

INDUSTRIES 



Another essential point which the events of 

 this period bring into prominence is that the 

 Suffolk cloth industry has become largely depen- 

 dent on the demand of the foreign market. 

 Whenever the policy of Henry or of Wolsey 

 seems likely to disturb free intercourse with 

 Flanders, the Suffolk trade is threatened with 

 paralysis. On 4 March, 1528, the Duke of 

 Norfolk writes to Wolsey from ' Hexon ' to 

 inform him of the measures he has taken to put 

 down the discontent he had found brewing at 

 Bury, and adds that on Sunday he is to have a 

 number of the most substantial clothiers of 

 Suffolk with him, whom he must handle with 

 good words that the cloth-making be not sud- 

 denly laid down in consequence of the rumour 

 that English merchants are detained in Flan- 

 ders. 1 Five days later he writes from Stoke 

 to say that he has called before him forty of the 

 most substantial clothiers of those parts, of some 

 towns two and of some one, and exhorted them 

 to continue their men in work, assuring them 

 that the reports were false about the detention of 

 English merchants in Spain and Flanders, and 

 using other arguments which he will explain to 

 Wolsey on coming to him before Sunday next. 

 He was assisted by Sir R. Wentworth and Sir 

 P. Tylney, and finally persuaded them to resume 

 work and take back their servants whom they 

 had put away. If he had not quenched the 

 bruit of the arrests in Flanders he would have had 

 200 or 300 women suing to him to make the 

 clothiers set their husbands and children on 

 work. 8 



On the 4th of May in the same year, when 

 the duke was again in Stoke, the clothiers came 

 to complain that they could have no sale for 

 their cloth in London, and that unless remedy 

 were found they would be unable to keep their 

 workpeople for more than a fortnight or three 

 weeks. The scarcity of oil alone, they said, 

 would compel them to give up making cloth, 

 unless some came from Spain. 3 



In his second letter Norfolk had concluded 

 with a suggestion that Wolsey should put 

 pressure on the London merchants, and it is 

 apparently to this hint that we owe the famous 

 scene related by Hall. The cardinal sent for a 

 great number of the merchants, and said to them : 



Sirs, the King is informed that you use not yourselves 

 like merchants, but like graziers and artificers, for 

 when the clothiers do daily bring cloths to your mar- 

 ket for your ease to their great cost and there be ready 

 to sell them, you of your wilfulness will not buy them, 

 as you have been accustomed to do. What manner 

 of men be you ? said the Cardinal. I tell you the 

 King straitly commanded! you to buy their cloths, as 

 before time you have been accustomed to do, upon 

 pain of his high displeasure. 4 



The threat with which the cardinal concluded, 

 that the king would take the cloth trade into 

 his own hands, may seem to be a mere piece of 

 petulant bluff, but it has in reality a deeper sig- 

 nificance. It indicates one line along which the 

 solution of the national problems presented by 

 the expansion of the cloth industry might be 

 sought, and along which, a century later, it was 

 sought with disastrous consequences. 



By the middle of the sixteenth century the 

 cloth industry of Suffolk had attained its full 

 development ; before the end of the century it 

 had probably reached the high-water mark of its 

 prosperity. It will be well, therefore, to gain as 

 complete an idea as possible of the economic 

 organization of the industry as it existed at this 

 period. In the state papers of Elizabeth's reign 

 and in the contemporary records of Ipswich 

 there are fortunately to be found adequate 

 materials for this purpose. We are enabled to 

 follow the course of the wool from the back 

 of the sheep through all the various processes of 

 manufacture and exchange until it is stowed 

 away in its finished form of dyed cloth of many 

 colours in the hold of an Ipswich trading vessel. 

 Nor do its adventures end there. As it crosses 

 the sea we find it frequently falling a prey to the 

 lurking pirate, or in war time to the enemy's 

 cruisers ; and if it reaches its destination in 

 safety we may watch the bargain made for it 

 by the merchants of Flanders or Spain, or see it 

 pass at once into the hands of the Levantine 

 trader to furnish the dress of the Turk or the 

 Muscovite, or of nations still further east. 



The first stage in this progress was the purchase 

 of the wool after shearing. This might be made 

 by the manufacturing clothier direct from the 

 grower, but for a century before this period the 

 intervention of the middleman or broker had 

 been becoming more and more necessary. As 

 the industry expanded the wool-grower and the 

 clothier frequently found themselves in different 

 counties, and had no time to seek each other out. 

 Even when they were within reach of each other, 

 capital was needed to tide over a period of waiting. 

 In some cases this was furnished by the wealthier 

 wool-growers or clothiers themselves, but the 

 capital of the majority of either class was not 

 large, and the demand upon it was greatest at 

 sheepshearing time. The broker therefore 

 who bargained for the wool beforehand, collected 

 it and supplied it on credit or held it over till it 

 was wanted, supplied an indispensable link be- 

 tween the small producers of wool and of cloth. 6 

 Nevertheless public sentiment was unfavourable 

 to his operations, and many Acts of Parliament 

 were passed to restrict or prohibit them. The 

 only effect of this was to give the crown an 

 opportunity of dispensing with the law by special 

 licence, which introduced the evils of monopoly 



1 L. and P. Hen. VII 'I, iv (2), 4012, 4044. 

 8 Ibid. 'Ibid. 4239. 



* Brewer, The Reign of Hen. Vlll, ii, 261. 



4 Unwin, Industrial Organization in the i6th and 

 \-]tb centuries, App. A, ii, 234. 



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