SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



Amongst the Ipswich burgesses who engaged in this foreign trade the 

 tendency to specialize in one or other branch of commerce had not proceeded 

 very far ; and indeed it was never destined to go as far in Ipswich as in 

 larger centres of trade. The merchant was a combination of grocer, vintner, 

 draper, and ironmonger, and varied his investments according to his opportu- 

 nities. There were, however, about a dozen traders the bulk of whose 

 capital was invested in mercery, about half a dozen who had a considerable 

 stock of skins, and Thomas le Spicer had spices to the value of lo marks.** 

 Many burgesses held a quantity of cloth which was evidently in excess of their 

 household requirements, but Hugo Golding, the wealthiest burgess after 

 Philip Harneys, was the draper par excellence, having ^66 of a total of ^Tga 

 invested in cloth of various kinds." Richard Topy must also be reckoned 

 as a draper, since £^zo out of jC^/ was in his case represented by cloth; 

 whilst in Roger le Neve with ^^xi invested in cloth and ^6 in mercery we 

 have the type of merchant in whose hands lay most of the English cloth 

 trade at this period." William Strik** and William Smith possessed stocks 

 of iron of the value of jTj and £^\ respectively, Bernard the dyer *' had 

 imported woad and ashes to the value of ^^7 loj., and an alewife held 300 lb. 

 of salt worth ^6 i 5J. 



There is little sign in the Subsidy Roll of 1282 of the development of 

 handicraft at Ipswich, with a single exception, that of the tanning industry. 

 About a dozen tanners are mentioned with capital varying from loj. to ^7 

 (besides the skinners already referred to), four or five shoemakers, a parch- 

 ment maker, and a glover. There are also enumerated six blacksmiths, one 

 goldsmith, a carpenter, a capper and a maker of catapults. At first sight the 

 cloth industry seems to be very inadequately represented, though the fact 

 that four dyers are named and only two weavers suggests the probability that 

 cloth woven in the country districts was brought to be finished in the town. 

 But it is extremely likely that many of the richer burgesses who are 

 mentioned as having stocks of cloth and wool and fuller's earth gave out 

 materials to the poorer inhabitants who had too little property to find a place 

 on a subsidy roll. This supposition is rendered almost a certainty by the 

 evidence of an ordinance in the Ipswich Domesday Book which forbids any 

 burgess to take as gage of a money debt, or as a pledge for victuals, any cloth 

 or combed wool white or dyed, or flax or hemp or woollen or linen thread 

 from poor weavers, women wool combers or spinners, tailors, tailoresses or 

 laundresses or other poor ' catyvys,' when there is a reasonable suspicion that 

 the goods so offered are the property of some other person.'" 



For the most part, however, Ipswich in the 14th century was less 

 a centre of industry than a combination of market, town, and port, where 

 half a dozen different currents of trade found a focus. The grain and dairy 

 produce of Suffolk came week by week to Cornhill and Butter Market, on the 

 spot where the old names still survive, and its live-stock and butchers' meat 

 to the Flesh Market or Cowerie, on the site of which Tavern Street grew up, 

 and to the Hen Market or Poultry which ran at right angles to the Flesh 

 Market in the direction of the Tower Ramparts. The wool and skins of 

 many counties came to the Wool Market. In the Fish Market were found 



" Ibid. 9. 



" Dom. Bk. of Ipswich, 133. 

 82 



