INDUSTRIES 



in length. A penalty of 40J. was decreed 

 for every oiFending piece. 



In 1594 four Guildford clothiers, Robert 

 Broadbridge, Richard and Robert Burchall 

 and George Bowyer were summoned for 

 alleged offences under this Act.' Under a 

 later Act John Mylles, another Guildford 

 clothier, was summoned in 1605 for exceeding 

 the length of 15 yards.* But an undated 

 and somewhat undecipherable list, probably to 

 be assigned to the last years of the sixteenth 

 century, gives the names of those clothiers in 

 Surrey, Hampshire and other counties, who 

 made fine kerseys * commonly called long 

 cloths' of 20 yards and upwards to 28 yards, 

 the which ' were never till now of late but 

 eighteen yards or nineteen at the longest.' 

 Four names appear under Guildford, amongst 

 them Maurice Abbott, four under Godalming, 

 four under Wonersh, three under Farnham, 

 one under Chiddingfold, and one, a woman, 

 under Shere.^ 



The chief localities in south-west Surrey 

 where the kersey industry was pursued may 

 be inferred from the above account of the 

 difficulties of the clothiers to comply with the 

 requirements of the Acts which regulated 

 their doings. Guildford, which as we have 

 seen at a very early date lent its name to a 

 special class of cloth goods, was still an im- 

 portant centre. The woolsacks on the 

 borough arms still testify to its once staple 

 trade, and we hear how in 1574 every ale- 

 house keeper was obliged by an ordinance of 

 the corporation to have a signboard with a 

 woolsack painted thereon hung up at his door 

 under a penalty of 6s. 8d. The signboard 

 was delivered to him at the Town Hall by 

 the hall warden, to whom he paid 2s. for the 

 same.* From the number of clothiers there 

 during the latter half of the sixteenth and the 

 first half of the seventeenth centuries, God- 

 alming seems to have equalled if not excelled 

 Guildford in importance. The town re- 

 ceived its charter from Queen Elizabeth on 

 25 January 1574-S, but the opening words 

 which state how the town was in the greatest 

 ruin and decay are perhaps, as Mr. Ralph 

 Nevill considers, a mere rhetorical flourish. ° 

 The ordinances for the government of the 

 town confirmed by the Lord Chancellor in 

 1620 recite that it is 'an ancient clothing 

 town, and the inhabitants thereof of long 



« Exch. K. R. Mem. R. Trin. 36 Eliz. 81, 8z. 



2 Ibid. Mich. 3 Jas. I. 205. 



3 Exch. K. R. Accts. bdle. 347, No. 17. 



* Manning and Bray, Hist. 0/ Surrey, i. 32. 

 6 R. Nevill, F.S.A., 0/d Cottage and Domestic 

 Architecture in South-West Surrey, ed. 2, p. 73. 



time and before the memory of any man to 

 the contrary have been principally employed 

 in the making, dyeing, fulling and dressing of 

 woollen cloth.' ° Farnham was another im- 

 portant clothing town, although in Aubrey's 

 day the fact had become well nigh forgotten. 

 The ulnager and sealer of cloths for the 

 counties of Surrey and Sussex gives the names 

 of fifteen clothiers in the district who sub- 

 mitted their cloths to inspection in 1574; 

 797 pieces of cloth were sealed between 

 Lady Day and Michaelmas in that year.'' On 

 23 March 1578-9 we find the ulnager much 

 concerned at the amount of cloth which he 

 feared was conveyed out of the two shires 

 unsealed to London, and that he understood 

 that ' divers broadcloths are brought out of 

 other countries and milled at a mill near 

 Wimbledon by Wandsworth.' A deputy was 

 appointed by him to seal these cloths and 

 others that were made at or brought into 

 Southwark.* 



Guildford, Godalming and Farnham thus 

 constituted the three centres in south-west 

 Surrey where in Elizabethan days clothmaking 

 could be practised in due conformity with 

 statute. But despite enactments to the con- 

 trary we have already seen proof that the 

 industry extended into the outlying villages. 

 In Wonersh, of the importance of whose in- 

 dustry we shall hear more later, there was 

 already established a colony of clothiers. The 

 little village of Chiddingfold, thriving with 

 its glass-makers and tanners, had also a few 

 clothiers, and they were to be found too in 

 Shalford, Ash, Stoke and Shere. Aubrey 

 speaks of the latter parish as considerable for 

 its fiistian weavers, an industry of long stand- 

 ing, and in connection with its wool manu- 

 facture the tradition which he quotes that the 

 parsonage house was built upon woolpacks 

 may be noticed here. The tradition may 

 have arisen, as he suggests, from a tax laid 

 upon woolpacks towards the building of it." 

 But whatever may have been its origin, the 

 currency of the tradition in Aubrey's day is 

 significant of the old staple industry of this 

 quarter of Surrey. 



As to the weavers, clothworkers, clothiers, 

 fullers and shearmen, as they are described 

 according to their various occupations, who 

 constituted the staple industry of these towns 

 and villages, wills, deeds and the records of 

 the Court of Chancery in addition to those 



« Ibid. 



' Loseley MSS. {Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. vli. App. 

 ii. p. 627). 8 Ibid. 



9 Aubrey, Nat. Hist, and Antiq. of the Count-) of 

 Surrey, iv. 43. 



II 



345 



44 



