306 Textiles and Textile Materials Trades 



cloth was often sold in an hour's time, and much of it was shipped 

 abroad at Hull.^ This is telling evidence of the ^'olume of this com- 

 mission business. 



Draper. 



The woolen drapers seem to have differentiated their employment 

 and separated their function from the general cloth manufacture and 

 trade during the fourteenth century. In the 37th year of Edward 

 Ill's reign (1363), a sumptuary act was passed in which the dealers 

 in cloth were enjoined to furnish certain quantities of cloth and the 

 ones then existent were "fesours des draps et drapers;"- another act 

 mentions "marchauntz nomez grossiers"^ and restricts them to cloth 

 alone or some other single commodity. In 1364 the first charter was 

 granted to the Draper's Company of London, signifying that a. body 

 of clothdealers was arising."* They were arising in various parts of 

 the kingdom during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. At 

 Beverley in 1390 the gild merchants were called mercers, in 1446 

 merceri, marchaunts and marchands, mercatores, merchants, drapers, 

 and pannarii. By 1446 the gild seems to have differentiated into three 

 somewhat distinct classes, viz. "merchants, mercers, and drapers."^ 

 The Beverley middlemen were defined in 1492 as including "every 

 one living in the town of Beverley who attends fairs and markets, buy- 

 ing cloth to resell and retail in the town of Beverley."^ The "draper's 

 crafte" existed in Worcester in 1456 and 1467 and 1497 according to 

 extant testimony in Chancery Proceedings for those dates." Deloney 

 mentions that Jack of Newbury sold to RandoU Pert, a draper of 

 London, for credit,^ but it does not appear whether he was a retailer 

 or wholesaler or both. About the same date a gild decree at Beverley 

 grouped all retail dealers of the town in the brotherhood and livery of 

 the drapers.^ 



It appears that the drapers were occasioned by the migration of 

 industry from the towns to the country and the consequent establish- 

 ment of the domestic system of cloth manufacture in the homes. The 

 rise of the country clothier was primarily due to the arbitrary restric- 

 tions laid by the town craft gilds. Heretofore, each craftsman might 

 have retailed his own product. Hereafter, cloth that was produced 



1 Anderson, Origin, III, 459. « See Selden XIV, p. 75. 



- 37 Ed. Ill, Cap. XV. ^ V. C. H., Worces., II, 285. 



3 Ibid., V. » Deloney, Jno. Winch., 106. 



' Hazlitt, London Liv. Cos., 198-9. » Selden, XIV, p. 100. 

 ^ See Selden, XIV, pp. .S3, 74, 81, 99. 



