Intro duction of machinery. Export of undyed cloth. engrossed great quantities of woollen yarn and sold it outside the city, and accordingly it was ordered that yarn should be sold only to cloth-makers in Coventry1. Again the dyers made complaint that the clothiers wished to dye their own cloth. At Reading in 1589 the privy council was forced to intervene in the dispute, and it decided that clothiers could dye their own wool, but ought not to encroach unfairly upon the craft of dyers by dyeing wool for others. The introduction of machinery was inevitably a fruitful source of dissension. The shearmen objected to the use of "instruments of iron ", and a statute of 1495 ordered fustian cloth to be shorn " with the broad shears" only, and " with none other instrument "3. A few years earlier (1478), the authorities of Norwich forbade shearers of worsted to employ sharp iron instruments which cut the cloth. Objection was also raised (1552) against the use of any "wrinch, rope or ring or any other engine" for straining or stretching cloth 5. But most persistent of all was the agitation over the use of water-mills among the fullers. Fulling at mills instead of "by might and strength of man, and that is with hand and foot "6, was forbidden in London as early as 1298, and again in 1376, 1391 and 14047. In 1417 the prohibition was annulled on the ground that fulling by mills involved less cost and was equally serviceable, but in 14379 it was once more revived, and confirmed in 1483 by statute 10. A collision of interests also arose between the clothiers and the Merchant Adventurers, the great merchant exporters, who shipped abroad their cloth in a raw state-undyed and unfinished-to be worked up in foreign countries. This was the germ of the protracted struggle between the industrial and trading capitalists, which in one form or another covered a period of many centuries. The export of white woollen cloth was several times forbidden by statute 11, but Reading Records, i. 397. 1 Coventry Leet Book, iii. 791. 3 Statutes, ii. 591. 5 Statutes, iv. part i. 139. 2 4 Records of Norwich, ii. 102. 6 Letter Book K, 220. 'Riley, Liber Custumarum, i. 128-129 (1298); Letter Book H, 47 (1376), 366 (1391); Letter Book I, 29 (1404). 8 Letter Book I, 176. 9 Letter Book K, 220. 10 Statutes, ii. 473. 11 Supra, p. 402. Also in 1523: Statutes, iii. 206. Undyed cloth amounted to nearly 96 per cent. of the whole export: Schanz, Englische Handelspolitik, ii. 17. the Merchant Adventurers contended that the export of white and undressed cloth was in the best interests of national prosperity, since foreign merchants would not buy cloth which was dyed and finished. They dwelt with some force upon the 'utter peril and danger' of interfering with a trade, which had grown beyond anything 'in the memory of man'. English cloth-workers, they urged, had the buying and selling of wool, one with another; they had also the carding, spinning, weaving and fulling, and the first sale of the cloth; while foreigners had only the dressing and shearing of certain of the cloths: "whereby the inhabitants there be a little relieved and a few number of them for a time set to work". If, then, “the realm of England should all covet and they to have no relief nor comfort of the same", there was a danger lest Antwerp and other towns would find ways and means to exclude our cloth altogether 1. It was also a ground of complaint against the Hansards that they would only buy white cloth," wherewith they set their own people to work" 2. But an exception seems to have been made in favour of cloth manufactured in Suffolk, for large quantities were dyed and dressed before being exported abroad; and on this account the Suffolk industry received special consideration from the government 3. a native industry. Under Elizabeth4, and particularly in the early part of the Attempts seventeenth century, attempts were made to foster a native to foster dyeing industry: "We have often and in divers manners dyeing expressed ourselves", declared James I., "what an earnest desire . . . we have that, as the reducing of wools into clothing was the act of our noble progenitor, King Edward the Third, so the reducing of the trade of white cloths, which is but an imperfect thing towards the wealth and good of this our kingdom, into the trade of cloths dyed and dressed might be the work of our time" 5. But though the export of undyed cloth was prohibited by proclamation, and 1 Schanz, Englische Handelspolitik, ii. 571, No. 131 (c. 1514-1536). 2 Pauli, Drei volksw. Denkschr. 36. 3 Vict. County Hist. Suffolk, ii. 261. 4 Acts of the Privy Council, 1575-1577, P. 381. 5 Select Charters of Trading Companies, 78. 6 Crawford, Tudor and Stuart Proclamations, i. No. 1148 and No. 1154. Friction among the clothiers. experiments were made, they were not attended with any degree of success. When the Merchant Adventurers acquired the monopoly of the foreign trade in cloth, the hostility between them and the clothiers was accentuated The latter found fresh ground for complaint in the allegation (1550) that the Adventurers "by agreement set such a price upon their cloths, that without the loss of twenty shillings in a piece they could not utter them"1. In 1586 the west-country clothiers complained that the Merchant Adventurers had not purchased their cloth "in such number and at such prices as they were lately accustomed ", and hence they were forced to dismiss their workmen. The Company was ordered by the privy council to buy their cloth; otherwise the Merchants of the Staple might purchase cloth and export it, or in default of them any merchant whatever might do so 2. But And lastly, the clothiers themselves were far from being a homogeneous class undivided by conflicting interests. Friction among them was occasioned by the attempts of the London drapers to establish a monopoly. Of old, recites a statute of 1406, cloth-makers and drapers from all parts of the kingdom could repair to London, and there buy and sell wholesale to natives and aliens alike, provided they paid the customs reasonably due from them. now they were being compelled to sell only to citizens of London, "to the singular profit and advantage of them of London", but "to the damage and loss" of consumers and traders. It was therefore ordered that merchants should be free to sell their cloth or other merchandise, in spite of any franchise to the contrary. Two centuries (1604) later the complaint was renewed: "All the clothiers and in effect all the merchants of England complained grievously of the engrossing and restraint of trade by the rich merchants of London, as being to the undoing or great hindrance of all the rest" 4. While thus confronted with many serious difficulties at 1 Acts of the Privy Council, 1550-1552, p. 19. The Journals of the House of Commons, i. 218. 3 Statutes, ii. 153. rivals. home, the clothiers had also to reckon with the jealousy of Jealousy their foreign rivals abroad. The Flemings especially were of foreign sorely pressed by the competition of the English clothmakers, now that they no longer enjoyed the monopoly of the weaving craft. Bruges, which in the thirteenth century owned forty thousand looms, was declining in numbers and making desperate efforts to recover its prosperity. Ypres, with a population in 1408 of over eighty thousand inhabitants and three to four thousand cloth-workers, had sunk in 1486 to less than six thousand inhabitants, and barely a score or two cloth factories 1. An opportunity to strike a blow at their rivals came to them in 1436, when the duke of Burgundy invoked the aid of the Netherlands for an attack upon Calais. They agreed to lend their assistance, but exacted the condition, according to the report brought to England, "that no Englishman shall be suffered to sell English cloth at any mart within the duke's dominions" 2. A few years later, in 1449, instructions were drawn up for the English ambassadors to the court of Burgundy to protest against an ordinance of the duke excluding English woollen cloth from Holland, Zeeland and Brabant. The English government was greatly alarmed, and the king divers times " made attempts to obtain a revocation of the ordinance. The ambassadors were instructed to point out that the ordinance was to the great hurt and damage of the king and his subjects, and not only contrary to the old friendship which had long subsisted between the two countries, but against the condition of the truce made by the duke of York at Rouen, which had provided for freedom of commercial intercourse. "At all times", proceeded the instructions, English cloth was accustomed to resort and have its utterance in Holland, Zeeland and Brabant where it is now forbidden, like as merchandise of those countries be freely uttered here". In a statute of the same year, and again in 1465, retaliation was threatened; no merchandise from the Netherlands would be imported into England, if English 1 Schanz, Englische Handelspolitik, i. 32-33. The worsted manu facture. cloth were shut out from the Netherlands 1. Henry VII.': commercial treaties with the duke of Burgundy restored the English market, and secured favourable conditions for the sale of our cloth 2. But trouble revived in the next reign, and a correspondent of Thomas Cromwell wrote to his master in 1532 that English cloth was excluded from the Low Countries, adding that if the king met their wishes "they would in short time bring our heads under their girdles " ". An important branch of the woollen industry was the manufacture of worsted, which was already established in Norfolk and Suffolk at the opening of the fourteenth century. It is evident that worsted cloth had gained a reputation before the coming of Flemish artisans under Edward III., for the accounts of the city chamberlain for the year 1301 include "presents sent to the justices of the lord king and others his ministers, as in cloth, wine, oats, cloths of Worstead and cloths of Aylsham, out of courtesy of the whole community". 'Worsteds' were apparently also termed ‘Irelonds', and 'cloth of Ireland' is mentioned as early as the reign of Henry III., though this may possibly refer to imported Irish cloth. In any case, it should be remarked that at first the worsted trade was associated not with Norwich, later its most famous centre, but with Worstead and Aylsham. To all appearance the foreign weavers, who came over to England at Edward III.'s invitation, did not take up their residence in Norwich to any considerable extent. There is mention, however, of one, John Kempe, whom it is tempting to identify with the famous captain of industry' to whom the king had granted letters patent in 1331, but it may have been merely a namesake. In the next reign many weavers became freemen of the city, an indication of expanding trade and prosperity. 1 Statutes, ii. 345, 411. 2 Rymer (O. ed.), xii. 655, 716; xiii. 132. • Records of Norwich, ii. 35. Norfolk long wool was specially adapted for worsted: J. James, History of the Worsted Manufacture (1857), 44. 5 Madox, Exchequer, 383 (n. d). Macpherson (Annals, i. 422) identifies it as Irish cloth, but this is doubtful. Cloth of Ireland is also enumerated among commodities paying customs at Southampton, c. 1300: Oak Book, ii. 6. 6 Records of Norwich, ii. p. lxvi. Ibid. ii. p. lxvii. |
