A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK 



the defendants had deliberately aimed at destroy- 

 ing the company's privileges, one of them having 

 been heard to say that if they had law for their 

 money they might overthrow the charter. The 

 arguments relied upon by the other side were 

 directed more to the point of policy than to the 

 point of law. It was contended that the Suf- 

 folk industry had been suffering for many years 

 for want of a free export trade, that the exclu- 

 siveness of the company made its agency inade- 

 quate and inefficient, and that trans-shipment 

 was a customary device for eluding the restraints 

 of monopoly. It is, however, the facts rather 

 than the arguments in which we are interested, 

 and these clearly point to a steady decline in 

 the Suffolk cloth trade. The number of cloths 

 exported by the Eastland Company from Ips- 

 wich dropped from 3,340 in 1626 to 728 in 

 1627, and one of the leading clothiers had not 

 sold them sixteen cloths in four years. Another 

 who once employed a hundred workers could 

 not find work for twenty. The amount raised 

 for poor relief in East Bergholt had had to be 

 doubled, and there was no prospect of improve- 

 ment. 1 



The same story is repeated five years later in 

 a similar connexion. This time it is the London 

 drapers and the merchant-adventurers who are 

 trying to gain exclusive possession of the market. 

 In 1635 the clothiers of Suffolk and Essex com- 

 plained to the Privy Council that 



on repairing to London to sell their goods as for- 

 merly they found a stand upon the market by reason 

 of an order made upon petition of the Merchant 

 Adventurers and drapers shopkeepers that no one 

 should sell any woollen cloths either by wholesale or 

 by retail but themselves. 



This order was designed to prevent the London 

 clothworkers from acting as agents to the country 

 clothiers, who often left the cloth in their hands 

 to find a purchaser. At this time, continues the 

 petition, £100,000 worth of cloth lies pawned 

 for want of buyers and in storehouses, and 



if the number of buyers be lessened the petitioners 

 cannot continue their trade. If the drapers become 

 the sole chapmen they will compel the clothiers to sell 

 at what price they please, and being few in number 

 may easily combine to agree to do so. The merchant 

 buys generally only against shipping times ; the 

 drapers buy but small quantities at some special times 

 of the year, and divers others buy of the clothiers 

 when they are most surcharged. The clothiers at all 

 times of the year are driven to repair to London to 

 sell their cloths to pay the wool-grower and the poor 

 whom they set on work. . . . The drapers are not 



1 Exch. Dep. 5 Chas. I, East. I. 



able to buy half the cloths that are brought to Lon- 

 don . . . being not 140 families and the worst and 

 hardest paymasters.' 



It appears from the Privy Council Register that 

 the petition was successful, 3 and there is an entry 

 in the London Clothworkers' Court Book under 

 the date of 15 April, 1635, authorizing the re- 

 payment of £147 8;. <)d. laid out by various 

 members in and about the reversing of an order 

 . . . prohibiting clothworkers and other to sell 

 woollen cloth. 



From what has been said it cannot be sup- 

 posed that the Suffolk cloth industry owed much 

 to the fostering care of the Stuart monarchy ; 

 but they both came to grief about the same time, 

 and there is something pathetic in the appeal 

 made by the Suffolk clothiers to the king in 

 1642 when he was issuing out of his coach at 

 Greenwich too deeply pre-occupied, one would 

 think, with his own troubles to be of any 

 assistance to the petitioners. 



The pressing fears that hath befallen your loving sub- 

 jects (runs this document), especially those of the 

 city of London, in whom the breath of our trade and 

 livelihood consisteth, have so blasted our hopes that the 

 merchants forbear exportation ; and cloths for the 

 most part for the space of 18 months remain on our 

 hands. 



The clothiers go on to say that they have already 

 petitioned both houses, and 'well knowing that 

 the life of all supply next under God resteth in 

 your royal Self,' they implore His Majesty to let 

 fall one word to his Parliament on their behalf. 

 The king received their petition very graciously. 

 He said they had done well to lay their troubles 

 before him. They had just cause to complain. 

 He had seriously considered their case, had 

 already recommended it to Parliament, and would 

 take further care of it. 4 A committee of the 

 House of Commons was in fact appointed in the 

 same year to consider remedies for the obstruction 

 of trade in Suffolk cloth, ' and how it may be 

 vented in Turkey as formerly ' ; ' but though we 

 hear of shipments to Smyrna by the Levant 

 Company in 1 65 7/ the statement of the Suffolk 

 Traveller that the old broad-cloth industry of 

 Suffolk, which supplied so important a part of the 

 trade of Ipswich, began to decline about the 

 middle of the seventeenth century seems to be 

 substantially correct. 



' S.P. Dom. Chas. I, eclxxxii, 130. 



3 Acts of P.C. 26 Nov. 17 Dec. 1634 ; 13 Feb. 

 1635. 



* 'Suffolk clothiers petition to the King,' in B.M. 

 66c, fol. 3-48. 



6 Commons Journ. ii, 429. 



6 S.P. Dom. 1657, p. 314. 



266 



