288 Textiles and Textile Materials Trades 



but were themselves independent producers on a very small scale and 

 margin. "The presence in Yorkshire of highj.y diffused capital, the 

 result of ceaseless denial and penurious habits" was most likely ef- 

 fected by these self-employed artisans — particularly weavers — using 

 their own materials, bought for cash or long term credit.^ These 

 merchants were more distinctly middlemen than the clothiers of the 

 west of England. From the weavers they usually simply bought the 

 cloth, — the weavers ha\dng provided themselves with warps and 

 weft; or else they simply warehoused the cloths received from the 

 weavers and distributed them for export or consumption in the 

 country.- They bought in the grey and had them colored and finished 

 according to order of customers. 



Poverty necessitated some sort of middleman in these parts. The 

 merchant or agent of the merchant supplied this want by buying the 

 unfinished cloth and bringing raw materials within reach. The Act 

 of Edward VI forbidding middlemen's activities provoked the cloth- 

 makers of Lancashire to petition the government for relief. They 

 alleged that they were "poore cotagers whose habilitye wyll not 

 streche neyther to buy any substance of wolles to mayntayne work 

 and labour, nor yet to fetche the same," and that the enforcement of 

 the statute would drive trade into the hands of the few rich men of 

 these parts .^ 



Most of the clothing trade was performed in the suburbs and rural 

 parts. In part, as has been shown, this fact was due to the gilds' 

 repressive control of town industries. In part it was due to the lower 

 cost of production in rural parts. York suffered a transfer of cloth- 

 iers to the small towns of HaUfax, Leeds and Wakefield during the 

 sixteenth centur)-', for instance, from these two reasons. Production 

 was cheaper there "for that not onely the commoditie of the water 

 mylns is ther nigh hande but also the poore folke as speynners, carders, 

 and other bysyde ther hand labor have Rye, fyre, and other releif 

 good cheape which is in this citie very deare and wantyng.""* Two 

 centuries later it was a common comment of travellers and writers 

 that farming was a bye-industry to spinning and weaving. In 1770 

 of the farmers of much of Lancashire fewer than one-tenth " raised their 

 rents directly from the produce of their farms; all the rest got their 

 rent partly in some branch of trade, such as spinning and weaving 



' V. C. H., Lancas., II, 382; York, II, 417; Tuke, Agric. of N. Riding, 38. 



- Ibid., II, 383. 



3 S. P. Doni. Eliz., CXVII, No. 38, quoted in Ec. Joum. X, 23. 



^Y. C. H., York, III, 450; York Munic. Rec. XIII, fol. 20a. 8 Jul. 1561. 



