A HISTORY OF SURREY 



attempt to interfere with the Southwark 

 leather market was strongly resented as an 

 infringement of important and well established 

 rights. 



From this time on, for close upon a cen- 

 tury our chief evidence of the extent and 

 nature of the Surrey leather industry is derived 

 from the cases in the Exchequer court of in- 

 fringements of the various Acts regulating the 

 trade. The very great number of these cases 

 forbids us to deal with them here in detail. 

 All we can attempt to do is to gather some 

 idea from the different kinds of offences, with 

 which the tanners and curriers of Surrey were 

 especially liable to be charged, of the nature 

 and conditions of their industry, and also, 

 from the descriptions of the oflFenders in the 

 rolls of the court, of the districts in which the 

 industry was chiefly seated in the county. 

 From the frequency of cases in which the 

 impugned leather was seized in the Southwark 

 market we may judge the great importance of 

 this market throughout the period. 



The great drawback in tanning has always 

 been the essential slowness of the processes ne- 

 cessary to render the leather lasting and tract- 

 able. Even down to the present day all 

 attempts to treat the hides with more quickly 

 acting agents than tannin prepared from oak- 

 bark, the best but slowest agent, have only 

 resulted in more or less injury to the leather. 

 That man was at work attempting to solve this 

 problem as early as the first half of the sixteenth 

 century is evident from the preamble to the 

 already mentioned Act of Edward VI. This 

 Act for the true tanning of leather commences 

 with an enumeration of the deceitful practices 

 then in use for hastening the process.* 



• 'Whereas in times past the hides or leather 

 were wont to lie in the tan vats by the space of 

 one year or five quarters of the year, before it was 

 taken out of the same vats or put to sale, now for 

 the speedy utterance and tanning hereof they fiave 

 invented diverse and sundry deceitful and crafty 

 means to have the same leather tanned, some time 

 in three weeks and some time in one month or six 

 weeks at the most, as by craft of over liming thereof 

 in their lime pits or otherwise by laying thereof in 

 their vats set in their old tan hills, where it should 

 be tanned with the hot oozes taking unkind heat in 

 the same hill, and sometime by putting seething 

 hot liquor with their oozes into their tan vats where 

 the same hides or leather lie, which they most 

 commonly do practise in the night time, and by 

 diverse and many other such crafty and subtle 

 means, whereby they make the leather to seem to 

 them that have not the knowledge or skill thereof 

 to be as well and sufficiently tanned within the 

 space of three weeks or a month or six weeks at the 

 most as if it lud been in the vats until it had had 

 the full time requisite for the true tanning of the 



The Act gives us matter enough for a 

 number of offences, and it is not long before 

 we hear, on 4 November 1552, of some large 

 quantities of leather seized in the borough of 

 Southwark because they had been insufficiently 

 tanned with such mixtures as had been recited. 

 The ownership of the leather was claimed in 

 various amounts by twelve tanners, eight of 

 them Kentishmen, two of Sussex, and two 

 Surrey men, namely John Cholmeley of 

 Blechingley and Thomas Pynnyn of Ber- 

 mondsey Street. The sheriff of Surrey was 

 bidden to summon a jury of the venue of 

 Southwark to try the cases, but the tanners 

 elected to let judgment go against them by 

 default.' 



The tanners did not represent the only 

 branch of the leather industry, the workers in 

 which were suspected to be guilty of deceitful 

 practices in order to put an insufficiently pre- 

 pared commodity on the market. In the 

 same year in which the true principles of the 

 art of tanning were set forth in an Act of 

 Parliament another Act was passed in which 

 the principles of the art of currying leather 

 were similarly defined.* The leading princi- 

 ples of the two Acts with many additions were 

 combined in the Act of 5 Elizabeth. Curriers 

 were forbidden the use of any other material 

 for the dressing of the tanned leather than 

 hard tallow. Nevertheless in Hilary term, 

 1567-8, seven Southwark curriers were 

 charged with using train-oil as a substitute.* 



Other legislation aimed at keeping down 

 the high price of leather by prohibiting the 

 regrating either of the raw hides or of the 

 tanned leather. By an Act of Edward VI.,* 

 none were allowed to buy raw hides or skins 

 and sell them untanned, and a later Act * 

 prohibited the buying of tanned leather to 

 sell again in the same condition. The latter 

 Act was repealed shortly afterwards, but was 

 again enforced in the first year of Elizabeth's 

 reign, and the principles of the two were 



same, which should have been at the least by the 

 space of three quarters of a year.' Such tanning 

 was to be prohibited henceforth and the use of 

 oozes mixed with 'ashen bark, tapworth, meal, 

 ashes or culver (pigeon) dung ' to be forbidden. 

 No leather was to be judged sufficiently unned 

 that had not lain in the tan oozes at least for 

 three quarters of a year (Stat. 2 and 3 Edw. VI. 

 cap. 11). 



2 Exch. K. R. Mem. R. Mich. 6 Edw. VI. 

 29, 104. 



' Sut. 2 & 3 Edw. VI. cap. 9. 



* Exch. K. R. Mem. R. Hil. 10 Eliz. 289 

 and 315-20 ; Stat. 5 Eliz. cap. 8. 



s Stat. 3 & 4 Edw. VI. cap. 9. 



» Sut. 5 Sc 6 Edw. VI. cap. ij. 



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