A HISTORY OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE 



becoming a prosperous affair. 1 In 1585 Acts were passed regulating the breadth 

 of Gloucestershire ' Whites and Reddes,' and protecting the Gloucestershire 

 industries of woollen card-making and card-wire drawing.* About this 

 date occurred an event which made the reign of Elizabeth rank equal with 

 that of Edward III in the history of the cloth-manufacture the immigration 

 of Flemish weavers, refugees from Alva's persecutions. Two great clothing 

 families, the Playnes and the Clutterbucks, who are still well known in 

 the Stroud district, trace their descent to Huguenot ancestors. The name 

 of Clutterbuck is found at King's Stanley as early as 1574, and early in the 

 seventeenth century had spread to the surrounding villages of Eastington, 

 Slimbridge, and Wotton-under-Edge. 8 The Playnes, who first settled in 

 Kent, did not move till about the middle of the seventeenth century to 

 Woodchester, where portions of their original mill may still be seen. 4 It 

 may be noted that to Flemish influence is generally attributed the peculiar 

 excellence of the farms and manor-houses of this portion of the Cotswolds. 



Under this new stimulus numerous fresh mills were erected. Near 

 Bubble well, at Bisley, in 1586, we read of one with two 'rack-places ' and a 

 dyehouse. Ten years later William Esler, a Bisley tenant, was fined for 

 cutting down an oak upon his tenement, and making thereof ' a boame for a 

 loome.' ' 



All this growth and change naturally strained the old system under 

 which the woollen industry had grown up. With the departure of the 

 manufacture from the towns the guilds ceased to play an important part in 

 its history. Weaving was now carried on under the domestic system, by 

 which the master clothier gave out his wool to be spun and woven in the 

 cottages of the workmen, or occasionally by a number collected under his 

 own roof. The fulling and finishing of the cloth was then completed at a 

 large mill, often the clothier's own property. The old merchants of the 

 staple began to disappear, and we catch echoes of their dying plaints in the 

 state papers of Elizabeth and James I. All their difficulties were ascribed to 

 the covetousness of the merchant adventurers, who were said to monopolize 

 the trade in the export of wool. Licences to export wool were being granted 

 also to foreigners, whereby, says a petition of 1560, 'the merchants of the 

 staple and their families are utterly decayed.' The merchant adventurers 

 were evidently a pushing set of men, whose methods accorded ill with old 

 ideas of a hard-and-fast delimitation of functions in commerce. They were 

 also accused by the Gloucestershire clothiers (in 1577) of raising the price of 

 wool, 8 so that some had been obliged to give over their businesses, and whole 

 villages were decayed. 7 Foreigners, it was felt, should not be allowed to 

 export wool, though there was objection to the establishment of a cloth 

 staple to provide them with employment (158 a). 8 



1 The proverb, ' He'll prove a man of Dursley ' (i.e. promise much and perform nothing), is due to the 

 unenviable notoriety of a Gloucestershire clothier, in the time of Queen Mary. This was a certain Webb, of 

 Dursley, who used ' to buy very great quantities of wooll out of most counties of England. At the weighinge 

 whereof, he would ever promise out of that parcell a gown-cloth, peticote-cloth, apron, or the like to the 

 good wife or her daughters, but never paid any thinge.' J. Smyth, Berkeley MSS. iii, 26-7. 



* John Smith, Mem. of Wool, pp. 812. 



3 Parish Registers of Glouc. (ed. W. Phillimore), vol. i. See also Exch. Dep. Mich. 5 Jas. I, No. 35. 



4 For this information I am indebted to the courtesy of Mr. Arthur J. Playne, of Longfords, Minchin- 

 hampton. 6 Ct. R. portf. 175, No. 13, m. 10. 6 S.P. Dom. Eliz. cxiv, 32 and 34. 



' Ibid. Add. ix, 56. Ibid, civ, 80. 



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