INDUSTRIES 



The yarn woven in the country districts was 

 collected by riders sent out by the clothiers and 

 delivered to the weavers. The weaver, though 

 he too was dependent on the clothier for 

 employment, was not in so helpless a position 

 as the spinner. The power of his organiza- 

 tion in the town, though weakened, was not 

 destroyed. The line between the clothier 

 and the weaver was, at first, not sharply drawn. 

 The more prosperous among the weavers gradu- 

 ally developed into clothiers, and Suffolk was 

 one of the counties in which this tendency was 

 allowed to have free play, since it was exempted 

 from the operation of the statutes forbidding 

 clothiers to set up outside the market towns. 1 

 But although a master weaver here and there 

 might rise in the world, the majority were 

 sinking into the position of wage-earners. A 

 petition of the weavers of Ipswich, Hadleigh, 

 Lavenham, Bergholt, and other towns in 1539 

 states that the clothiers have their own looms 

 and weavers and fullers in their own houses, so 

 that the master weavers are rendered destitute. 



For the rich men the clothiers be concluded and 

 agreed among themselves to hold and pay one price 

 for weaving, which price is too little to sustain house- 

 holds upon, working night and day, holyday and 

 weekday, and many weavers are therefore reduced to 

 the position of servants." 



As a rule, however, the weaving continued to be 

 done in the weavers' homes, although perhaps in 

 some cases the loom was the property of the 

 employer. Elaborate regulations, both by Par- 

 liament and by the local authorities, were to 

 ensure that the right weight of yarn should be 

 delivered by the clothier, and that none of it 

 should be wasted or stolen by the weaver. The 

 fuller, who next took over the cloth, was also 

 employed by the clothier. It would be a natural 

 thing for a fuller with a little spare capital to set 

 up a loom in his house, and no doubt he did so, 

 as we find it forbidden in later ordinances, just 

 as we find the weaver and the shearman prose- 

 cuted for setting up as clothiers. 



When the cloth was woven and fulled the 

 clothier might have it finished by the local shear- 

 man, but he more often seems to have disposed 

 of it to the merchant. The two chief markets 

 for the Suffolk clothier were London and Ipswich. 

 A good deal of Suffolk cloth was bought by the 

 London clothworkers to finish, and some was 

 bought by the London merchants ready finished 

 for export. 



The London clothworkers, who naturally 

 wished to concentrate the finishing trade as much 

 as possible in the metropolis,' used their powers 

 of search to further this end. We find them in 

 1539 seizing twenty-nine broad Suffolk cloths 

 on board the ship of Edward Lightmaker of the 



1 Stat. 4 and 5 Phil, and Mar}', cap. 5, Sec. 25. 

 * L. and P. Hen. Fill, xiv (1), 874. 



Steelyard, and declaring them to be forfeited as 

 not wrought according to the Act. 3 In a petition 

 already alluded to, which was presented in 1575, 

 the clothiers of Suffolk declared that 



the statute as it is cannot be observed by any 

 means. The reason is this. We occupy the coarsest 

 wools that are occupied in this land which will not 

 brave out the danger and the charge that finer wool 

 will in spinning and other workmanship. 



After attributing many of the defects in the 

 cloth to the inevitable conditions of the domestic 

 system, they add that they are forbidden by 

 statute to use any engine, which they are never- 

 theless obliged to do, and that lewd persons inform 

 against them. If the law were strictly carried 

 out the trade would be brought to a standstill, 

 but the search being in London not one in three- 

 score is searched. 



These extremities, the petition proceeds, make us 

 the clothiers to shun the open market and to commit 

 our trust to clothworkers to make sale of our cloths 

 who many times commend unto us men that are not 

 able to pay to our great hindrance, and they do seek 

 out chapmen and offer our commodities to them who 

 being sought unto will not by any means give us any 

 reasonable price. . . . We are forced to lay our 

 commodities to pawn upon a bill of sale to pay our 

 poor workmen and others that we be indebted unto 

 and to pawn ,£40 worth of commodities for £20 and 

 to give £10 in the hundred. 4 



An illustration of this system of credit is 

 supplied by the records of the Ipswich borough 

 court. It appears that in 1577 Sebastian Mann, 

 a merchant of Ipswich, agreed to take from 

 Anthony Colman, clothier of Wadringfield, six 

 broad cloths called 'asers' (azures) of the value 

 of ^5 3 10/. Mann was to be bound along with 

 his brother for £40 before Bartholomew's day, 

 and was to give a bill for the payment of the rest 

 at Christmas. In the meantime the cloths were to 

 be sent to John Cowper, a shearman of Ipswich, 

 who would 'dress' them and deliver them to 

 Mann on receiving assurance that the bond for 

 £40 was duly executed. Mann, however, 

 without having executed the bond, obtained 

 delivery of two of the cloths and sold them to 

 other merchants, and while three more were 

 lying at Cowper's house, a certain creditor of 

 Mann's named Leete, sent the Serjeant of the 

 mayor of Ipswich to attach them, whereupon the 

 shearman declared that the cloths were the 

 property, not of Mann but of Colman the 

 clothier. 5 It need not be supposed that trans- 

 actions of this unsatisfactory kind were of so 

 regular occurrence as the language of petitions 

 might seem to imply. But the clothier often 

 gave credit to the merchant, and it was said that 

 the clothiers of a dozen small towns in Suffolk 



3 L. and P. Hen. fill, xiv (2), 97. 

 ' S.P. Dom. Eliz. cvi, 48. 



4 Dep. Bk. in town records of Ipswich, 2 1 Eliz. 



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