Wiltshire Archaeological & Natural History Magazine, vol. 97 (2004), pp. 35-62 
Thomas Kytson and Wiltshire Clothmen, 
1529 -—1539 
by Colin Brett 
This article concerns the purchases of cloth, by the sixteenth-century London merchant Thomas Kytson, from Wiltshire 
clothers, or clothmen as he preferred to call them, and the export of those cloths to the four seasonal marts in Antwerp 
and Bergen-op-Zoom. A previous article covered Kytson’s dealings with Somerset clothmen.! 
Thomas Kytson, born in 1485, was the son of 
Robert Kytson of Warton in Lancashire. In his 
youth he travelled to London and was apprenticed 
to the mercer Richard Glasyer. On the completion 
of his apprenticeship he was admitted a freeman of 
the Mercers’ Company in 1507.2 He became a 
member of the Merchant Adventurers Company 
and dealt extensively in cloth exported to the cloth 
marts in Flanders and by so doing became an 
affluent London citizen. By 1521 he had amassed 
enough money to purchase Hengrave Hall near 
Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk from the Duke of 
Buckingham for £2,340, the estates being valued at 
£115 yearly. Later in the decade he acquired manors 
in Devon, Dorset, Lancashire, Somerset and 
Suffolk as well as property in London. He obtained 
a licence from Henry VIII to build an embattled 
manor-house at Hengrave. This house, begun in 
1525 and finished in 1538, was on a magnificent 
scale and reflected the great wealth of its owner. 
This wealth enabled him in 1521 to lend Henry 
VIII £2,340? and the next year, in an assessment of 
the goods and lands of the citizens of London, he 
was assessed in goods at 1,000 marks, later amended 
~ to 4,000 marks, and in lands at 600 marks.’ He had 
extensive financial dealings with the Crown and in 
1523 he was indebted to the Crown for £600.° In 
1535 he was again assessed at 4,000 marks (the 
seventh highest out of 146 citizens).° He had a 
house, with a chapel, in Milk Street in the parish of 
St. Mary Magdalen’s, a garden in Coleman Street, 
and another house with a chapel in Stoke 
Newington, besides other houses in Suffolk and 
Devonshire. After serving as an alderman he also 
served as sheriff of London in 1533 and was 
knighted the same year.’ Kytson died on 11 
September 1540 and was buried at Hengrave.’ 
In 1517 Kytson was recorded as one of ‘late 
Tresorers of the Merchauntes adventerers by yonde 
the see’,’ and in 1525 was elected as one of the four 
wardens of the Fellowship of Mercers.!° As such he 
sat on the frequent General Courts of the 
Fellowship of Mercers and presided over the Courts 
of Assistants of the Mercers. He traded extensively 
in cloths and other goods at the cloth fairs in 
Flanders and appears to have had a house and a 
staff of ‘servants’ in Antwerp. Included in this staff 
would have been his ‘factor’ who received the cloths 
when they were shipped over from London and 
carried out the transactions with the continental 
merchants. Kytson became, probably, one of the 
most affluent of the mercers in the 1530s. After his 
death an inventory of his goods revealed that his 
warehouses in London held imports of cloth of gold, 
satins, velvets, tapestries, fustians, furs, bags of 
pepper, madder, cloves etc. valued at £1,181 15s. 1d. 
The records of Tudor merchants are few in 
number, but among Kytson’s books remarkably 
preserved are two in which are recorded his 
shipments of cloth to the annual marts. To some 
19 Belgrave Crescent, Bath BA] 5JU 
