308 Textiles and Textile Materials Trades 



and their apprentices to make woman's hoses, as they heretofore 

 have used . . . "^ But here some discrimination was made 

 against the pure drapers and "lynnynmen;" they ''were to sell only 

 in guildhall, and pay . . . for their stalls," whereas any "man 

 or woman denysyn" might ''sill linen cloth of their proper makyng 

 without contradiction of eny person."^ The drapers of Shrewsbur\^ 

 were the finishers of the Welsh cottage-made grey cloths from Ehza- 

 beth's time till the midst of the eighteenth century.^ ''The cloth 

 bought at Oswestry and the two Welsh markets of Welshpool and 

 Montgomery w^as brought to Shrewsbury, and there handed over by 

 the drapers to the shearman and clothworkers to be dressed and to 

 the dyers (hewsters) to be coloured."^ They made them up into 

 bales, some of which contained 2000 yards and shipped them down the 

 Severn. These operations were very like those of the merchants of 

 the north manufacturing district. 



But the trade of the draper ujiderwent a progressive differentiation 

 from the artisan class, from the retailing class, and from the merchant 

 class. At Beverley they were given a monopoly of dealing in woolen 

 cloth and hose; this ordinance, 1572, was to prevent "marchantes" 

 from "buyinge and sellinge of any woUen clothe belonging to the 

 Drapers crafte, or women's hose, ... or any other kind of 

 woollen clothe that might be hurtefull to the saide Drapers."^ The 

 Tailors in particular had been, in 1561, warned to "bye no maner of 

 woillen clothe or clothes, to the intent to sell the same againe, by 

 hollsaile or retaile, by yerde or otherwyse.'"' It would be a safe infer- 

 ence from a State Paper dated 1627 that the distinction between 

 draper and merchant was recognized at that date in Yorkshire. A 

 petition from Wakefield stated that the "small quan title of cloth 

 there made is noe sea ware but sould to Drapers onlie."' The Drapers 

 Company of London furnished a goodly quota to the membership of 

 the Merchants Adventurers, some becoming merchant exporters as 

 England began to manufacture her wool herself. The distinction 

 between the retailing mercer and the wholesaling draper was always 

 relative. They were often incorporated in the same gild-^ As will 



1 Quoted in Noake, Wore, in Olden Times, 37; V. C. H., Wore, II, 287-8. 



2V. C. H., Wore, II, 286. 



^ Cf. Aikin, Tour in North Wales, 74. 



^ V. C. H., Shrop. I, 431; Add. MSS. 21202. fol. 208-9. 



s Selden, XIV, 108. 



6 Ibid., 105. 



' S. P. Dom., Chas. I, LXI, 84; V. C. H., York, II, 414. 



" For example, in 1572, at Oxford; see Turner, Select. Rec. Oxford, 342. 



