270 Textiles and Textile Materials Trades 



Yarn Merchant. 



The yarn merchants were a class of merchants who owed their 

 existence to the locaHzation of spinning and weaving. This locaHza- 

 tion increased the interdependence of the different parts of the King- 

 dom. The clothmaking districts were forced for want of spinners to 

 draw part of their yarn from quarters near and remote. The opera- 

 tions of getting the wool from the wool-buyers, and into the hands of 

 the spinners in their localized districts, and of collecting again and 

 selling the yarn to the clothiers were performed by this specialized 

 class. Sometimes they simply bought up the surplus yarn spun by 

 the country spinners and carried it and distributed it among the 

 clothiers. They commonly combined the functions of the wool- 

 stapler (viz., assorter, kember, washer, scourer, and trimmer) with 

 that of yarn-merchant proper.^ 



The demand for yarn of the Eastern manufacturing district, centered 

 in Essex and Suffolk, was greater than the spinners of the clothing 

 towns could provide. As early as 1575 it was reported that "The 

 custom of our country (Suffolk) is to carry our wool out to carding 

 and spinning and put it to divers and sundry spinners who have in 

 their houses divers and sundry children and servants that do card and 

 spin the same wool."- The outlying parts of this district also con- 

 tributed' yarn to London. In 1618 Reyce's Breviary reported that 

 the spun yarn was divided between the Norwich manufacturers and 

 those of London, whither it was carried weekly and "readily sold to 

 those who make thereof all sorts of fringes, stuffs, and many other 

 things which at this day are used and worn."'^ A century later, 

 according to Cox (1720) Essex was still engaged "partly in Spinning 

 of great quantities of yarn, which is sent to London for the fringe- 

 makers and Spitalfield weavers."'* In 1748 Morant, the historian of 

 Colchester, found that over the greater part of the country "the 

 poorer sort are almost universally employed in spinning the wool" 

 for the weavers^ and in 1770 thirty-two parishes were specially men- 

 tioned, in or adjacent to the cloth-making portion of the county, as 

 devoted to this work.'' The same parts are enumerated in statutes of 



^ Reyce, Breviary of SuiYolk, 26. 



■' S. P. Dom., Eliz. CXIV, 32; V. H. Suff. II, 258. 



3 Op. cit., 26. 



* Co.x, I, Mag. Brit. I, 722. 



^ Morant, Hist, of Colch., 75. 



""Gentleman," II, 49; V. C. II., Essex, II, 401. 



