INDUSTRIES 



make them no satisfaction. There are four score 

 clothiers of Suffolk at the least to whom he is in- 

 debted, many of them young beginners so that their 

 estates be overthrown if they lose the money he 

 oweth them, and their people being 5,000 at the least 

 that work unto them they will be brought into such 

 extremities that neither the clothiers by their trade 

 nor we by any means we can use shall be able to 

 relieve them.' 



Three years later, when the Privy Council were 

 instructing the justices in many counties to urge 

 the clothiers to find work for the poor, 2 the Suf- 

 folk justices replied that the clothiers .were 

 willing to employ their workmen, but were un- 

 able, having spent most of their estates in making 

 cloth which lay on their hands. ' The clothiers,' 

 they add, ' that inhabit but in twenty towns in 

 two hundreds of this county have at the present 

 4,453 broad cloths worth 39,282 which do lie 

 upon their hands, some one year, some two.' 

 The losses from bankruptcy sustained by the 

 clothiers in twelve of these towns amount to 

 30,415, and the losses elsewhere are in the 

 same proportion. The justices attribute this 

 bad state of things to the lack of free trade in 

 buying and selling of cloth owing to the incor- 

 poration of the merchants into companies. They 

 complain also of the export of wool and fuller's 

 earth, and of the new imposition lately laid on 

 cloth. 1 



The point about fuller's earth has a touch of 

 Sophoclean irony. In 1639 the Privy Council 

 ' in its wisdom ' gave ear to the complaint and 

 forbade the export by special proclamation, being 

 urged thereunto by the fear that Puritan clothier., 

 from Suffolk, who were migrating to Holland, 

 needed only English fuller's earth to enable 

 them to transplant the industry. So strictly was 

 the new order enforced that the export of fuller's 

 earth from Rochester to Ipswich by water was 

 stopped by a watchful government, and before 

 long we hear the bitter complaint of the Suffolk 

 clothiers that they have to pay 6 a ton for land 

 carriage instead of 2s. which was the cost of 

 water carriage. 4 



In referring to the lack of free trade the jus- 

 tices undoubtedly came nearer to the real cause 

 of the trouble. Not that the merchants who 

 were complained of were alone to blame in this 

 respect. We have already seen the clothworker 

 of the towns trying to hamper the freedom of 

 the clothier. At the very same time a number 

 of weavers and shearmen of Suffolk were appeal- 

 ing to the Privy Council against the action of 

 the clothiers, who were bringing indictments 

 against them for setting up in the trade of cloth- 

 making.* The spirit of monopoly was deeply 



1 S.P. Dom. Jas. I, cix, 126. 



1 Ibid, cxxvii, 75. 



3 Ibid, cxxviii, 67. 



4 Ibid. Chas. I, ccccxxiv, loo. 



' Acts of 'P. C. 1 8 Jan. 1616-17. 



rooted and widespread, and the merchants had 

 good precedents for their assertion that foreign 

 trade could not be safely carried on except by 

 exclusive and privileged corporations. It is in 

 the records of a struggle against this tradition as 

 preserved in the evidence taken in a case between 

 some Ipswich clothiers and the Eastland Com- 

 pany that we get one of the last glimpses of the 

 Suffolk broad-cloth industry in its relations with 

 the European market. 



The Eastland Company, which held a mono- 

 poly of the trade with Scandinavia and the Bal- 

 tic, was one of the main agencies for the export 

 of Suffolk cloth. It had a branch at Ipswich,, 

 and several merchants of that town were mem- 

 bers. In 1622, when the government was 

 urging merchants to buy, four of these went to 

 the Ipswich clothiers to see what they had in 

 hand. Five clothiers offered between them 

 192 pieces of cloth. Of these 40 belonged to 

 Mr. George Acton, and 45 to Mr. Hailes, the 

 latter comprising 17 fine azures, 6 violets in 

 mather, 2 violets in grain, 10 middle blues, 5 

 ' teire ' blues, 3 fine blues, and 2 grass greens at 

 prices varying from 10 to 15 the cloth. The 

 clothiers said that these prices were I 2 per cent, 

 less than the merchants had been paying to 

 others. The merchants on the other hand de- 

 clared they were 2 a cloth more than usual, 

 and wrote to the governor of their company in 

 London that the high prices asked showed that 

 the Ipswich clothiers were holding back their 

 cloth in the hope of inducing the Privy Council 

 to give them a licence to export on their own 

 account, which, if granted, would so unsettle 

 trade as to prove a greater inconvenience than 

 those already complained of. 6 



Whether this was true or not, there is no 

 doubt that the Ipswich clothiers were desirous of 

 trading abroad on their own account. Two of 

 them had already offered to pay the entrance fee 

 to the Eastland Company, but had been refused 

 admittance. One of them thereupon joined with 

 another clothier in sending out a factor to the 

 Eastland countries, who reported a good demand 

 for Suffolk cloth, and apparently brought back 

 orders. Soon after the futile negotiations with 

 the Eastland merchants several of the clothiers 

 sent off from Aldeburgh and Lynn shipments 

 of their goods, consigned nominally to Amsterdam 

 and Rochelle, but with instructions for trans- 

 shipment to the Eastland countries ; and in due 

 course they received in exchange cargoes of the 

 products of those parts, hemp, flax, and potash. 



Proceedings were taken by the Eastland Com- 

 pany against the interlopers. Evidence was 

 brought to show that the clothiers did not en- 

 tirely depend on the Eastland merchants for a 

 market, but might also dispose of their cloth to 

 the merchants trading with East India, Barbary, 

 Muscovy, and Turkey ; and it was alleged that 



265 



6 S.P. Dom. Jas. I, cxxxi, 40. 



34 



