in the wake of Leland's Itinerary, we can trace in certain counties of England both the decay of the older towns and the rise of the new country 'townlets', which owed their prosperity to the spread of the textile industries. At Beverley1, once famous for its cloth, the woollen manufacture was "much decayed". Bridgnorth in Shropshire formerly "stood by clothing, and that now decayed there, the town sorely decayed therewith". Coventry had risen "by the making of cloth and caps, that now decaying the glory of the city decayeth". On the other hand in Somersetshire, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire numerous "clothing towns" and "clothing villages" are enumerated: Bradford, Frome, Pensford, Chew Magna and Norton St. Philip in Somersetshire; Alderley, Wotton, Dursley, Tortworth and Wickwar in Gloucestershire 5; Devizes, Steeple Ashton and Westbury in Wiltshire 6. Of all these places Leland tells how one is "well occupied with clothiers", and how another "standeth most by clothing"; and his list could easily be extended from other sources". A similar movement can be discerned in the West Riding of Yorkshire. The aulnager's rolls for the county at the end of the fourteenth century show that weaving was carried on in country districts near York, but was not yet organized on any large scale in the remoter parts of Yorkshire 8. In the sixteenth century, however, the prosperity of the corporate towns in Yorkshire began to wane, and their place was usurped by their younger rivals. Leland, whose evidence we have already cited for Beverley, specially mentions Wakefield as a town whose "whole profit standeth by coarse drapery". In 1561 the authorities of York complained of the decayed fortunes of their city. "The cause of the decay of the weavers and looms for woollen [cloth] within the city, as I 1 Itinerary, i. 47. Ibid. ii. 108. 4 Ibid. v. 84 (Bradford "the pretty clothing town on Avon "); 97 (Frome); 98 (Norton St. Philip); 103 (Pensford, Chew Magna). 2 Ibid. ii. 85. Ibid. v. 95 (Alderley, Wotton); 96 (Dursley, Tortworth, Wickwar). Ibid. v. 82 (Devizes); 83 (Steeple Ashton and Westbury). E.g. in Somersetshire the industry was also growing up in Mudford and Croscombe, the latter having a gild of weavers and a gild of fullers : Vict. County Hist. Somersetshire, ii. 301, 408. The act of 1465 (Statutes, ii. 406) shows that the woollen industry was spreading in country districts. Vict. County Hist. Yorkshire, ii. 409-410. • Itinerary, i. 42. do understand and learn, is the lack of cloth-making in the city as was in old time accustomed, which is now increased and used in the towns of Halifax, Leeds and Wakefield: for that not only the commodity of the water-mills is there nigh [at] hand, but also the poor folk as spinners, carders and other necessary workfolk for the weaving, may there beside their hand-labour have rye, fire[wood] and other relief good cheap, which is in this city very dear and wanting "1. But it was not only the presence of water-mills and the cheapness of provisions which attracted artisans into the rural districts; even more important was the absence or at any rate the difficulty of supervision. In the villages the weaving industry was left to a large extent unregulated, a circumstance which contributed to the disadvantages to which the older towns were exposed. In Yorkshire, for example, the country weavers made cloth "with woof of flocks", a practice afterwards prohibited by parliament 2. The oppressive ordinances of craft gilds concerning the fees of apprentices and admission to mastership must have operated in the same direction. Under Henry VIII., however, an attempt was made to redress the balance by an act (1543), which gave to York a monopoly of the manufacture of coverlets and conferred upon its gild of coverlet-makers power of search throughout the county3. The struggle between the established seats of industry Industrial and villages which were growing into towns, constitutes one the Tudors policy of of the main economic features of the sixteenth century. The former sought by the pressure of legislative action to check the spread of industry, and to repress the activities of the new industrial centres that sprang up around them. In 1534 an act was passed on behalf of Worcestershire, of which the capital town together with four other towns in the county found their prosperity menaced by the growing competition of the country districts. It ordered that no cloth should be made in the county except in the above five towns. The act would seem to have been effective, for 1 York Mun. Rec. xxiii. fol. 20 a; cit. Vict. County Hist. Yorkshire, iii. 450. The commonalty of the city, on the other hand, attributed its decay to the lavish hospitality of the civic fathers: English Hist. Review, ix. 296. 2 Statutes, ii. 404. 3 Ibid. iii. 908. 4 Ibid. iii. 459. Leland-whose Itinerary belongs to the years 1535-1543 -wrote that "the wealth of Worcester standeth most by draping, and no town of England at the present time maketh so many cloths yearly as this town doth"1. In Mary's reign a renewed effort was made to revive the prosperity of the corporate and market towns. In 1554 the government repealed in their favour the clause of an act passed under Edward VI. (1552), by which no one might weave broad woollen cloth in any place without serving an apprenticeship of seven years. This repeal was followed by the Weavers' Act in 1555, which extended to most parts of the kingdom the principle embodied in the acts relating to Worcester and York. Henceforth "no person whatsoever, which heretofore hath not used or exercised the feat, mistery or art of cloth-making, shall . . . make or weave . any kind of broad white woollen cloths but only in a city, borough, town corporate or market town, or else in such place or places where such cloths have been used to be commonly made by the space of ten years". This legislation throws a remarkable light upon the efforts of the Tudor government to control the economic life of the country, and determine the direction of its industrial development. At the end of Mary's reign another act was passed, the preamble of which illustrates the nature of the exodus which was taking place from the towns to the villages. Divers ancient cities . . . hath been in times past well and substantially inhabited", but "divers years past such persons as do use the feat or mistery of cloth-making do daily plant themselves in villages and towns, being no cities, boroughs and towns corporate", and "draw with them out of cities . . . all sorts of artificers" to the decay of the older towns; and moreover "the weavers and workmen of clothiers when they have been traded up in the trade of cloth-making and weaving three or four years do forsake their masters, and do become clothiers and occupiers for themselves without stock, skill or knowledge "4. The 1 Itinerary, ii. 91. 2 Statutes, iv. part i. 142. Repealed for corporate and market towns: 3 Ibid. iv. part i. 287. ibid. iv. part i. 232. • Ibid. iv. part i. 325. preamble is again followed by a prohibition against the manufacture of cloth, except in market or corporate towns1. Here, as in its efforts to check the agrarian revolution, the Tudor monarchy sought to divert the tide of economic change, which was transforming mediaeval conditions and for good or evil ushering in the modern world. 1 How important the cloth trade had become by the reign of Elizabeth is shown by one of the minutes of the privy council, that arrangements for the employment of agricultural labourers were to be made "without annoyance to the good towns . . . and cloth-making”: Acts of the Privy Council, 1586-1587, p. 8. Formerly the interests of industry had been subordinated to those of tillage. CHAPTER X Early commerce. FOREIGN TRADE IN the latter part of the tenth century merchants from beyond the sea wère already frequenting English shores in considerable numbers, and had gained a recognized status in the pursuit of their trade. A document of Ethelred II. sets forth the tolls charged at Billingsgate, and enumerates the different bodies of foreign traders who had obtained a foothold in this country. "The men of Rouen, who came with wine or dried fish, gave a due of six shillings for a great ship and one measure in twenty of the fish itself. Merchants of Flanders and of Ponthieu (in Picardy) and of Normandy and of France had to show their goods and pay full toll. Men of the Hague and Liége and Nivelles, if they passed through the land, did scavage and gave tolls. And the Men of the Emperor, if they came in their own ships, were held worthy of all good laws equally with ourselves; and besides wool and tallow in broken bulk, it was lawful for them to buy on board their own ships three live pigs. And it was not lawful for the portreeves to put upon them any trading fine; and [they had to] pay their own toll, and also at Christmas two white loaves, and one brown, and ten pounds of pepper, and gloves for five men, and two horse-tanks full of vinegar, and the like at Easter "1. The existence of some foreign commerce between England and the continent is shown in the famous letter of the Emperor Charlemagne to Offa, King of Mercia (796), in which he promises protection to English merchants: "Concerning the pilgrims who for the love of God and the salvation 1 Liebermann, Gesetze, i. 232 (c. 991-c. 1002). For the Men of the Emperor, see infra, p. 464. |