148 TRADE AND MARKETS. 



exercised a vigorous police over the home manufactures and the 

 imports, native or foreign, chiefly with a view to prevent frauds. 

 Precautions were taken to prevent dishonesty in the woollen 

 trade, and pieces of cloth were measured before and after they 

 were shrunken and shorn, in order to see that the quantity was 

 just, by officers called aulnagers, who were provided with mea- 

 sures, ' twelve feet twelve inches long ' (Rot. Parl. v. 30. b), and 

 duly marked. The worsted manufacture in Norfolk and Norwich 

 was intrusted to the supervision of a local corporation created 

 by statute. The statute-book of the Plantagenet and Tudor 

 sovereigns is full of enactments determining the measure in 

 length and breadth and the quality and weight of textile fabrics, 

 and deploring the decay of trade, due to the frauds of manu- 

 facturers. Thus, for example, the statute 34, 35 Henry VIII, 

 cap. n, recites that there had been a local manufacture in 

 Carmarthenshire, Cardiganshire, and Pembrokeshire of Welsh 

 friezes and Welsh cottons, which was now decayed and ex- 

 tinguished in consequence of short weight and measure. The 

 raw frieze ought to weigh 54 Ibs. and be 46 yards long by i^ 

 yard broad. The cotton piece raw used to be 68 avoirdupois 

 Ibs. weight, was 48 yards long, and 5 quarters and a nail broad. 

 The Act prescribes these weights and measures for the future. 



The legislature is also constantly busy in attempting to 

 save the public from the frauds of foreign manufacturers and 

 importers. Thus dowlas and lockram, two kinds of linen for 

 wear, ought to contain a certain quantity in length and breadth, 

 both should have 100 ells to the piece, the former being one 

 yard broad, the latter a yard less a nail. The manufacturer 

 however defrauded the customer. But the worst trick of trade 

 is pointed out in n Hen. VII, cap. 27, where it is stated that 

 foreign fustians are made so ill, and so dressed in order to 

 conceal faults, that forming as they do the cloth for doublets, 

 they wear out in four months, to the great hurt of the poor 

 commons and serving men. In the same reign, 4 Hen. VII, 

 cap. 22, similar frauds in the gold thread of Venice, an 

 article of which only the very opulent could have been the pur- 



