Middlemen in English Business 285 



famine and pestilence; there was a chronic dearth of raw materials 

 except the poor-quality far-north wool. It was distinctly the pro- 

 ducer of cheap cloth — the well known kerseys — hybrid kinds of 

 cloth, made with linen or woolen woof and cotton or short-wool weft. 

 It was dominated by the foreign Eastland trade and the metropolitan 

 trade; foreign and London merchants were resident in these parts or 

 had agents resident there; and these merchants were the centralizing 

 force in the clothing organization. There was also a rank opposition 

 to the immigration of fine skilled workmen into the north : the Flemish 

 and Huguenot immigrants brought no such profit to this region as 

 they did to Norwich; and this is one reason why the region stuck to 

 cheap kerseys.^ 



The originals of the kerseys were household products of very early 

 centuries. They reached little importance before the sixteenth cen- 

 tury .^ The towns of these parts encouraged clothmaking in numer- 

 ous ways at different times; for example, Lincoln allowed all persons 

 who came to buy cloth, or bring wool, woad, madder, oil, alum, or 

 other necessaries for clothmaking to be free of toll for seven years.^ 

 The manufacture of ''fustians," later called "cottons," a mixture of 

 wool and linen, had been begun in Salford Hundred before 1600' and 

 estabhshed itself during Tudor times. This manufacture was stim- 

 ulated by the organization of the cloth-export trade by the Merchants 

 Adventurers and the Eastland Merchants and their facilitation of 

 transportation to the Baltic region, where these coarse durable fabrics 

 were used by the Pomeranian and PoUsh nobles to clothe their re- 

 tainers.^ This increase of trade to the East reacted favorably on the 

 manufacturing organization by breaking down the gild municipal 

 control and freeing independent producers from restrictions.*^ During 

 the seventeenth century the expansion was very rapid. The gild 

 control during the previous century had been so repressive as to cause 

 a migration of clothmakers from the towns to the country." Towards 

 the end of the seventeenth century a new phase was entered upon by 

 the woolen manufactures of the north, for the worsted trade then 

 began to be transferred thither, at a phenomenal rate, from Norfolk 



' See discussion of the immigration problem in \'. C. H., York, III, 458-61. 



= V. C. H., Lancas., II, 295. 



' Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. 14, .\pp. VIII, 26; \. C. H.. Lincoln. II, 381. 



' V. C. H., Lancas., II, 296. 



= V. C. H., York, III, 460; B. M., Reasons, 816 m (,100;. 



« Ibid., 451-2. 



■Ibid., II, 411-2; 111,450. 



