CHAPTER II. The Woollen Trade and Manufactures

THE WOOLLEN TRADE AND MANUFACTURES

§ 1. ENGLAND’S MONOPOLY OF WOOL—In the Middle Ages England was the only wool-producing country in the North of Europe. Spain grew wool also, but it could not be used alone for every kind of fabric, and besides it was more difficult to transport wool from Spain to Flanders, the seat of the manufacture of that article, than it was to send it across the narrow German Ocean, where swarms of light craft plied constantly between Flanders and the {48} eastern ports of England. Hence England had a practical monopoly of the wool trade, which was due not only to its favourable climate and soil, but also to the fact that even at the worst periods of civil war—and they did not last for long—our island was incomparably more peaceful than the countries of Western Europe. From the thirteenth to the seventeenth century, the farmers of Western Europe could not possibly have kept sheep, the most defenceless and tender of domestic animals, amid the wars that were continually devastating their homesteads; nor, as a matter of fact, did they do so. But in England, especially after the twelfth century, nearly everybody in the realm, from the king to the villein, was concerned in agriculture, and was interested therefore in maintaining peace. Even when the great landlords, after the Plague of 1348, gave up the cultivation of their arable land, they went in, as we saw, for sheep farming, and enclosed large tracts of land for that purpose. Hence the export trade in wool became more and more important, and there was always a continual demand for English wool to supply the busy looms of the great manufacturing towns in Flanders.

§ 2. WOOL AND POLITICS—The most convincing proof of the importance of the wool trade is seen in England’s diplomatic relations with Flanders, which, by the way, afford an interesting example of the necessity of taking economic factors into account in dealing with national history. Flanders was the great manufacturing country of Europe at that time. England supplied its raw material in vast quantities, and nine-tenths of English wool went to the looms of Bruges and Ghent. A stoppage of this export from England used to throw half the population of the Flemish towns out of work. The immense transactions that even then took place, are {49} seen from the fact that a single company of Florentine merchants would contract with the Cistercian monks of England for the whole year’s supply of the wool produced on their vast sheep-ranges on the Yorkshire moorlands; for the Cistercian order were among the foremost wool-growers in the country. Now, it is a curious and significant fact that when Edward I., Edward III., and Henry V. premeditated an attack on France, they generally took care to gain the friendship of Flanders first, so as to use that country as a base from which to enter France, or at least as a useful ally; and secondly, they paid a large proportion of the expenses of their French expeditions by means of a wool-tax in England. Thus, when Edward III. opened his campaign against France in 1340, he did so from Flanders, with special help afforded by a Flemish alliance. This king also received annually £60,000 from the wool-tax alone, and on special occasions even more. Again, it was a grant of 6s. 8d. on each sack of wool exported that enabled Edward I. in 1275 to fill his treasury for his subsequent invasion of Wales. The same king in 1297 got the means for equipping an expedition against France, via Flanders, in the same way. Similarly Henry V. took care to cultivate the friendship of the Flemish and their rulers before setting out to gain the French crown, and paid for his expedition by raising taxes on wool and hides. The enormous revenues also which from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century were exacted from England by the Papal Court, and by the Italian ecclesiastics quartered on English benefices, were transmitted in the shape of wool to Flanders, and sold by the Lombard exchangers, who transmitted the money thus realized to Italy. The extent of these revenues may be gathered from the fact that the {50} Parliament of 1343, in a petition against Papal appointments to English ecclesiastical vacancies, asserted that—“The Pope’s revenue from England alone is larger than that of any Prince in Christendom.” And at this very time the deaneries of Lichfield, Salisbury, and York, and the archdeaconry of Canterbury, were all held by Italian dignitaries, while the Pope’s collector sent from London 20,000 marks a year to his master at Rome. Now, these impositions were paid out of the proceeds of English wool. It is interesting, too, to find that taxes for King Edward III. were calculated, not in money, but in sacks of wool. In one year the Parliament granted him 20,000 sacks; in another year 30,000 sacks. In 1339 the barons granted him “the tenth sheep, fleece, and lamb.” Early in the fifteenth century £30,000 out of the £40,000 revenue from customs and taxes came from wool alone. Once more, as in the days of the Crusades, we are able to see how the Hundred Years’ War with France, and the exactions of Rome, were paid for by the industrial portion of the community, while underneath the glamour of the victories of Edward III. and Henry V. lies the prosaic but powerful wool-sack.

§ 3. PRICES AND BRANDS OF ENGLISH WOOL—Having now seen the importance of wool as a factor in English industry and political history, we must proceed to study more closely the facts of the woollen trade, and the manufacture of woollen cloth. The chief growers of wool were the Cistercian monks, who owned huge flocks of sheep. The wool grown near Leominster, in Herefordshire, was the finest of all, and, generally speaking, that grown in Wiltshire, Essex, Sussex, Hampshire, Oxfordshire, Cambridge and Warwickshire, was the best. The poorest came from the North of England, and from {51} the Southern downs. There were a number of different breeds of sheep, for care was taken to improve the breed, and it would seem that forty-four different brands of English wool, ranging in value from £13 to £2, 10s. the sack (of 364 lbs.), were recognized both in the home and foreign markets, as mentioned in a Parliamentary petition of 1454. The average price of wool from 1260–1400 was 2s. 1⁠¾d. per clove of 7 lbs.—i.e. a little over threepence a pound, sometimes fourpence. In the middle of this period (1350) the average annual export, according to Misselden, in the Circle of Commerce, was about 11,648,000 lbs., representing a value of some £180,683 yearly.

§ 4. ENGLISH MANUFACTURES—Now, although I have spoken of Flanders as the manufacturing centre for Europe, it must not be supposed that England could not manufacture any of the large quantity of wool which it grew. Undoubtedly the people of the Netherlands were at that time the great manufacturers of the world, and were acquainted with arts and processes to which the English were strangers, while for a long time the English could not weave fine cloths; but, nevertheless, there was a considerable manufacturing industry, chiefly of coarse cloths, an industry very widely spread, and carried on in people’s own cottages under the domestic system. The chief kinds of cloth made were hempen, linen, and woollen coverings, such as would be used for sacks, dairy-cloths, woolpacks, sails of windmills, and similar purposes. The great textile centres were Norfolk and Suffolk, where, indeed, manufacturing industries had existed long before the earliest records. An idea of their importance may be given from the fact that, in the assessment for the wool-tax of 1341, Norfolk was counted by far the wealthiest county in England after Middlesex (including London). {52} There was also a cloth industry of importance in the West of England, the chief centres being Westbury, Sherborne, and Salisbury. The linen of Aylsham was also celebrated.

§ 5. FOREIGN MANUFACTURE OF FINE GOODS—But we find rich people used to purchase fine cloths from abroad—e.g. linen from Liège and Flanders generally, and velvet and silk goods from Genoa and Venice—although there was certainly a silk industry in London, carried on chiefly by women, and protected by an Act of 1454. In the England of which we are now speaking, the textile industries were prevented from attaining a full development from the fact that, though general, they were strictly local; and, moreover, those who practised them did not look upon their handicraft as their sole means of livelihood, but even till the eighteenth century were generally engaged in agriculture as well. The cause of this is connected with the isolation and self-sufficiency of separate communities, previously noted. An evidence of the consequent inferiority of English to Flemish cloth is given by the fact that an Act of 1261 attempts to prohibit the import of spun stuff and the export of wool. Needless to say it was useless. The prices of cloth at this period are interesting, as showing the great difference between the fine (i.e. foreign) and coarse (home) cloths. The average price of linen is 4d. an ell, being as low as 2d. and as high as 8⁠¼d. Inferior woollens sold at 1s. 7⁠½d. a yard, “russet” at 1s. 4d., blanketing at 1s. On the other hand, scarlet cloth (foreign) rises to the enormous price of 15s. a yard. Cloth for liveries varied from 2s. 1d. to 1s. per yard. Speaking generally for the period 1260–1400, we may give the average price of the best quality at 3s. 3⁠½d. a yard from 1260–1350, and 3s. 5⁠½d. from 1350–1400; while cloth of the second quality {53} fetched 1s. 4⁠½d. in the first period, and 1s. 11⁠¼d. in the second.

§ 6. FLEMISH SETTLERS TEACH THE ENGLISH WEAVERS. NORWICH—It is to Edward III., very largely, that the development of English textile industry is due. It is true that, long before, Henry II. had endeavoured to stimulate English manufacture by establishing a “cloth fair” in the churchyard of St Bartholomew. But English industry had developed slowly till the days of Edward, partly, no doubt, owing to the continual disorder of the preceding reigns. Stimulated, probably, by his wife Philippa’s connexion with Flanders, he encouraged Flemish weavers to settle in England, chiefly in the Eastern counties, though we hear of two Flemings from Brabant settling in York in 1331; and about this time one John Kemp, also a Fleming, removed from Norwich, and founded in Westmoreland the manufacture of the famous “Kendal green.” The chief centre, however, of the foreign weavers was naturally Norwich, the Manchester of those days, with a population of some 6000, and the chief industry was that of worsted cloths, so named from the place of manufacture, Worstead. When we speak of worsted cloths, we mean those plain, unpretending fabrics that probably never went beyond a plain weave or a four-shaft twill. The yarn was very largely spun on the rock or distaff, by means of a primitive whorl or spindle, while the loom was but a small improvement on that in which Penelope wove her famous web. There was a great demand among religious orders for sayes and the like, of good quality; plain worsteds were generally worn by the public.

§ 7. THE WORSTED INDUSTRY—Whether the growth of the worsted cloth industry was connected or not with this particular Flemish immigration we cannot determine. {54} The manufacture was confirmed to the town of Worstead by a patent of 1313, and in 1328, also, Edward III. issued a letter patent on behalf of the cloth workers in worsted in the county of Norfolk. The manufacture was already so extensive and important that the next year a special “aulnager” (or cloth searcher) was appointed to inspect the worsted stuffs of Norwich and district, and held his office for twenty years. In 1348, however, on the petition of the worsted weavers and merchants themselves, the patent was revoked, and the aulnager removed. But in 1410, when Norwich gained a new charter, the power of “aulnage” was once more given, at its own request, to its mayor and sheriffs, or their deputies.

§ 8. GILDS IN THE CLOTH TRADE—In the previous period we referred to the origin and growth of the craft gilds, and it is interesting to note their importance in connexion with the woollen industry at this time. As a separate craft, that of the weaver cannot be traced back beyond the early part of the twelfth century; in the middle of the twelfth century, however, gilds of weavers are found established in several of the larger English towns. At first they were in voluntary association, though acting independently of each other, but it became the policy of the government in the fourteenth century to extend the gild organization over the whole country, and thus to bring craftsmen together in organized bodies. Elaborate regulations were drawn up for their governance by Parliament, or by municipalities. Now, in London at this date (1300), and probably at Norwich and other large towns, the woollen industry was divided into four or five branches, the weavers and burellers, the dyers and fullers, and the tailors (cissores). The weavers and burellers were united in the same gild, the dyers and fullers in another, while the tailors formed a third gild of {55} their own. But they were all very conscious that they had interests in common, and they were accustomed to act together in matters affecting the industry as a whole, such as, e.g., ordering cloth made in the city to be dyed and fulled in that city, and not sent out to some other town.

§ 9. THE DYEING OF CLOTH—The dyeing and fulling industry, however, could not have flourished much in England at this time, for English cloths were mostly sent to be fulled and dyed in the Netherlands; and indeed we cannot consider dyeing as a really English industry till the days of James I., where it will be duly mentioned. At the same time it was not unknown, for we have scarlet, russet, and black cloths of English make in the fourteenth century. But the industry was chiefly carried on in the Netherlands, owing to the progress there made in the cultivation of madder, which forms the basis of so many different dyes. This plant has never been at any time largely cultivated in England, and, moreover, the Dutch for several centuries possessed the sole secret of a process of pulverizing the root in order to prepare it for use. Such being the case, there is no wonder that they far excelled the English in the art of dyeing.

§ 10. THE GREAT TRANSITION IN ENGLISH INDUSTRY—From the time of this first Flemish immigration in the fourteenth century, we perceive the beginning of an important modification in our home industries. Hitherto England had been almost exclusively a purely agricultural country, growing large quantities of wool, exporting it as raw material, and importing manufactured goods in exchange. But from this period the export of wool gradually declines, while on the other hand our home manufactures increase, until at length they in turn are exported. In fact, manufactured cloth, and not raw wool, becomes the {56} basis of our national wealth, and finally the export is forbidden altogether, so that we may have the more for the looms at home.

A proof of the growing importance of manufacture in this period is the noticeable lack of labourers and the high wages they get, as set forth in the Act 7 Henry IV. (i.e. 1406), which points to an increase of weavers in all parts of the kingdom, that takes labourers from other employments.

§ 11. THE MANUFACTURING CLASS AND POLITICS—The growing importance of the manufacturing class which was now rapidly springing up, can be clearly traced in the politics of the Tudor period. In spite of two great drawbacks the cloth manufacture was growing. It had naturally been severely checked for a generation or so by the awful national disaster of the Great Plague, which occurred so soon after Edward II. had helped to found it in England, and which for the time utterly paralysed English industry in all its branches. It had been checked again by the long and useless wars which Edward III. and his successors carried on against France, at enormous cost and with no practical results, but which of course were paid for out of the proceeds of our national industries. But after these two checks it developed steadily, even during the Wars of the Roses; for these wars were carried on almost exclusively by the barons and their retainers, in a series of battles hardly any of which were of any magnitude, exaggerated though they have been both by contemporary and later historians. These wars had the ultimate effect of causing the feudal aristocracy to destroy itself in a suicidal conflict, and thus helped to increase the influence of the middle class—i.e. the merchants and manufacturers—as a factor in political life. And thus it became the policy of the Tudor sovereigns, who were gifted with a {57} certain amount of native shrewdness, to hasten the decaying power of the feudal lords by simultaneously supporting, and being supported by, the middle class, and to the alliance thus made between the crown and the industrial portion of the community we owe a rapid increase of the commercial prosperity which laid the foundations of the greatness of the Elizabethan age, and of the great mercantile enterprises that succeeded it.