256 Textiles and Textile Materials Trades 



trade was highly organized and centralized in spite of the fact that 

 the production was so broadly distributed over most of England. 

 London played a most conspicuous role in the collection and distri- 

 bution both of the raw and manufactured product. These two 

 processes occasioned a complex set of middlemen, and the great 

 volume of trade made possible a higher degree of specialization of its 

 various branches than was to be had in the other trades.^ 



Distribution. 



Roughly considered, the woolen industry was divided into three 

 districts, first, the Eastern division centering in Nor\^ich, Colchester, 

 Sandwich, Canterbury and Maidstone; secondly, the Western cen- 

 tering in Taunton, Devises, Bradford, Frome, Trowbridge, Stroud, 

 and Exeter; and lastly, the Northern or West Riding division.- But 

 no section was without some woolen manufacture, and household 

 production for family use was universal. The one fact of all others 

 to be noted is that these several districts and parts within these dis- 

 tricts specialized in particular kinds of cloth, and each became famous 

 for its brand.^ This differentiation in kind of cloth produced made 

 each section dependent somewhat on the other for those sorts of cloth 

 which it did not produce itself. Thus a trade in cloth had arisen and 

 was very extensi\'e although no part of the Kingdom was without its 

 cloth manufacture. The Yorkshire district drew the finer cloths 

 from Wiltshire and Gloucestershire; the Norwich and Exeter manu- 

 facturers had their coarser cloths from the North; while the people of 

 the Southwest were supplied from the North and East in exchange 

 for their serges. This reciprocal interchange of cloth was in part 

 direct from district to district, but the greater part was centered in 



'^ The writer is very much indebted to the writings of Unwin, Ashley, Cunning- 

 ham, and others for generalizations and valuable suggestions as to the organization 

 of the cloth industry and wishes to make due acknowledgment of their help in 

 developing this chapter. 



' Hobson, Mod. Cap., 26. 



' The Eastern division produced worsteds, stuffs, serges, camlets, crapes, ba3-s, 

 sayes and perpetuanos; the Western turned out duroys, druggets, shalloons, 

 broadcloths, medley cloths, dyed cloths, etc.; the Northern furnished the market 

 with coarse cloths, kerseys, stockings, and cotton-weft goods. Colchester had long 

 been famous for its bays and sayes, Norwich for its druggets, duroys and serges, 

 Wiltshire for its dyed cloths, Nottingham for its stockings, etc. See the "Atlas 

 Mar. et Com.," 109, for a more extensive treatment. Defoe, Com. Eng. Tr., 

 194-5, gives a very complete tabular display of the cloths produced in each county 

 in 1745. 



