THE

WILTSHIRE MAGAZINE.

66

MULTORUM MANIBUS GRANDE LEVATUR ONUS."-Ovid.

No. CXLI.

DECEMBER, 1924.

VOL. XLII.

THE WEST OF ENGLAND CLOTH INDUSTRY: A SEVENTEENTH CENTURY EXPERIMENT IN STATE CONTROL.

By KATE E. BARFORD, M.A.

In the counties of Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, and Somersetshire was carried on the manufacture of "white undressed cloths," which were the staple export of the Merchant Adventurers to the Netherlands. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, when the prosperity of the Adventurers was at its height, there were exported annually more than sixty thousand white cloths, which were valued at about £600,000.1 This trade, however, came to an abrupt end by the introduction, in 1614, of the disastrous Cockayne scheme, by which, in the interests of the London cloth workers, it was proposed to dye and dress all English cloth within the realm. This action threatened to ruin the dyeing and dressing industry of the Netherlands and produced results which permanently affected the English cloth trade. The Netherlanders refused to import English dyed cloth, so that within two years the Cockayne scheme was abandoned and the charter of the Merchant Adventurers was renewed. The complete revival of the earlier trade, however, was impossible, for the need for the undressed cloth which England had of late refused to supply had given an impetus to the clothmaking industry in the Netherlands. This implied a measure of independence of the English cloth market, the practical result of which was the institution of a much closer scrutiny of the quality of all imported cloth. In England, where the cause of the economic situation was probably not fully appreciated, the lack of sale was attributed chiefly to the faults in manufacture. The Merchant Adventurers complained bitterly of the abatements in the price of cloth made by buyers in the Netherlands for defects in manufacture, for this involved serious financial loss and reflected upon the merchants' reputation. Moreover, they felt that there was some justification for these statements owing to the poor quality of the English cloth. If these complaints were merited the fault lay not with the Government, which by law and proclamation provided for the true making of cloth, but in the failure of manufacturers to carry out these regulations. In 1 Wheeler. Treatise of Commerce, 1601.

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1630, therefore, the Merchant Adventurers petitioned the Privy Council to grant powers of investigation to two men whom they wished to send to the West of England to discover means for improving the manufacture; 1 and a commission of inquiry was therefore granted to Anthony Wither and Samuel Lively, the nominees of the merchants.

The investigation to be pursued by any commissioner for clothing would naturally fall under two heads: (a) an examination of the methods and materials used in the manufacture of cloth, and (b) an inquiry into the efficiency of the supervision of that manufacture.

The organisation of the woollen industry in the West of England centred in the capitalist clothier. Unlike the clothiers of the North, who were small manufacturers and employed few besides members of their own household, the typical western clothier was wealthier, controlled large stocks, and employed a great number of weavers and spinners, who, while probably working in their own houses, depended upon the clothier for wages. When slackness of trade compelled the clothier to set aside his men, the justice of the peace, at the instance of the Council, would probably put pressure upon him to find work for them in the interests of the peace of the county, which might be jeopardised by unemployment. But generally the interests of peace and prosperity united the justices and the clothiers in a common aim both worked together to minimise the irritating official oversight of the manufacture of cloth which often caused delays and inconvenience, involving probable loss of trade. However, before 1630 a new situation had been created in the West, by the appearance of the market spinner, who was in some sort a rival to the clothier. After the upheaval caused by the disastrous Cockayne scheme, the West had developed an industry in coloured cloth, and this was accompanied by a change in the spinning industry. In 1633, a report of the Wiltshire Justices of the Peace shews that many of the clothiers who made coloured cloth bought their yarn in the weekly market from middlemen known as Market Spinners, who dealt in large quantities of wool and employed many spinners. They carried on so successful a trade that the wool growers estimated that they bought twothirds of the wool used in the district. The reason for their success was said to lie in the fact that they were able to give higher rates of pay to their spinners than could the clothiers who employed their own spinners, because the "coloured" clothiers to whom they sold their yarn paid higher prices than the "white men" did, with the obvious result that spinners more readily worked for them than for the clothier. This fact was undoubtedly at the root of the rivalry between the market spinner and the clothier, who

1 State Papers, Dom., Ch. I., CLXXX., 74, 1630.

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2 The most famous of the new manufactures was Spanish cloth, a medley cloth made of Spanish and English wool, and " dyed in the wool." It was made exclusively in the West of England, and gained a great national and European reputation. It was undoubtedly this cloth which was indicated in the "well known cloths " referred to later.

3 State Papers, Domestic, Ch. I., CCXLIII., 23, July 23rd, 1633. Letter from justices of the peace for Wilts to the Council.

apparently found great difficulty in securing spinners to work for him, and was therefore the underlying cause of the controversy which engaged the constant attention of the commissioner and local authorities during the inquiry of 1630.

But the sale of yarn to "coloured" clothiers is not sufficient to explain the existence of the market spinner. The clothier had never succeeded in completely suppressing the independent spinner, who bought his own wool and sold the yarn in the market, and when the new trade in coloured cloths began, involving the sale of both coloured and white yarn, the existence of the weekly yarn market afforded an excellent opportunity for the development of the market spinner; he never succeeded in eliminating the independent spinner altogether, but he soon began to enter into vigorous competition with him and to supply the increasing demands of the clothier with yarn which he had employed spinners to produce. Moreover, he did not confine his sales to "coloured" clothiers, but supplied with yarn certain “white” clothiers also, probably the poorer men, who found it more profitable to buy yarn than to procure a weekly supply of wool in the market and employ their own spinners. The more substantial "white" clothiers, on the other hand, did not deal in the weekly market but bought wool in large quantities annually from the wool growers. It was these clothiers who found in the market spinners successful rivals in the production of yarn, and it was because to a certain extent they both produced the yarn which was used in the making of white undressed cloth that these clothiers hoped to substantiate the claim which they made, that the yarn supplied by the market spinners was the cause of faults in white cloth. In the investigation of 1630, therefore, this was the "white" clothiers' chief ground of complaint. It was an established fact in the seventeenth century that one of the two principal faults which were found in the manufacture of cloth was the making of false yarn. Yarn ought to contain wool of one quality only, for since different qualities varied in stretching power it was essential to the manufacture of good cloth that the wools should not be mixed. It was apparently a common occurrence to discover the presence of mingled yarns in finished cloth when it was tested in water, whence it would consequently emerge" cockled and banded." The "white" clothier maintained that it was not possible to detect false yarn before the cloth was manufactured, though by statute the clothier was responsible for his faulty cloth: thus it could be alleged with some justice that the market spinner unfairly escaped responsibility, and, indeed, his very immunity was deemed sufficient in the eyes of the clothier to justify the accusation that the market spinner was the producer of false yarn. The question of false yarn was in this way merged in the conflict of the rival capitalists and was waged with varying success throughout the period during which the inquiry of 1630 was being pursued. Of the two most persistent faults in the manufacture of cloth in the seventeenth century, the defects in spinning attracted most attention in the inquiry of 1630, but equally pernicious was that of stretching and straining the finished cloth by means of a tenter. This abuse had been prohibited by statute in the North of England in 1597'; but, when the

1 39 Eliz., Ch. XX.

provisions of this Act were extended to the rest of the country in 16011 the prohibition was modified, and stretching to the extent of one yard in a cloth of English manufacture was allowed on the ground that during the fulling process there was undue shrinking. Tenters "with lower bar," however, involved excessive straining and were forbidden; nevertheless, for certain kinds of inferior cloth, such as that known as "Stroudwater Red," licence was given to use the tenter3 "with lower bar." But where these tenters were set up it was suspected that the privilege was abused, and white cloth was stretched thereon to undue length, making it so thin that it sometimes pulled into holes which had to be treated with such foreign matter as chalk and oatmeal.

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The objection to the engines known as gigmills" was of a similar nature. They were used for “ perching and burling "6 coloured cloths, and not only stretched them but also tore and ruined them. The use of gigmills had been prohibited in 1555,7 but they reappeared in Stroudwater under the name of mosing mills, and, in the opinion of both the merchants and the Council, needed to be destroyed.

To carry out the legislation against the manufacture of defective cloths, officials known as searchers were appointed annually by the justices of the peace. The duty of the searcher was to examine the length and breadth of the cloth as it came wet from the fulling mill (i.e., when it was thoroughly shrunk), to test its weight when dry, and to affix a seal as proof of examination. Unfortunately a great deal of corruption existed in the attempt to avoid regulation. In the appointment of searchers the justices of the peace often conspired with the clothiers to choose either incompetent men who were incapable of detecting the faults in cloth, or else men who were in the employ of the clothiers and therefore were not free agents. Hence, cloths frequently escaped adequate examination. Searchers affixed to the cloths seals on which the particulars of size and weight were omitted, or evaded the responsibility of having inadequately performed their duty by neglecting to affix their own signatures. More commonly, searchers simply handed over the seals to clothiers to append what particulars they

1 43 Eliz., Ch. X.

2 The length of cloths varied from about 24 to 30 yards. Shorter cloths could be stretched only yard.

3 Tenter. The frame on which the cloth was stretched to make its proportions even after it had been shrunk in the fulling mill. A bottom beam, or "lower bar," of this framework was so constructed that it might be lowered and thus cause excessive stretching of the cloth.

4 State Papers, Dom., Ch. I., CCXV., 26. 18th April, 1632. Report of Anthony Wither to the Council.

Gigmill. An "engine" for raising the nap on the cloth by means of teazels.

6 Burling. Picking the "burrs," or "burls," from the surface of woollen cloth.

7 5 & 6 Ed. VI., CXXII.