Abstract
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the English wool-textile industry was divided into two main branches: the woollen, or clothing, branch, and the worsted branch. The woollen industry manufactured broadcloth, medley cloth, kersies, dozens, penistones, friezes, cottons and other varieties of cloth, while the main products of the worsted industry were worsted proper and the wide range of fabrics known as the ‘new draperies’ or ‘stuffs’. The latter included bayes, sayes, serges, perpetuanas, rashes, frisadoes, minikins, bombasines, grograines, buffins, russells, sagathies, mockadoes, shalloons and tammies — and the list could be considerably extended. The various types of cloth differed little from each other save in fineness, weight and size; but there were fundamental differences between cloth and worsted fabrics, and between ordinary worsted and the new draperies. These differences lay mainly in the character of the yarn that was used, and this in turn depended partly upon the character of the wool and partly upon the processes through which the wool was passed prior to spinning.
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Notes
H. Heaton, Torkshire Woollen and Worsted Industries (Oxford, 1920), pp. 260–2.
P.R.O. E. 134/15 James I. Mich. 31; Hist. MSS. Gomm. Buckingham MSS. p. 49. In the 1570’s, bayes manufacturers were using 20–25 lbs. of fell wool in making the weft of their cloth (The Ordinance Book of the Merchants of the Staple, ed. E. E. Rich (Cambridge, 1937), p. 68). Fell wool was also used in the manufacture of blankets, druggets, kersies, penistones, long-ells, stockings and hats (J. Haynes, Great Britain’s Glory (1715), p. 6; J. Haynes, A View of the Present State of the Clothing Trade in England, pp. 15–16.
E. Lipson, The History of the English Woollen and Worsted Industries (1921), p. 139; Heaton, op. cit., p. 262.
P.J. Bowden, Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. ix (1956), 53.
Ibid., pp. 51–2; F. J. Fisher, ‘Commercial Trends and Policy in Sixteenth-Century England’, Econ. Hist. Rev. x (1940), 96;
B. E. Supple, Commercial Crisis and Change in England, 1600–1642 (Cambridge, 1959), pp. 136–7.
L. Stone, Econ. Hist. Rev. xvii (1947), 119.
F. J. Fisher, ‘London’s Export Trade in the Early Seventeenth Century’, Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. iii (1950), 151–61;
P.J. Bowden, Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. ix (1956), 52–3;
C. Wilson, ‘Cloth Production and International Competition in the Seventeenth Century’, Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. xiii (1960), 210–11; Supple, op. cit., p. 153.
P. J. Bowden, Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. ix (1956), 45–54.
G. D. Ramsay, The Wiltshire Woollen Industry in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Oxford, 1943), p. 1.
P.J. Bowden, Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. ix (1956), 56–7.
J. Klein, The Mesta, A Study in Spanish Economic History, 1273–1836 (Cambridge, Mass., 1920), p. 34.
G. Unwin, Industrial Organization in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Oxford, 1904), p. 131.
For figures of Spanish-wool imports between Michaelmas, 1578, and Easter, 1585, see B.M. Lansd. MS. 29, fol. 56; ibid., 48, fol. 152. At first, Spanish and other foreign wools were imported into England only by aliens; but by 1579 wool imports were being made mostly by ‘English merchauntes, Aldermen and of the best Comoners of London and other Cittis and townes in the West partes’ (ibid., 28, fol. 71). Imports into Exeter in the seventeenth century are given in W. B. Stephens, Seventeenth-Century Exeter. A Study of Industrial and Commercial Development, 1625–1688 (Exeter, 1958), p. 170.
Ibid., pp. 112, 114–16; M. Priestley, ‘Anglo-French Trade and the Unfavourable Balance Controversy, 1660–1685’, Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. iv (1951), 46–7.
Statutes of the Realm, 5 and 6 Edward VI, c. 6; V.C.H. Somerset, ii, 414; T. Westcote, A View of Devonshire in 1630 (edn. 1845), pp. 60–1.
G. Unwin, Studies in Economic History (1927), p. 263.
V.C.H. Essex, ii, 331–3, 386–90; Unwin, op. cit., p. 291. For the decline of the East Anglia worsted industry in the eighteenth century, see M. F. Lloyd Prichard, ‘The Decline of Norwich’, Econ. Hist Rev. 2nd ser. iii (1951), 371–7; V.C.H. Essex, ii, 400–1.
P.R.O. E.134/44–5 Elizabeth I. Mich. 1; N. J. Williams, ‘Two Documents concerning the New Draperies’, Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. iv (1952), 354–7.
M. Priestley, ‘Anglo-French Trade and the Unfavourable Balance Controversy, 1660–1685’, Econ. Hist, Rev. 2nd ser. iv (1951), 45–7; Heaton, op. cit., pp. 250–1.
P.J. Bowden, Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. ix (1956), 47, 54–5.
P.J. Bowden, Earn. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. ix (1956), 49–50.
Welsh wool in general was of an inferior quality. See P.R.O. C.3/200/90; Prothero, op. cit., p. 139; A. L. Rowse, The England of Elizabeth (1951), p. 77.
E. A. Lewis, Welsh Port Books 1550–1603 (Cymmrod. Rec. Ser. xii, 1927), pp. xxxii–xxxiv, 86–91, 156–9; P.R.O. S.P. 14/122/130; S.P. 14/123/28, 54.
T. S. Willan, The English Coasting Trade, 1600–1750 (Manchester, 1938), pp. 168–75. The shipments from Bristol probably included Welsh and Irish wool as well as Gloucestershire and Midlands wool. Bristol also had a considerable coastal trade in wool with Gloucester (ibid., pp. 90–1).
P.J. Bowden, Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. ix (1956), 53, n. 3.
Allison, Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. xi (1958), 107–8.
P.R.O. C.1/1311/70–1; Req. 2/61/93; Req. 2/80/45; E.133/6/833; Advocates’ Library, ADV. MSS. 34. 2. 15. (MS. dated 16th December, 1602); Lumley MS. 2305; L.A.O. MM. VI/5/8,18; Allison, Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. xi (1958), 107–8.
P.R.O. P.C. 2/47, fols. 30–1; H. of C. Journals, xiii, 570, 720, 783–4; Tudor Economic Documents, i, 195; R. B. Westerfield, Middlemen in English Business (1915), p. 259; Defoe, The Complete English Tradesman, ii, 277. Fell wool was also used, though to a lesser extent, by the Norfolk worsted industry. The Northampton glovers supplied part of the raw material (P.R.O. Req. 2/169/12).
P.R.O. G.1/637/4. The monastic houses in Lincolnshire also supplied wool to the West Riding manufacturers. See J. E. T. Rogers, A History of Agriculture and Prices in England (Oxford, 1882), iii, 232; iv, 323.
B.M. Add. MS. 34324, fol. 15; P.R.O. S.P. 12/117/38; H. of C. Journals, xiii, 501; S. H. Waters, Wakefield in the Seventeenth Century (1933), p. 135.
E. Lipson, The History of the English Woollen and Worsted Industries (1921), pp. 220–2.
T. S. Willan, River Navigation in England, 1600–1750 (Manchester, 1936), p. 121.
A View of the Present State of the Clothing Trade in England, p. 66. Complaints were sometimes made by manufacturers that their wool was spoilt by salt water getting into it (P.R.O. C.3/199/28; The Letter Books of Joseph Holroyd and Sam Hill, ed. H. Heaton (1914), p. 39). Even in 1800 the finer sorts of wool were usually transported by land (Clay, op. cit., p. 147).
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Bowden, P.J. (1962). The Wool-Textile Industry and its Sources of Wool Supply. In: The Wool Trade in Tudor and Stuart England. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-81676-7_2
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