clothiers. The reputation which his cloth obtained may be gauged from the advice of the English envoy at Antwerp to the Protector Somerset to send over a thousand of Winchcombe's kersies ", in discharge of a debt1. Even at the end of the seventeenth century Jack of Newbury was the chief figure in the pageant of the Clothworkers of London 2. John Winchcombe was not the only clothier in the Other great sixteenth century who set up a manufactory and gathered servants and looms under the same roof. It is not unlikely that the agrarian changes of this period, which cut so many labourers adrift from their occupation, furnished the labour which clothiers with some capital at their command were able to utilize in the woollen industry. In 1546 William Stumpe, a clothier of Malmesbury, rented Osney Abbey and undertook to receive in his employment as many as two thousand workmen, who were to labour "continually in cloth-making for the succour of the city of Oxford "3. Stumpe had also converted into a factory Malmesbury Abbey, and Leland's description is well known. "The whole lodgings of the abbey be now longing to one Stumpe, an exceeding rich clothier, that bought them of the king. At this present time every corner of the vast houses of office that belonged to the abbey be full of looms to weave cloth in . . . there be made now every year in the town three thousand cloths "4. Other famous clothiers were the Springs of Lavenham, the Tames of Fairford, and Thomas Dolman of Newbury 5. Thomas Spring, surnamed the rich clothier, bequeathed two hundred pounds to finish Lavenham steeple and money for a thousand masses, and his daughter married Aubrey de Vere, a son of the earl of Oxford. John Tame, who lived in the reign of Edward IV., built up a large 1 J. Burnley, The History of Wool and Woolcombing (1889), 69. 2 Herbert, Livery Companies, i. 207. 3 Records of Oxford, 184. 4 Itinerary, i. 132. 5 When Dolman gave up cloth-making, the weavers of Newbury lamented: "Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable sinners, Thomas Dolman has built a new house, and turned away all his spinners " (Vict. County Hist. Berkshire, i. 389-390). 6 Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archæology, vi. 107 seq. His will was proved in 1524. Opposition to the factory system. cloth manufacture at Cirencester and kept vast flocks of sheep at Fairford, prospering so well that he became owner of several landed estates. His son, Edmund Tame, received a visit from Henry VIII., by whom he was knighted; he became lord of the manor of Fairfield and was three times high sheriff of Gloucestershire1. Fairfield, observes Leland, "never flourished before the coming of the Tames unto it ". His remarks on Bath are worth quoting to show the influence, which the clothiers were exercising upon the destinies of the towns in which they were established. "The town hath of a long time since been continually most maintained by making of cloth. There were in hominum memoria three clothiers at one time, thus named, Style, Kent and Chapman, by whom the town of Bath then flourished. Since the death of them it hath somewhat decayed "3. But the movement towards a factory system, already foreshadowed in the career of Thomas Blanket, was disliked by the government, which was disquieted at the opportunity it seemed to afford for unruly spirits to collect together in one centre and stir up rioting and disorder. The famous Weavers' Act of Philip and Mary (1555) recites that: "forasmuch as the weavers of this realm have . . . complained that the rich and wealthy clothiers do in many ways oppress them, some by setting up and keeping in their houses diverse looms, and keeping and maintaining them by journeymen and persons unskilful, to the decay of a great number of artificers which were brought up in the science of weaving, their families and household, some by ingrossing of looms into their hands and possession and letting them out at such unreasonable rents as the poor artificers are not able to maintain themselves . . . some also by giving much less wages and hire for the weaving and workmanship of cloth than in times past ", therefore no clothier out of a city was to keep more than one woollen loom, and no woollen weaver out of a city to have more than two looms. This act, however, did not affect the older towns, and its operation 1 H. F. Holt," The Tames of Fairford ", in Journal of the British Archæol. Assoc. xxvii. 118 seq. 2 Itinerary, i. 127. 3 Ibid. i. 143. Statutes, iv. part i. 286. was confined to country districts, but more than forty years earlier Norwich had taken steps to check the growth of capitalism. The Ordinances of the Worsted Weavers of Norwich and the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire (1511) forbade a weaver, who lived in Norwich, to keep above four broad looms and one narrow loom; while a weaver who lived in rural districts was limited to two broad looms and one narrow. At the same time the system of hiring out looms to artisans, which at one time was prohibited in London 2 though subsequently (1300) allowed, was completely forbidden at Norwich. It is extremely improbable, however, that these measures, some of which are found elsewhere even at an earlier date, were really effective in checking the development of a capitalist class in the eastern counties, and indeed the act of 1555 would seem an indication to the contrary. workers. The intervention of the state was also demanded in other Oppression directions. Industrial capitalism began early to give clear of the indications that, without strict regulation and efficient control, it lent itself easily to oppression. A popular pamphlet on England's Commercial Policy, composed in the first half of the fifteenth century, contains interesting references to the grievances of the working classes under the changing conditions of production. The writer complains that merchants and cloth-makers had lately started a pernicious practice of truck, or payment in kind, which bore hardly upon the poor people. They paid them low wages, and half was paid in merchandise which they rated at double its real worth. "The poor have the labour, the rich the winning". He urged that workmen should receive their wages good money", and his recommendation was adopted in the statute of 1464. This statute recited that labourers in the 1 Records of Norwich, ii. 377. 2 Riley, Liber Custumarum, i. 125. 3 E.g. in 1477 the weavers of Bury St. Edmunds enjoined that no one should occupy more than four looms: Hist. MSS. Comm. 14th Rep. App. viii. 135. Among the weavers of Kent (temp. Hen. VIII.) no "clothier weaver" making coloured cloths was allowed more than one loom: Schanz, Englische Handelspolitik, ii. 661, No. 174. Political Poems and Songs (ed. T. Wright, Roll Series), ii. 285. at cloth industry have been driven to take a great part of their wages in pins, girdles, "and other unprofitable wares less than their value, and ordered clothiers to pay their workfolk-carders, spinners, weavers, fullers--" lawful money for all their lawful wages" 1. Here, however, as in many other directions, local enterprise had already led the way and furnished a model and a precedent for the interference of the central executive. An ordinance against the truck system was made at Colchester 2 in 1411 and at Norwich in 1460. The popularity of Edward's act is shown by the demand of the cloth-workers of Northampton that it should be put into operation. But legislative action does not appear to have been very effective, for at Worcester 5 in 1467, and again at Coventry in 1518 and 1547, the local authorities found it necessary to take steps on behalf of the workers and to forbid truck wages. Complaints were renewed under Henry VIII. by the weavers of Kent, and also in the well-known Treatise Concerning the Staple; another statute was passed in 15129, but the practice persisted during the seventeenth 10 and following centuries. In the earlier centuries, the inadequate supply of currency may have been partially responsible for the system. Another device of capitalist exploitation was to pay workmen according to the weight of the material given out to them, and then defraud them by using false weights. In 1554 Thomas Glene was amerced at Norwich 11" for delivering his stuff to be wrought by a weight a great deal above the standard". Again at Colchester 12 (1452) a burgess, William Godfrey, delivered thirty pounds of wool to be combed pretending that they only weighed twenty pounds, "to the deception " of the workers. An act of parliament in 1512 ordered that the wool delivered by the clothier 1 Statutes, ii. 406. 2 Red Paper Book of Colchester, 17. 3 Records of Norwich, ii. 94. Among the ordinances of the London Shearmen (1452) there is one against payment in wares: London and 4 Records of Northampton, i. 302. Coventry Leet Book, iii. 658, 784. Midd. Archæol. Soc. iv. 41. Smith, English Gilds, 383. 7 Schanz, Englische Handelspolitik, ii. 661, No. 174. 8 Pauli, Drei volksw. Denkschr. 37. 10 E.g. Vict. County Hist. Suffolk, ii. 267. 12 Red Paper Book of Colchester, 59. 9 Statutes, iii. 28. for breaking, combing, carding or spinning, should be of true weight1; and a like injunction was enforced by local authorities 2. sumers. These indications are sufficient to show that the clothiers Complaints were often apt to exploit their position at the expense of of contheir workfolk. At the same time they were accused by the public of "unreasonable lucre" in raising the price of cloth to the consumer 3, while the charge was also brought against them that by their deceits in the manufacture of cloth they were ruining both the home and foreign markets. The frauds of the west-country clothiers were said to imperil the lives of English traders in foreign parts, and were bitterly denounced in a statute of 1390: "The merchants that buy the same cloths, and carry them out of the realm to sell to strangers, be many times in danger to be slain and sometimes imprisoned and put to fine and ransom by the same strangers, and their cloths burnt or forfeit because of the great deceit and falsehood that is found in the same cloths when they be unpacked and opened, to the great slander of the realm "4. Subsequently (1465), it was said that for many years past and now at this date the workmanship of cloth hath been of such fraud, deceit and falsity, that the said cloths in other lands and countries be had in small reputation to the great shame of this land", and foreign cloth was also being imported into England 5. Even when allowance is made for the exaggerated terms in which all mediaeval statutes are couched, we have no reason to doubt the general truth of these statements. "The ill-working of our cloths", wrote Edward VI. at a later period, "maketh them less esteemed " ". weavers, The clothiers were also drawn into conflict with those Conflicts who had retained their economic independence in the with different branches of the cloth manufacture. The weavers, fullers and fullers and shearmen raised the cry, as at Coventry in 1549, that capitalists "for their own private lucre and gain" 1 Statutes, iii. 28. 2 E.g. Green, Worcester, ii. App. lxvii.; Red Paper Book of Colchester, 17; Coventry Leet Book, iii. 777. 3 Statutes, ii. 533. ▲ Ibid. ii. 64. 6 Burnet, History of the Reformation, v. III. 5 Ibid. ii. 403. shearmen. |
