A HISTORY OF SURREY 



Lord Mayor of London was then directed to 

 examine Marche as to the complaint against 

 him, and to advise the Council what measures 

 should be taken for the relief of the petitioners 

 whose industry maintained a great number of 

 poor people.* But in 1630 and the follow- 

 ing years it is evident from the State Papers 

 that the depression in the cloth trade was by 

 no means confined to Surrey. The Hamp- 

 shire industry, as we have already seen, was 

 closely associated with that of Surrey, and the 

 complaint of the Basingstoke clothiers on 1 2 

 January 1 630-1, following upon those of the 

 Godalming and Wonersh clothiers, that 

 whereas thirty broadcloths and a hundred 

 kerseys had been made every week in their 

 town, now only seven broadcloths and twenty 

 kerseys were made, and even that reduced 

 quantity laid upon their hands for want of 

 buyers, is only what we should expect.* But 

 from other parts of the kingdom, from Devon, 

 Kent, Suffolk, and Essex for instance, com- 

 plaints were to come of the badness of trade, 

 and the cause at length becomes generally 

 attributed to the attempts which the Com- 

 pany of Merchant Adventurers and the 

 London Drapers' Company seem to have 

 been making at this period, apparently not 

 without some measure of success, to get the 

 whole of the trade in cloth, wholesale and 

 retail, into their hands.' 



Aubrey's account of the Surrey towns and 

 villages where the cloth industry had once 

 flourished so greatly well shows to what a 

 state of decay it had fallen into at the close 

 of the seventeenth century. Godalming 

 alone is spoken of as still eminent for clothing, 

 ' the most of any place in this country ; here 

 they make mixed kerseys and blue kerseys for 

 the Canaries, which for their colour are not 

 equalled by any in England.'* Of Wonersh 

 or Ognersh he says that it ' has been a village 

 of great note for its clothing manufacture, 

 but has been in its waning condition above 

 threescore years ; it chiefly consisted in mak- 

 ing blue cloth for the Canary Islands ; the 

 decay and indeed ruin of their trade was 

 their avaricious method of stretching their 

 cloth from 18 yards to 22 or 23, which 

 being discovered abroad, they returned their 

 commodity on their hands and it would 

 sell at no market. The same fraudulent 



1 Jets of P. C. (ed. Dasent), 18 June 1587. 

 » S.P. Dom. Chas. I. clxxxli. 45, 45 i.; clxxxviii. 



55- 



3 See for instance S.P. Dom. Chas. I. cclxxix. 



64, 65, cclxxxii. 130. 



♦ Aubrey, Nat. Hist, and Antiq. of the County of 



Surrey, iv. 4. 



348 



practice caused the decay of the blues at 

 Guildford.' * Of Farnham as once a clothing 

 town Aubrey knew only by hearsay. There 

 was not in his time a clothier there.* The 

 parish ofShere is still spoken of as considerable 

 for its ancient industry of fustian weaving.' 

 Fustian is properly a cotton cloth, but there 

 seems little doubt that the term was formerly 

 applied in this country to a woollen fabric 

 made in imitation of stuflFs of cotton or mixed 

 materials imported from abroad.* Possibly it 

 was still so applied in Aubrey's day to the 

 Shere product, wool being the material most 

 ready to the hands of the weavers in that 

 parish. 



In Godalming alone in south-west Surrey 

 does the old cloth industry appear to have 

 been continued to any considerable extent 

 during the eighteenth century. In Bowen's 

 map of Surrey of 1749 Aubrey's account of 

 the Godalming kerseys is quoted in a marginal 

 note apparently as still applicable. Wills of 

 Godalming clothiers can still be found in some 

 number to the middle of the century, among 

 the chief clothing families being the Woods 

 and the Shrubbs. In the early years of the 

 nineteenth century there seem to have been 

 still some kerseys and other cloths made in the 

 town and neighbourhood, but it is said that of 

 late years the manufacture had gone very 

 much to decay.' Indeed, even as late as 

 1850 we arc told that 'a few kerseys, wool- 

 lens, and stockings are still made here ; but 

 the advantages of steam power wherever coal 

 is cheap leave but little chance to other places, 

 especially where the supply and means of dis- 

 tribution are inferior.'" These few kerseys 

 and woollens must have been the very last 

 remains of the ancient industry which has 

 long since become completely extinct. 



Before closing this account of the Surrey 

 cloth industry, a few words may be said as to 

 the fulling mills, of which frequent mention is 

 to be found in records relating to the county, 

 and which at one time must have been very 

 numerous. The process of fulling is intended 

 by pressing and thickening the woven cloth 

 so to work the surface that the transverse 

 threads may not be seen. Originally it was 

 performed by walking on or kneading the 

 cloth, hence our English surnames of Walker 

 and Tucker. But in process of time mills 

 were used for the purpose. When this change 

 actually took place cannot perhaps be exactly 



^ Ibid. iv. 97. « Ibid. iii. 346. 



' Ibid. iv. 43. 



8 See art. ' Fustian ' in the Drapers' Diet. 

 ' Manning and Bray, Hist, of Surrey, i. 605. 

 " Brayley and Britton, Hist, of Surrey, v. App. 47 



