A HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE 



that the cloth trade was carried on at an 

 early period. At these mills the cloth was 

 scoured and thickened by being saturated 

 with hot water, and made to shrink by being 

 worked under the falling weight of the 

 fulling stocks. The material is thus made to 

 shrink up and thicken. A fulling-mill is 

 mentioned as existing at Newbury as early as 

 1205.* The cloth produced by these early 

 English manufacturers was very coarse and very 

 different from that woven by Flemish looms. 

 The manufacture was carried on in the houses 

 of the people, who were ignorant of the arts 

 and processes used by the cloth-makers of the 

 Netherlands. They wove hempen linen and 

 woollen coverings, suitable for sacks, dairy- 

 cloths, wool-packs, sails of windmills and 

 similar purposes. 3 It was not until the reign 

 of Edward III. and the first immigrations of 

 the Flemings that any improvements were 

 effected in English manufactures. The 

 Abbot of Abingdon had his fulling-mill, 

 which was in ruins in 15 55, when the town 

 received its first charter and was then to be 

 rebuilt. A fulling-mill existed at West- 

 brooke, near Newbury, in the time of Henry 

 VI., when one Robert Curteys was lessee of 

 a messuage with a fulling-mill in Benham 

 manor. 3 



One of the mills of Hungerford called Dun 

 Mill was a ' tucking ' or fulling-mill, and 

 was held in 1614 by Thomas Holmes of 

 Alexander Chock, Esquire, of Avington. 4 As 

 late as 1691 an action was brought by the owner 

 or lessee of the Town Mill, which before the 

 enfeoffment of the borough was the king's 

 mill, in the Court of the Exchequer in order 

 to restrain the owner of Dun Mill from grind- 

 ing the corn of the inhabitants. The Court 

 decided that the tenants of the Hungerford 

 and Sandon fee were bound to have their 

 corn ground at the Town Mill, and that 

 Dun Mill must be either pulled down or 

 converted into a tucking-mill again. It is 

 stated, however, that it was found impos- 

 sible to put the decree into operation, and 

 the mill remains to this day a corn mill. 5 



The Berkshire wool was of such good 

 quality that it commanded a price con- 



1 Rot. Normanniz, No. 35, quoted by W. 

 Money, Hist, of Newbury, p. 66. 



2 Gibbins, Industrial History of England, p. 51. 



3 The heading of this document, with the date, 

 is gone, but it is considered at the P.R.O. to belong 

 to the reign of Henry VI. 



4 Mutilated Hungerford Town Articles in the 

 possession of the Corporation, 1614. 



From the information of Mr. W. H. Sum- 

 mers, who is transcribing the documents in the 

 possession of the Corporation of Hungerford. 



siderably above the average, ranking with 

 other kinds thirteenth in the list of forty-four 

 given in Professor Rogers' History of Agri- 

 culture and Price, iii. 704, for the year 1454. 

 A number of lists of prices of wool collected 

 by Mr. Leadam 8 show that about the year 

 1547 the wool of Cotswold and Berkshire 

 ranked, after Leicester and Marche, as the 

 highest priced wools in England. Hence 

 the Berkshire clothiers had excellent material 

 for this cloth. The county in the fourteenth 

 and fifteenth centuries ceased to be a purely 

 agricultural district, producing a large quantity 

 of wool and exporting it as a raw material to 

 the Netherlands to be made into cloth ; and 

 the cloth manufactured on the Berkshire 

 looms had a good reputation in the markets 

 of the world. In 1549 the English envoy at 

 Antwerp advised Protector Somerset to send 

 to that city for sale a thousand pieces of 

 ' Winchcombe's Kersies.' 7 These were the 

 products of the looms of the famous Jack of 

 Newbury, who figures largely in the history 

 of the Berkshire clothing industry. 



This John Winchcomb, alias Smalwoode, 

 commonly called ' Jack of Newbury,' was the 

 most famous of the Berkshire clothiers who 

 lived in the reigns of Henry VII. and Henry 

 VIII. The romantic details of his life will 

 be more abundantly set forth in a later 

 volume in the topographical section. He 

 became an apprentice of a rich clothier in 

 Newbury at the time when the trade was 

 most flourishing, married his master's widow, 

 and became very prosperous. Deloney's 

 Pleasant History of John Winchcomb is valu- 

 able, not so much as an accurate story of his 

 life, or for its literary merit, but as being 

 highly illustrative of old manners and customs 

 of the time when the industry was most 

 flourishing, and of the scenes which the 

 writer had doubtless witnessed in the old 

 cloth manufactories. Deloney's description 

 of a clothing establishment in the time of the 

 Tudors is doubtless drawn from personal 

 observation : 



Within one room, being large and long, 



There stood two hundred loomes full strong. 



Two hundred men, the truth is so, 



Wrought in their loomes all in a row. 



By every one a prettie boy 



Sate making quills with mickle joy; 



And in another place hard by 



An hundred women merrily 



Were carding hard with joyful cheere, 



Who singing sat with voyces cleere. 



And in a chamber close beside, 



Introduction to the Domesday of Inclosures, i. 69. 

 ' Burnley, Wool and Woolcombing. 



388 



