274 Textiles and Textile Materials Trades 



have reached the acme of their renown and importance between 1690 

 and 1760/ after which they declined rapidly under the throes of the 

 Industrial Revolution and the migration of industry to the north. 

 The family fortunes were usually indigenous to the trade; the clothiers 

 began as poor masters and attained to wealth. Richard Baxter said, 

 "My People were not Rich . . . there were none of the Trades- 

 men very rich . . . The Magistrates of the Town were few of them 

 worth 40 1. per An. and most not half so much. Three or four of the 

 Richest thriving Masters of the Trade, got about 500 1. or 600 1. in 

 twenty years, and it may be lose 100 1. of it at once by an ill Debtor. "- 



Defoe found that about Bradford in Wiltshire it was no extra- 

 ordinary thing in 1722 to find clothiers worth from £10,000 to 

 £40,000 and that many of the great families of gentry had risen to 

 wealth and rank in the capacity of clothier.^ These accumulations 

 of wealth are evidence of large profits at least in the earlier decades 

 of the industry. But if the public declarations of the clothiers them- 

 selves may be trusted the rate of profits declined very much in the 

 second quarter of the eighteenth centur}^ One states that during the 

 '30's four-fifths of the Western woolens had been manufactured on a 

 3 per cent basis upon the capital invested. Intense local competition, 

 the north district's growing competition, the decline in the foreign 

 demand for Spanish cloth, and the custom of carrying larger stocks 

 of finished cloth were the causes ascribed for the decline.-' 



At various times and places the more adventurous, able and wealthy 

 clothiers attempted to set up production on a large scale. The ven- 

 tures were not always successful. William Stumpe clothier of Malmes- 

 bury in 1546 rented Osney Abbey and engaged "himself to fynd work 

 for ii (2,000) persons from tyme to tyme, if they may be gotten, that 

 wyll do their worke well contynually in clothemaking, for the succour 

 of the cytye of Oxenford and the country about yt, for the which 

 intent the my lies were made."^ This charitable attempt failed; but 

 the success of some others was so great that traditions have gathered 

 about certain clothiers' names much as they have about the semi- 

 mythical military heroes of primitive Britain. Berks prides herself 



1 V. C. H. Glouccs. II, 160. 



^ "Baxterianae Reliquiae," pt. 1, 94. 



3 Defoe, Tour, II, 35. 



^Gent. Mag., 1739:125, 135, 236-7, 479. "Public Register,"" 24 Jan. 1741. 

 Cf. Nash, Worces. II, app. CXIV; \'. C. H., Berks, I, 391-2. 



'" Gough, IMS. Oxon., 70; Records of City of Oxf., 184-6; Cunningham and Mac- 

 Arthur, Outlines, 204-5; V. C. H., Oxf. II, 244. 



