A HISTORY OF SURREY 



armourer and two Oxted husbandmen, as 

 being ' of greet alye yn there countreys and 

 richesse.'* The views of the frankpledge of 

 the hundred of Godalming in 1483 show 

 several tanners at work in that neighbour- 

 hood. John Hamonde and Robert Oueton 

 are both fined for making excessive gain out 

 of their leather. John Glover and Thomas 

 Glover are whiteners {dealbatores) of tanned 

 leather, who use their art outside a market 

 town. The latter seems to have been also a 

 common brewer. At Chiddingfold was another 

 tanner, William Rople (or Ropley), who made 

 excessive gains out of his trade.' He belonged 

 to a glassmaking family in this neighbourhood. 

 But we need not insist on the importance of 

 these notices as anything more than chance 

 references to an industry which we may be 

 assured was carried on in most of the chief 

 centres of the county from the earliest times. 

 The origin of the industry in Bermondsey, 

 which was to become by far its most impor- 

 tant seat in Surrey, is as obscure as it is every- 

 where else. Nevertheless a recent writer has 

 with every appearance of confidence fixed the 

 period as coinciding with the influx of Hugue- 

 nots after the massacre of St. Bartholomew 

 and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.' 



» Early Chan. Proc. bdle. 9, No. 300. 



» B. M. Add. Chart. 26892. 



= He says : ' The cause which led to Bermondsey 

 originally becoming a centre for tanning and the 

 leather manufacture is not generally known, and it 

 is of singubr historic interest. When the massacre 

 of St. Bartholomew and the Revocation of the 

 Edict of Nantes drove the Huguenots out of France, 

 it occasioned the transference to England of capital 

 and labour, the loss of which seriously weakened 

 the French and augmented the industrial prosperity 

 of the British. No fewer than 1,300 refugees 

 crossed over to the town of Rye, in Sussex, who 

 were skilled in unning, in leather manufacture, 

 in silk-weaving, and in glassmaking. They were 

 welcomed by religious sympathizers, but after their 

 irate oppressors had made incursions across the 

 water, and several times set fire to the town of 

 Rye, the reftigecs decided on leaving, and came to 

 London. Entering by the Kent Road they observed 

 that the district of Bermondsey was intersected by 

 tidal streams, so fiivourable to leather manufacture, 

 and those in the leather trade at once determined 

 on remaining there and establishing themselves. 

 This resulted in Bermondsey becoming the great 

 centre for the tanning of skins and the manufacture 

 of hides, which it has ever since continued to be.' 

 The passage is uken from E. T. Clarke's Bermondsey 

 (1902), pp. 195-6, which quotes it from a Descrip- 

 tive Account ofSouthwark and Bermondsey, published 

 a few years ago. Mr. Clarke rightly points out the 

 initial difficulty in the statement, that it mentions 

 together two historic events separated by an interval 

 of more than a century. 



The number of alien workers and dealers 

 in leather who settled in Southwark and 

 Bermondsey during the sixteenth century was 

 indeed considerable, and must have given a 

 great impetus to the manufacture. Neverthe- 

 less, Southwark appears as an important market 

 for the leather trade, and tanners were living 

 there and in Bermondsey in sufficient numbers 

 so long before the first of the two events men- 

 tioned in the above passage as to warrant us 

 discarding so recent an origin for the industry. 



If it is necessary to insist upon foreign 

 influence for the development of the industry, 

 then we must go back to considerably over a 

 hundred years at the least. For of the large 

 alien element in the population of Southwark 

 in 1440 we find that a fair proportion were 

 engaged in various branches of the leather 

 trade.* Principally however they were con- 

 cerned with the later stages of the trade, the 

 manufacture, that is to say, into various articles 

 of the already finished product. Thus there 

 were thirteen foreign householders and two 

 non-householders who were cordwainers, and 

 in their employ were no less than forty- 

 five aliens. Three alien householders were 

 described as cobblers, and no doubt the 

 three pursers, the two girdlers, and the one 

 pommel-maker, all of them aliens and house- 

 holders, were artificers in leather. Several 

 of these had also foreigners in their service. 

 Engaged in the earlier stages of the leather 

 manufacture we may notice the nine skin- 

 ners (seven of them householders) with three 

 skinners' servants, and the two curriers with 

 three curriers' servants. The nationalities 

 of these aliens are not given, but the nature 

 of their names, some of them with the 

 prefix ' van ' occurring before them, often pre- 

 supposes a Low Countries origin. None of 

 them it is true are returned as tanners, but 

 this fact, coupled with that of the existence 

 of so many engaged in other departments of 

 the leather trade, can only lead us to infer 

 that, while tanning must have been carried 

 on in the neighbourhood at this period, it was 

 exclusively in native hands. For definite 

 notices, however, of Southwark and Bermond- 

 sey tanners we have to come a good deal later. 

 Thus we may cite the case of John Forster, 

 a tanner in Bermondsey Street, who was fined 

 the sum of ^5 in the Exchequer in 1535 for 

 tanning sheep skins contrary to the Act of 

 I Henry VII. cap. 5," and at no long interval 

 this case is followed by a number of others in 

 which tanners in the same neighbourhood 

 were concerned. But our chief evidence in 



330 



• Lay Subs, clxxxiv. 212. 

 » Exch. K. R.Mem. R. Mich. 27 Hen. VIII. 8. 



