When we speak of worsted cloths, we mean those plain, unpretending fabrics that probably never went beyond a plain weave or a fourshaft twill. The yarn was very largely spun on the rock or distaff, by means of a primitive whorl or spindle, while the loom was but a small improvement on that in which Penelope wove her famous web.5 There was a great demand among religious orders for sayes and the like, of good quality; plain worsteds were generally worn by the ordinary public.

§79. The Worsted Industry.

Whether the growth of the worsted cloth industry was connected or not with this particular Flemish immigration we cannot determine, but after the Flemings came it seems to have increased." The manufacture was confirmed to the town of Worstead by a patent of 1315;7 and in 1328, 1 Rymer, Foedera, ii. 954.

5

3 Bonwick, Romance of the Wool Trade, 366. 4 Rogers, Six Centuries, 117.

2 Ib., ii. 823.

Compare two interesting pictures, one of weaving (about A.D. 1130-1174), from M.S. Trin. Coll. Camb., R. 17, 1; and the other of a loom from the Faröe Isles, from Montelius, Civilisation of Sweden, both reproduced in Green's History of the English People, illustrated edition, vol. I. pp. 171 and 172.

* Burnley, Wool and Woolcombing, p. 50.

7 Worsted is first mentioned in official records in the eighth year of Edward II. (1315), when the clothiers of Norwich are accused of making pieces of only 25 yards in length and selling them as being of 30 yards. But, of course, worsted as a material was known long before this period. William Rufus had a pair of stockings of "say," a kind of worsted, which were valued at 3s., a very high price for those days. See Burnley, ut supra, 51.

« PreviousContinue »