Middlemen in English Business 111 



and makers of cloth" of Worcester.^ In Southampton the employees 

 consisted, 1616, of "serge weavers and woolkemmers" and "cloth- 

 workers" such as "doe . . . rowinge, burlinge, fullinge, dress- 

 inge and pressmge."^ 



Those clothiers who stand out with the greatest halo of tradition 

 tried the concentration of these employments in large halls. Deloney 

 in 1632 in his introduction to "Thomas of Reading" said in retrospect 

 that "Every one of these (nine clothiers of the West) kept a great 

 Number of Servants at Worke, Spinners, Carders, Weavers, Fullers, 

 Dyers, Sheeremen, and Rowers, to the great Admiration of all those 

 that came into their Houses to behold them." The same author in a 

 poetical dissertation on John Winchcombe, the celebrated "Jack of 

 Newbery," gave the following statistics of his employees; at 200 looms, 

 200 men and 200 boys, 100 women carding, 200 "maydens" spinning, 

 150 children picking wool, 50 "shearemen," 80 rowers, 40 men in the 

 dyehouse, 20 men in the fuUing mill, a butcher, brewer, baker, 5 

 cooks, 6 scullions, and children "to turne the broaches every day."^ 

 This traditional clothier lived about 1500. Fuller says "he was the 

 most considerable clothier, without fancy or fiction, England ever 

 beheld." Thomas Dolman succeeded Winchcombe as the leading 

 clothier of Newbery.'' 



Wages were paid in truck or money. A schedule of wages paid b\^ 

 a Gloucester clothier to his numerous employees in 1737 shows that 

 one pack of wool would give employment to 58 persons for one week 

 at a total combined wage of £19 85. The list contained one sorter, 

 one dyer and cleaner, four men and two boys, 'scribblers," thirty 

 women carders and spinners, four spoolers and winders, four "bur- 

 lers," five weavers. The spinning and weaving were the most costly.^ 

 The evils of the truck system caused much complaint: one disgusted 

 employee at Worcester in the sixteenth century was receiving "soup, 

 candels, rotten cloth, stinking fish, and such Hke baggage. "° Even 

 in the previous century this city was forbidding truck payments by 



' See regulations laid by the town, 1467, V. C. H., Worces. II, 286. 



2 Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. XI, App. Ill, 95; V. C. H., Hants, V, 486. 



^ Deloney, Jno. Winch, 37. The existence of this celebrated clothier has been 

 called in question by historical critics in recent years; and of course these statistics 

 are but poetical statements and not at all likely to be true. It is not likely however 

 that the position of the clothier as employer was fabricated by the poet, but that 

 he described the organization which was familiar to him in his day. 



^ Henry, Hist, of Gt. Br., 424. 



5 "The Golden Fleece," 1737. 



6 Pollard, The Protector Somerset, 214; V. C. H., Worces. II, 288. 



