282 Textiles and Textile Materials Trades 



trade. The wool was brought to this market by the buyers, jobbers 

 and merchants (previously discussed) and by merchant importers from 

 Spain and the Mediterranean and from Ireland. Besides woolen 

 cloths and wool, "Oyl and dying stuffs" and "all goods belonging to 

 the Clothing trade" were handled here.^ When factors developed 

 they were engaged by the wool broggers to sell their wool; as was said, 

 " they come to this agreement with the Factor or Packer that if either 

 of these can help them to a Clothier that will take off their Wool and 

 afterwards sell the Cloth for him, and secure him their Money for the 

 Wool, that they shall have such a constant Salary, out of every pack 

 of Wool, sent him down."- 



From very early times the cloths of this whole west district found 

 readiest market in London. Even the port towns and counties dis- 

 patched their product to the metropolis.^ Deloney described the 

 manner of carriage of west England cloth to London in the days of 

 his early hero Thomas by saying that "he met with a great Number 

 of Waines loaden with Cloth, comming to London" that "drive one 

 after another," and that he stood aside '"whilest the Carts passed by, 

 the which at that Time being in Number aboue Two Hundred/' so 

 many that he "thought Old Cole had got a Commission for all the 

 Carts in the Country to carry his cloth."* Pack-horse trains and 

 wagon trains composed the transportation faciUties of the day. 



The pack-horse antedated the wagon and cart, and the super- 

 cession of the former by the latter was contingent on the improvement 

 of the roads. Packs or panniers were strapped to the back of the 

 horse ;^ the horses were tethered one behind another; the lead-horse car- 

 ried a bell; and the train moved in single solid file by sinuous narrow 

 pack-horse roads or bridle-paths. The whole picture is curtly put 

 in the line, "pile the pack on the long tinkling train of slow-pac'd 

 steeds," from Dyer's 'The Fleece.' They were in charge of a "pack- 

 horse man." Forty or fifty of these in single file, under one man's 

 control, were frequently to be met with in the seventeenth centur\- 

 in the west-country clothmaking districts, laden with the products 



"• See petition of the Somerset clothiers in "A Treatise of Wool" (1685), 28-9. 



- "Clothiers Complaint," 6. 



^ Hampshire is a good example; during a lull in the trade in 1630-1 the Hants 

 clothiers complained that the regular amount was "not bought of them by the 

 merchants of London." Stevens, Hist, of St. Mary Bourne, 249; \'. C. H., Hants, 

 V, 427. 



* Deloney, Thomas, Ch. I. 



'" See description in Owen and Blakeway, Hist. Shrews. T, 511. 



