330 



Extracts from the Becords of the 



VII. — Restraints on Handicrafts. 



But not to a man's hours of idleness alone did the legislature 

 take heed ; it directed and controlled him in the workshop and the 

 mill, in a spirit differing greatly from that of modern factory laws. 

 For the practice of almost every sort of handicraft some form of 

 licence, or certificate, or allowance, or at least bail, was needed — and 

 among the applicants for such licences, or defendants called to ac- 

 count for the want of them, are to be found bakers, wheelwrights, 

 dyers and weavers. It was upon these last and upon the clothiers 

 that the law pressed most heavily, even while its laudable aim 

 was the suppression of " scamped " workmanship. 



Shoddy — ubiquitous, and unabashed, in the later nineteenth cen- 

 tury — encountered from the legislature of the sixteenth nothing 

 but uncompromising hostility. 



Edward the Sixth's Acts 1 of Parliament gave it no quarter. They 

 denounced " the slight and subtile making of clothes and colours/' 



1 The preambles of Edward's Acts breathe a spirit of such primitive simplicity ; 

 principles not always regarded in modern commerce are there advanced with an 

 air so serious, and in phrases so fresh and original, that their transcription more 

 at large may perhaps be forgiven : — 



"Forasmuch as by the slight and subtile making of clothes and colours within divers parts of 

 this Realm, now of late practised and used, not only great infamies and slanders have grown to the 

 same Realm, but also the King' Majesty's faithful and true subjects have sustained great loss in the 

 use and wearing of the said clothes so slightly and subtilly made." 



And :— 



" Where heretofore divers and many goodly statutes have been made for the true making of cloth 

 within this Realm, which nevertheless forasmuche as clothiers, some for lack of knowledge and ex- 

 perience, and some of extreme covetousness, do daily more and more study rather to make many 

 than to make good clothes, having more respect to their private commodity and gain, than the ad- 

 vancement of truth and continuance of the commodity in estimation, according to the worthiness 

 thereof, have and do daily, instead of truth, practise falsehood, and instead of substantial 

 making of cloth, do practise sleight and slender making, some by mingling of yams of divers 

 spinnings in one cloth, some by mingling fell-wool and lambs-wool, or either of them, with 

 fleece-wool, some by putting too little stuff, some by taking them out of the mill before they 

 be full thicked, some by over stretching them upon the tenter, and then stopping with flocks 

 such bracks as shall be made by means thereof ; finally, by using so many subtle sleights and un. 

 truths, as when the clothes so made be put in the water to try them they rise out of the same 

 neither in length nor breadth as they oughtto do, and in some place narrower than some, beside such 

 cockeling, bandoning, and divers other great and notable faults, as almost cannot be thought to be, 

 true. . . . And yet nevertheless, neither fearing the laws in that case provided, nor regarding 

 the estimation of their country, do not only procure the Aulnager to set the King's seal to such false 

 untrue and faulty cloth, but do themselves weave into the same the likeness and similitude of the 

 King's Highness most noble and imperial crown, and also the first letter of his name, which should 

 be testimonies of truth, and not a defence of untruth, to the great slander of^the King our Sovereign 

 Lord, and the shame of this land, and to the utter destruction of so great and notable commodity, 

 as the like is not in any foreign nation." 



