286 Textiles and Textile Materials Trades 



where it had been monopolized for centuries.^ This increase in the 

 north's trade during the eighteenth century was, contrarily to what 

 had happened in the sixteenth, promoted by the practical extinction 

 of the two great trading companies that had exported its cloth and 

 the substitution of independent merchants." 



The water carriage in the north was facilitated by its many rivers 

 and harbors. The roads were poor. The cloth trade tended to con- 

 centrate in the river and sea ports. The trade on the Trent, for in- 

 stance, from Nottingham, and on the Ouse from York, and on the 

 Aire from Leeds, to Hull on the Humber, was large.^ In 1627 York 

 sent cloth by way of Hull, Newcastle, West Chester, London, and 

 other ports;'' in 1676 it despatched 30,000 cloths from Hull yearly, 

 chiefly to Stoad in Germany, and of 80,000 cloths made in West 

 Riding 60,000 went abroad through the ports of Hull, London, West- 

 chester and Stock ton. '^ 



Before coming to these seaports the cloth was assembled in interior 

 towns in great cloth markets. There was a remarkable geographical 

 division of labor among these towns. The old accustomed market 

 at Barnsley was dispossessed during the first half of the seventeenth 

 century by Wakefield. In 1627 it was declared that "Wakefeilde 

 now is the greatest markett and principall place of resorte of all sorts 

 of Clothiers Drapers and other trafiickers for cloath in all thees 

 parts.''*' And in 1640 a petition of the Barnsley citizens prayed that 

 the weekly cloth market at Wakefield ''but lately invented may be 

 put a stop to."^ But by 1676 it had gained a permanent ascendancy."^ 

 The broad-cloth trade and manufacture were centering in Leeds about 

 1700 and the kersey trade in Halifax.^ According to a description of 

 the country about 1800, "The whole number of the broad-cloth manu- 

 facturers in the West Riding of Yorkshire was calculated in 1794 to be 

 3240, no one of whom is to be found more than one mile east, nor two 

 miles north of Leeds, nor are there many in the town, and those only 

 in the outskirts."^" During the sixteenth century the shoddy trade 



^ Bischoff, Comp. Hist. I, 185. 

 2V. C. H., York, II, 417. 

 3 V. C. H., Nott., II, 278-9; York, II, 415. 

 ' S. P. Dom., Ch. I, XI, 82. 

 ' V. C. H., York, II, 416. 



« S. P. Dom. Ch. I, XC, 54; V. C. H., York, II, 414. 

 7 Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. IV, App. 36. 

 8V. C. H., York, II, 416. 

 9 Ibid., II, 417. 

 '■" See description of the Leeds' market under the head "Factors at Leeds." 



