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facture overflowed from the towns into the suburbs and country districts, where it ran its course free from any impediment or restraint. The ordinance of 1364 drew attention to "deceits in the making of cloth", and complained that dyers changed the wool, weavers the thread, and fullers the drapery 2. Again, in the sixteenth century (1512) an act "against the deceitful making of woollen cloth" repeated the injunction that walkers and fullers "shall truly walk, full, thick and work every web of woollen yarn", while carders and spinners were also forbidden to appropriate any of the wool delivered to them3. The frauds perpetrated by artisans could not well be obviated, unless the clothiers had full knowledge and supervision of the work in all its processes. At Coventry in 1518 this control was amply secured; two weavers and two fullers made search of the weavers and fullers, and six drapers were appointed "to be masters and overseers of the doing of the searchers". Similarly at Worcester the cloth trade was in the hands of the drapers' craft, and artificers were allowed to make cloth only for their own use," but not to the prejudice of the drapers"; their influence is also seen in a regulation (1497) compelling weavers to employ one journeyman at least for every loom they occupied, the object clearly being to ensure that the weavers did not spoil the cloth given out to them by the bad workmanship of half-trained apprentices 5. The wealth and position of the drapers, who were greatly represented among the town magistrates, enabled them with comparative ease to manipulate the municipal council in their own interests, and acquire an effective authority over the different crafts engaged in the local industry. The extent to which they engrossed civic offices may be illustrated from the records of Coventry. In 1449 a list was compiled of craftsmen who were obliged to provide armour; it enumerates 59 drapers of whom 16 had been in office, 37 dyers comprising 7 ex-magistrates, 57 weavers including 2 ex-magistrates, and 64 tailors and shearmen and 2 Patent Rolls, 1364-1367, PP. 4-5.

Infra, P. 439.

3 Statutes, iii. 28; confirmed in 1515, ibid. iii. 130. Leet Book of Coventry, iii. 656.

5 Green, History of Worcester, ii. App. lxviii.

27 fullers of whom none at all had attained to civic dignity1. The significance of this transition from the gild to the capitalist system cannot be overestimated. The essence of the gild system lay in the control of industry by the industrial workers themselves, through an elected authority appointed by them. In the capitalist system, on the other hand, this control is transferred to men who stand outside the ranks of the industrial workers, and are frequently in conflict with them.

woollen

In the sixteenth century the whole control of the woollen Organizaindustry came to be concentrated largely in the hands of tion of the capitalist manufacturers. The clothier was now the pivot industry on a capitalist of industrial organization, and his position at the head basis. and centre of the cloth trade enabled him to supervise and direct every stage of the manufacture. After the wool had been shorn it was purchased either directly from the farmer, or through a broker-when the small producer bought on credit. It was then carded and spun by spinners, and afterwards delivered to weavers, fullers and shearmen. The spinners were generally women and children, who appear to have been without any separate organization, and as will be seen they were the most easily exposed to capitalist exploitation. The weavers enjoyed greater economic independence, and from their ranks, as already mentioned, the employers were often recruited. Sometimes they were brought together under the roof of their employer, though the factory system was the exception rather than the rule. But even where they still worked in their own homes, their looms often belonged to the clothier 2, and their growing subjection is shown in the complaints made by the Suffolk and Essex weavers in 1539, that the clothiers had both their own looms and weavers and fullers in their own houses, so that the petitioners were rendered destitute: "for the rich men, the clothiers, be concluded and agreed among themselves to hold and pay one price for weaving of the said cloths", and a price too small to support their households even by working day and night, holy day and work

1 Leet Book, iv. p. xlii.

* For the factory system, see infra, p. 422; for hired looms, p. 423.

day; accordingly, many of them were reduced to become other men's servants1. Thus the industrial independence of the weavers began to disappear, and with its loss the master weaver became to all intents and purposes a hired servant. The extent to which those engaged in the different processes of the woollen industry had become dependent upon the clothier was signally shown in 1525, when Wolsey endeavoured to raise war taxes. The clothiers of Suffolk under pressure from the minister submitted to the imposition, but were left without money to pay the wages of their men. They were forced to dismiss the carders and spinners, weavers and fullers, whom they employed, and a revolt against the government was only narrowly averted". The incident serves, in part at any rate, to explain the apprehension with which the Tudors viewed the development of the capitalist system. Upon the discretion and foresight of a limited group of men had now come to depend the welfare and even the existence of the great body of industrial workers. The absolutism of the Tudors and early Stuarts has been severely criticized by constitutional historians, but the economic historian at any rate can do justice to their constant efforts to promote the well-being of the labouring classes. The privy council actively intervened on the behalf of artisans engaged in the woollen industry, and insisted that the employer should not turn his men adrift in times of depression. In 1586 the council wrote to the sheriff and justices of the peace in Somersetshire: "that whereas their lordships are informed that the poorer sort of the people inhabiting about the city of Bath and other towns on the easterly parts of the county of Somerset, wont to live by spinning, carding and working of wool, are not set on work, whereby in this time of dearth of corn and victual they lack their common and necessary food, a matter not only full of pity, but of dangerous consequence to the state if speedy order be not taken therein; her majesty, therefore, tendering the one and careful of the other hath given commandment that they forthwith . . . consider of the present incon

1 Letters and Papers Henry VIII. xiv. part i. p. 408.
2 Holinshed, Chronicles, iii. 709.

venience and how it may be redressed, and for that purpose especially they are hereby authorized to call before them the clothiers and other men of trade in the several places within the county where the people do complain of lack of work, and in her majesty's name to require and command such of them as have stocks and are of ability to employ the same as they have heretofore done, so as by them the poor may be set on work; and if any of them upon any frivolous excuses shall refuse to obey her majesty's commandment herein, they shall certify their names and what their excuses be, that consideration may be had of them accordingly "1. We may compare the action of the council under James I. (1622), when it informed the justices of the peace that there were many complaints of distress owing to weavers and spinners being out of work; and it was unfitting that clothiers should at their pleasure dismiss their workpeople, for “those who have gained in profitable times must now be content to lose for the public good, till the decay of trade be remedied "2.

Winch

The type of sixteenth-century clothier is portrayed for John us in the career of John Winchcombe, familiarly known combe. as Jack of Newbury, who is described by Fuller as "the most considerable clothier (without fancy and fiction) England ever beheld " ". He was unquestionably an historical figure, though many legends have gathered round his name. His will is still preserved in which he bequeathed forty pounds to Newbury parish church and legacies to his servants, and his epitaph survives in Newbury church, of which he built the tower and western part 5. In the Journal to Stella (1711) Swift describes a visit to the famous St. John, afterwards Lord Bolingbroke, who had married one of Winchcombe's descendants. "His lady is descended from Jack Newbury of whom books and ballads are written; and there is an old picture of him in the house"". There is a tradition that he entertained King Henry VIII. and his

1 Acts of the Privy Council of England, 1586-1587, p. 93.
2 Cal. of State Papers Domestic, 1619-1623, P. 343.

3 T. Fuller, The Worthies of England (ed. 1840), i. 137.

• Thomas Deloney, Works, ed. F. O. Mann (1912), 507.

5 Fuller, op. cit. 137.

6 J. Swift, The Journal to Stella, ed. G. A. Aitken (1901), 265.

Court, and he is said to have marched to Flodden Field at the head of a hundred of his own men. It is likely enough that he furnished a contingent of men to meet the Scottish invaders, and the pride of their exploits rings through the lines of the old ballad:

"The Cheshire lads were brisk and brave

And the Kendal lads as free,

But none surpass'd or I'm a knave

The lads of Newberrie "1.

In The Pleasant History of John Winchcombe the prosperity of the great clothier is depicted by Thomas Deloney in the most glowing terms:

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Within one room being large and long

There stood two hundred Looms full strong:

Two hundred men the truth is so

Wrought in these Looms all in a row.

By every one a pretty boy

Sate making quills with mickle joy.
And in another place hard by,
An hundred women merrily

Were carding hard with joyful cheer
Who singing sate with voices clear.
And in a chamber close beside,
Two hundred maidens did abide,

In petticoats of Stammell red,

And milk-white kerchers on their head" 2.

The weavers as they plied their tasks sang the 'Weaver's Song':

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When Hercules did use to spin

And Pallas wrought upon the loom

Our trade to flourish did begin . . .'3.

1 History and Antiquities of Newbury and its Environs (1839), 138. The number is variously given as 100, 150 and even 250.

a Deloney, op. cit. 20. 3 Ibid. 31.

In Deloney's Works (p. 211) there is an account of Thomas of Reading in The History of the Six Yeomen, of whom " every one kept a great number of servants at work, spinners, carders, weavers, fullers, dyers, shearmen and rowers". This was Thomas Cole, "commonly called the rich clothier of Reading" (Fuller, op. cit. 136), who was supposed to have lived in the reign of Henry I. But he was undoubtedly a legendary figure, and even Fuller admits there is very little truth in the tradition.

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