INDUSTRIES 



(whereof now most are unmindful), hath at his owne 

 cojt and charges begunne to set on foot this laudable 

 trade of clothing, the which, if well followed and 

 recorded by others and neighbours in the country, 

 would further to set forward so laudable an enterprise, 

 it would in a short time prove no small benefit both 

 to the towne and countrie, and by this meanes many 

 poore might well be set a worke who now are forced 

 either to begge their bread or else labour hard at 

 knitting stockings, which will not furnish them with 

 browne bread to fill their hungry bellies, especially in 

 these hard pinching times.' 



This project of reviving the cloth trade of 

 Northampton met with little success. About 

 thirty years after another native of the county 

 declared that ' though fine their wool, their 

 cloath ran so coarse that it could not be sold 

 without loss.' ^ 



Morton, whose Natural History of Northampton- 

 shire- appeared in I 710, says that in many of the 

 pastures they have excellent wool — fine, white, 

 and long. The greater quantity of it used to be 

 bought up by factors and taken to Stourbridge 

 Fair — 



' And thence to Norwich and to Braintrey, Bocking 

 and Colchester, where 'tis wrought into stuffs and 

 bays. A part of it is used within the county, being 

 comb'd and weav'd into Serges, Tammies, and 

 Shalloons, at Kettering and other towns.' 



The fallow or shorter wool was usually sent 

 into Yorkshire and to the west to Cirencester 

 and Taunton for the making of cloths. ' And as 

 there is in no other county in England a better 

 race of sheep than here, if you take the whole 

 county throughout, so the wooll is generally good.' 

 He also tells us that the poorer sort of people are 

 usually employed in the carding, spinning, or 

 knitting of wool, and many others in the combing 

 and weaving of it, and that during his time the 

 manufacture of wool had largely increased in 

 the city of Peterborough. 



In the latter part of the seventeenth, the 

 whole of the eighteenth, and the first two de- 

 cades of the nineteenth centuries, weaving was 

 extensively carried on in the district embraced 

 by the parishes of Kettering, Rothwell, Des- 

 borough, Braybrooke, Little Bowden, and the 

 neighbouring villages. The principal articles 

 woven were tammies and shalloons. The former 

 was a thin woollen material of open texture 

 used for straining purposes ; it was also made 

 into flags, often in bright colours. The latter 

 was a coarse woollen stuff. In the Natural 

 History of England^ by Benjamin Martin, we 

 read under the description of Kettering — 



' It has a good woollen manufacture of Serges, 

 Shalloons, and Tammies, in which it is said 2,000 



' Fuller, H'orlhies (1662), 279. 



hands are constantly employed. This trade was first 

 introduced by Mr. John Jordan in the last century, 

 which the inhabitants have industriously improved.' 



At Oundle the woollen industry was intro- 

 duced by Sir Matthew Dudley, for which Mor- 

 ton * gives him due honour for his public spirit. 

 A hundred years later it is stated that the 

 woollen manufacture of the county was prin- 

 cipally confined to Kettering and its neighbour- 

 hood, and that at the beginning of the Napo- 

 leonic war it was in the highest perfection it 

 had ever attained. William Pitt, who wrote on 

 the agriculture of the county, though he ad- 

 mitted the difficulty in estimating the number 

 of people employed in the cloth industry, cal- 

 culated that from 5,000 to 6,000 hands had 

 been engaged, but when his work' was printed 

 in 1809, "o' more than half that number were 

 employed. 



The wool was bought of the farmers in the 

 neighbourhood by the manufacturers, then after 

 undergoing a very minute assortment the dif- 

 ferent kinds of wool found in every fleece were 

 apportioned to supply the proper markets in the 

 different parts of England where they were re- 

 spectively manufactured ; thus Yorkshire would 

 take the finest for clothing, some would go to 

 Leicester for the hosiery trade, while some of 

 the longest was worked at home into moreens, 

 tammies, calamancoes, and everlastings ; these 

 last were stout close-woven worsted stuffs, dyed 

 black and other colours, and were very much 

 used for ladies' shoes. After the wool was 

 sorted and the different kinds assigned to their 

 respective purposes, that intended to be manu- 

 factured at home was combed and then delivered 

 out in small quantities to homeworkers in the 

 neighbourhood to be spun and reeled, for which 

 they were paid so much per pound, according 

 to the fineness of thread into which it was con- 

 verted. The thread was then taken to the 

 manufacturer, who had it woven into such stuff 

 as its quality was best adapted for. The spin- 

 ning and reeling were chiefly done by women 

 and by boys from ten to fourteen years of age. 

 The price allowed was from lod. to is. bd. a 

 pound, and a tolerable spinner who was indus- 

 trious would earn on an average bd. per day, 

 sorters were paid at the rate of (yd. per tod of 

 28 lb., combers received 2s. for every pound of 

 wool, and a good hand would make ()s. or lOi. 

 a week. A weaver was paid from 5;. td. to 

 6j. bd. a piece for tammies — a piece consisted of 

 32 yards long by 22 inches broad — and for ever- 

 lastings the pay was from 55. to "js. a piece of 

 the same size according to the fineness. A good 

 weaver would earn 1 8^. a day. At the time 

 William Pitt wrote his book the woollen manu- 

 facture was in a bad state, and there was a good 



■ p. 16 et seq. 

 ' (1763), ii, 126. 



* Op. cit. p. 1 7. 



* Gen. Fieo! Jgric. Norlhants (1809), 241. 



333 



