A HISTORY OF DORSET 



CLOTH 



Dorset of the downs, commercially concerned 

 with agricultural pursuits, and with the manipu- 

 lation of its abundant earth products, its hemp 

 and flax, presents, with regard to its cloth trade, 

 none of those features of industrial romance 

 which characterized the history of the craft in 

 other counties. Easy access, moreover (even in 

 times when the problem of the highways pressed 

 heavily upon the mediaeval commercial traveller), 

 to the neighbouring great clothing centres of 

 Wilts., Devon., and Somerset, rendered the Dorset 

 housewife and husbandman independent of the 

 local loom.^ The wool of Dorset took but a 

 secondary place in the kindred values of the same 

 commodity in other parts of the kingdom, the 

 price in 1343 being only 8 marks, one of the 

 lowest rates, as pointed out elsewhere in this 

 volume,^ in the kingdom.' Twenty years later, 

 Melcombe Regis, which possessed a cocket of 

 wools prior to the reign of Edward I, was 

 made a staple town, a privilege which was taken 

 away by Henry VI, who bestowed it upon Poole.* 

 The price of Dorset wool in the reign of this 

 king was 66s. 8d. per sack.* 



The early woollen industry of the county is 

 nearly always mentioned in connexion with the 

 kindred industries of Somerset and Wiltshire, as 

 for example in the reign of Richard II, when the 

 clothworkers of the west of England seem to 

 have incurred legislative censure, forasmuch 



As divers plain cloths that be wrought in the counties 

 of Somerset, Dorset, Bristol and Gloucester be tacked 

 and folded together and set to sale, of which cloths a 

 great part be broken, hroused and not agreeing in 

 the colour neither be according to Breadth nor to no 

 manner to the part of the same cloths shewed outwards, 

 but be falsely wrought with divers wools to the great 

 deceit, loss and damage of the people, in so much that 

 the merchants that buy the same cloths and carry them 

 out of the realm to sell to strangers be many times in 

 danger to be slain, and sometimes imprisoned and put 

 to fine and ransom by the same Estrangers, and their 

 said cloths burnt or forfeit, because of the great deceit 

 and falsehood that is found in the same cloths when 

 they be untacked and opened to the great slander of 



' Dorset spinners, it would appear, were employed 

 by the clothiers of other counties, those of Cerne 

 Abbas being thus engaged in 1750 for the Devonshire 

 clothiers. Pococke, Travels through Engl, ii, 143. 



' See ' Soc. and Econ. Hist.' for details of the state 

 of the trade in the fourteenth century. 



' Rot. Pari. (Rec. Com.), ii, 138^. 



'Ibid, i, 317^; ii, 28817, 30413. Edward III 

 appointed Gilbert de Portesham and William the 

 Marshal collectors and receivers of the customs of 

 wool at Melcombe ; Walter de Frampton and lohn 

 Baker being similarly appointed 35 Edw. Ill; Ellis, 

 Hist. IVeymouth. 



' Rogers, jigrk. and Prices in Engl, iii, 704. The 

 wool-tax was assessed on Dorset in the reign of 

 Edw. Ill as follows : 480 sacks, 21 stone, 4f lb. 



the Realm [of England]. It is ordained and assented 

 that no plain cloth tacked nor folded shall be set to 

 sale within the said counties but they be opened upon 

 pain to forfeit them so that the buyers may use them 

 and know them as it is used in the county of Essex.' 



There were further regulations with regard to 

 the sealing of cloth by the workers, weavers, and 

 fullers, permission being given to buyers to fold 

 or tack their cloth as they chose to ensure easy 

 carriage. The necessity for the statute was 

 obvious when the penalties incurred by merchants 

 abroad were so severe, and the frauds practised 

 by the Dorset men among others so outrageous. 

 The statute shows clearly that cloth was made 

 in this county and exported even in the fourteenth 

 and fifteenth centuries, when the greater part of 

 English trade consisted in raw wool, and not in 

 manufactured goods. 



The cloth-making towns of Dorset have been 

 Sherborne, Dorchester, Lyme Regis, Wareham, 

 Shaftesbury, Beaminster, Bere, Sturminster, and 

 Gillingham.' 



Dorchester ' formerly gained much by cloth- 

 ing ' ; * but the industry was almost entirely 

 destroyed by the disturbances caused by the Civil 

 War, and by a great fire.' The material first 

 made here was broadcloth, the manufacture of 

 serges being afterwards substituted for it. The 

 fame of the former fabric, however, still lingered 

 in the town in 1720, when Defoe visited it.^" 



The fifteenth century saw the rise of Sher- 

 borne to importance as a cloth-making town. 

 Leland considered it ' the best town ' in his time 

 for the woollen manufacture in the county.^^ 

 Both he and Camden attributed its exceptional 

 prosperity to this trade." The cloth made in 

 Sherborne was of the same character as that pro- 

 duced in the other towns in Dorset, namely the 

 fine Spanish medley or mixed cloths, which 

 Defoe explains to be 



such as are usually worn in England by the better 

 sort of people and also exported in great quantities to 

 Holland, Hamburg, Sweden, Denmark, Spain and Italy. 



describes the organization of the 



He also 

 industry : 



These towns are interspersed with a very great number 

 of villages .... hamlets and scattered houses in 

 which, generally speaking, all this manufacture is per- 

 formed by the poor people ; the Master clothiers who 

 generally live in the greater towns sending out the wool 

 weekly to their houses, by their servants and horses, and 

 at the same time bringing back the yarn that they have 

 spun and finished, which then is fitted for the loom. 



' Stat. 13 Ric. II, cap. II. 



' Defoe, Tour through Great Brit, i, 334. 



' Coker, Surv. of Dors. 69. 



' Hutchins, Hist. Dors, i, 373. " Defoe, op. cit. 



" Leland, Itin. ii, 47. " Camden, Brit, i, 173. 



360 



