A HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE 



of wool, Doleman by name, so rich and so 

 little inclined to thrift, that he laid out the 

 enormous sum of ten thousand pounds on 

 building a vast and strong house near his 

 native place. Fearful of the lashes he ex- 

 pected to receive from the envy of his neigh- 

 bours, he inscribed more than one apposite 

 sentence, both in Greek and Latin, above 

 his superb stone porch, as spells against 

 those ill-wishers whose peculiar malice he 

 dreaded.' l 



Thomas Dolman, great-grandson of the 

 Thomas Dolman who first held the manor of 

 Shaw, was a clerk of the Privy Council, M.P. 

 for Reading, attained to the honour of 

 knighthood in the time of Charles II., and 

 fought for the king in the second battle of 

 Newbury. 



The manufacturers of the Tudor period 

 were very prosperous. The foreign trade was 

 good, and wool had increased in value, and 

 the Inclosure Acts of 1517-8 show that a 

 very large amount of arable land in Berkshire 

 was laid down as pasture for sheep, in order 

 to produce the rich fleeces for her traders and 

 clothworkers. An enduring relic of New- 

 bury's palmy days of the clothing industry 

 is the existence of the Guild or Fraternity of 

 Weavers founded in the reign of Henry VIII. 

 and incorporated by Royal Charter in the forty- 

 fourth year of Queen Elizabeth (1601), under 

 the style of ' the Fellowship of the Weavers 

 at Newbury.' As a reward for their royal 

 welcome to King Henry VIII. he gave them 

 permission to take four bucks out of his park at 

 Donnington for their annual feast. By their 

 charter no one was allowed to exercise the 

 trade of weaving within the town unless they 

 were made free of the company. Their annual 

 feast days were celebrated with much festivity, 

 especially in the seventeenth century. Basker- 

 ville, in describing a journey from Abingdon 

 to Newbury in the early years of the Common- 

 wealth period, wrote of the town : ' They 

 are a very sociable people, and to increase 

 trade do keep great feasts, each several 

 Company, they and their wives feasting to- 

 gether, especially the Clothiers and Hatters.' 

 The corporate insignia of the guild will be 

 described in the topographical section, but the 

 pall or hearse-cloth deserves mention here, as 

 it is a specimen of the hand-weaving of the 

 clothiers of Newbury at the time of William 

 and Mary, and the shield of arms is a pro- 

 duction of the old silk factory at Greenham 

 Mills. 



Another relic of the ancient industry is the 



1 Continuation of Henry's Hist, of Great Britain, 

 by J. P. Andrews (ed. 1796), p. 424. 



Old Cloth Hall, which has recently been 

 restored, and tells of the palmiest days of the 

 town's mercantile importance. 



The same progress which has been noticed 

 in the clothing industry, of Newbury is evi- 

 dent in Reading, where there were several 

 famous clothiers. One of the earliest records, 

 now in existence, of the trade in the borough 

 is in the year 1435, when Nicholas Mount- 

 fort, a fuller, and John Heryng, a weaver, are 

 admitted members of the guild. In 1469 

 two men were elected as wardens of the art 

 of ' fullers' crafte.' In the previous year 

 John Longe, ' fullere,' was admitted into the 

 fraternity of the ' Gilde Aule Merchaunt.' In 

 1454 mention is made of one John Lynd, 

 ' fuller and forenere, ' and in 1448 Thomas 

 Clerk, weaver, was elected warden. The 

 names of William Brussele and Edward 

 Lynacre have a Flemish sound ; these men 

 were mayors of Reading in 1444 and 1445, 

 and may have emigrated here from the Low 

 Countries, and helped to improve the art 

 of manufacturing cloth. In the Records a 

 large number of names of early craftsmen and 

 traders is given, but the majority are English 

 names, or are so anglicized that it is difficult 

 to detect a foreign source. 



In the fifteenth century it may be con- 

 cluded that the industry was firmly established 

 in Reading, and possibly earlier, but of this 

 we have no evidence. In the charter of 

 Henry VII. granted in 1485, the king gave 

 authority to the mayor and burgesses for 

 ' the working and making of cloth, and exa- 

 mining the utensils employed in the same.' 

 Struggling clothiers were occasionally assisted 

 by the bounty of Sir Thomas White, son of a 

 Reading clothier who was Lord Mayor of 

 London in 1553, and by the munificence of 

 John Kendrick, which will be hereafter 

 noticed more fully. In the year 1486-7 

 (2 Henry VII.) the mayor and burgesses took 

 upon themselves the oversight and correction 

 of all workmen in cloth-making within the 

 borough, and several entries in the corpora- 

 tion books show that the industry had greatly 

 increased. 



The Inclosure Acts of 1517-18 brought an 

 increased supply of wool to the Reading 

 clothiers, and labour was plentiful owing to 

 the eviction of tenants and villagers who 

 flocked to the towns. 2 Merchants and manu- 

 facturers became rich and prosperous. A 

 list of the five gilds or companies which 

 existed in the time of Queen Mary is pre- 

 served among the Corporation archives, and 

 amongst these the Clothiers and Cloth- 



Industrid History of England, p. 98. 



390 



