INDUSTRIES 



Two hundred maydens did abide. 

 In peticoats of stammel * red, 

 And milk-white kerchers on their head ; 

 Their smocke sleeves like to winter snow 

 That on the westerne mountaines flow, 

 And each sleeve with a silken band 

 Was featly tied at the hand ; 

 These prettie maids did never lin" 

 But in their place all day did spin ; 

 And spinning so with voyces meet, 

 Like nightingales they sung full sweet. 

 Then to another loom came they, 

 Where children were in poor array. 

 And every one sat picking woll 

 The fineste from the course to pull. 

 The number was seven score and ten, 

 The children of poor silly men. 

 And these, their labours to requite, 

 Had every one a penny at night 

 Beside their meate and drink all day, 

 Which was to them a wondrous stay. 

 Within another place likewise 

 Full fiftie proper men he spies ; 

 And these were shearemen 3 every one, 

 Whose skill and cunning there was showne. 

 And hard by them there did remaine 

 Full foure score rowers * taking paine. 

 A dye-house likewise had he then, 

 Wherein he kept full fortie men ; 

 And likewise in his fulling mill, 

 Full twenty persons kept he still. 



This fulling-mill was at Bagnor, a hamlet 

 of Speen. The waste ground adjoining the 

 mill is called ' Rack Marsh,' and so late as the 

 end of the eighteenth century the old posts 

 which formed the framework for drying the 

 cloth were observable. 5 



We will pass over the poetical description 

 of the food supplied to the workmen, the 

 butcher, baker, brewer, five cooks and six 

 scullion boys. The author tells of ' the 

 warehouses, some being filled with wool, some 

 with flocks, some with woad and madder, 

 and some with broad cloth and kersies ready 

 dyed and drest, beside a great number of 

 others, some stretched on the tenters, some 

 hanging on poles, and a great many more lying 

 wet in other places.' We may take this ac- 

 count as a fairly accurate description of a 

 great merchant's clothing establishment in 

 the time of the Tudor monarchs. 



Winchcomb of Newbury, according to 

 Deloney's biography, took a leading part 

 among the clothiers of England in obtaining 

 freedom of trade with foreign countries. By 

 reason of war many foreign merchants were 



1 Stammel a kind of fine worsted. 



2 Lin cease or stop. 



3 Shearemen or Sheremen clothworkers. 



* Rowers those who smoothed the cloth with 

 rollers. 

 ' Netubury and its Environs, p 171. 



prevented from coming to England, and 

 English merchants were forbidden to trade 

 with France or the Low Countries. Hence 

 the clothiers' stocks grew amazingly large, 

 and they were forced to sell their goods at a 

 very low rate. Wages were reduced, and many 

 weavers, shearmen, spinners and carders were 

 dismissed from their employment. Not half 

 the looms were being worked. The New- 

 bury clothier wrote a letter to the chief cloth- 

 ing towns in England arranging for a petition 

 to the king. This was presented by 120 persons, 

 two representatives being sent from each town. 

 The king received it graciously, and it was 

 finally agreed that ' the merchants should 

 traffic freely one with another, and that 

 proclamation thereof should be made as well 

 on the other side of the sea as in our land.' 

 Cardinal Wolsey however for a time delayed 

 the matter, calling forth the spirited speech of 

 the Newbury clothier ' If my lord cardinal's 

 father has been no hastier in killing calves 

 than he is in dispatching poor men's suits, I 

 doubt he had never worn a mitre.' However 

 the matter was finally concluded, and ' in 

 a short space clothing again was very good 

 and poor men as well set on work as before.' a 

 Fuller says of him that ' he was the most con- 

 siderable clothier, without fancy or fiction, 

 England ever beheld. 



Another eminent clothier of Newbury 

 was Thomas Dolman, whose factory was in 

 Northbrook Street. He was more ambitious 

 of social rank than honest Jack of Newbury, 

 who declined the honour of knighthood, 

 preferring ' to rest in his russet coat a poor 

 clothier to his dying day.' Thomas Dolman's 

 father was probably William Dolman, manager 

 of Winchcomb's works, to whom ' Jack ' left 

 a legacy of 10. He attained to great 

 wealth and built Shaw House, expending on it 

 10,000. The house was completed by his 

 son, also named Thomas. The weavers of 

 Newbury, on his abandoning cloth-making, 

 invented the rhyme : 



Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable sinners, 

 Thomas Dolman has built a new house, and turned 

 away all his spinners. 



Of this Dolman a later writer states : 

 ' Newbury supplied another manufacturer 



Deloney does not state his authorities, but his 

 story is confirmed in its main outline by Lord 

 Herbert's account of the disputes of the merchants 

 with the cardinal, and their fears lest Henry's 

 declaration of war with the emperor in 1528 should 

 derange the whole system of the national industry. 

 He speaks of ' the sullen merchants, ' little moved 

 by the cardinal's menaces, and tells how at length 

 they gained the day. 



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