The Wool Trade in Tudor and Stuart England

258 Pages·1962·24.078 MB·English

by  Peter J. Bowden (auth.)

THE WOOL TRADE
IN TUDOR AND STUART ENGLAND
THE WOOL TRADE
IN TUDOR AND STUART
ENGLAND
BY
J.
PETER BOWDEN
LECTURER IN ECONOMIC HDTQRY IN THB
UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD
Palgrave Macmillan
1962
ISBN 978-1-349-81678-1 ISBN 978-1-349-81676-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-81676-7
Copyright © P. J. Bowden 1962
Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover 1st edition 1962 978-0-333-07430-5
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To the Memory of
my Father
FOREWORD
In her classic study of The Wool Trade in Medieval English History
the late Eileen Power described an English economy whose
prosperity rested largely on sacks of wool. When Dr. Bowden's
story begins, the English economy had become even more de
pendent on wool, no longer exported mainly raw but now made
up into cloth; the cloth was increasing in its local variety and it
was becoming more and more a cottage industry scattered over
a score of English counties. Until the middle of the sixteenth
century only the worsted industry of Norfolk suffered from seri
ous foreign competition: for the other clothing counties there
seemed no limit to the capacity of the home and foreign markets
to soak up whatever cloth was produced, and the main task of
the traders in wool was to match the variegation oflocal demand
with the variety of supplies which different local breeds and
pastures could produce. The increase in total supply was brought
about by absorbing most of the wools that had previously been
exported raw, and by a steady rise in price which tempted
farmers to consider whether wool was not a more profitable
crop than corn, and shepherds more attractive a labour force
than husbandmen. Only the Company of the Staple shivered in
the wind, shorn. Its members still had the monopoly of raw
wool exports that Eileen Power described, but there were
hardly any wool exports.
After the mid-sixteenth century the situation was different in
one fundamental aspect. Stagnating woollen cloth exports
created unemployment at home and faced the government with
adjustments to contraction, and the whole industry (from
Northamptonshire sheep pastures to the activities of Baltic
traders) became a prey for anatomists and diagnosticians, and
the dispossessed husbandman was not the only voice crying that
sheep had eaten up too much of England. When the historian
and traveller William Camden came to Halifax he rejoiced to
see somewhere in England at last where the human population
was growing faster than the sheep population.
Vlll Foreword
In this spate of self-examination and recrimination the his
torian must rejoice at the publicity given to private matters.
With so lucrative a trade as wool it is not surprising that the
proposals to regulate the wool trade were the occasion of much
special pleading by different sectors of the wool-textile industry,
and Dr. Bowden is able to show that much of the Tudor and
Stuart legislation and official regulation which used the lan
guage of public welfare was in fact the cover for private interest.
Among the themes which emerge, the new role coveted by the
under-employed Staplers and the hostility between the capital
istic and non-capitalistic sections of the clothmakers are perhaps
the most important. Unpublished material now explored en
ables Dr. Bowden to show government regulation and the ad
ministration of monopolistic privileges in their sordid - and
not very efficient - reality.
Another consequence of a contracted trade and of new
government regulations from which an historian can profit is
the litigation which follows: the clothier seeks to evade a bar
gain made with a wool dealer in fatter years; creditors seek to
recover losses from reluctant debtors; the unlucky, the foolish
and the rogues jostle each other in the records of the Court of
Requests and the Chancery; while in the Exchequer the com
mon informers were pursuing those who had offended against
the regulating statutes. Dr. Bowden has broken much new
ground in analysing this type of record, and from it he has been
able to draw a more realistic picture of the role of the wool
trader, the much discussed middleman or brogger, who was the
scapegoat for many sins. He is seen to be the inevitable and use
ful servant of an industry which was developing more and more
local specialization and needing the wools of a wider and wider
area; his sorting function grew to be of great importance and as
an importer he showed the growing dependence of the industry
on the wools ofIreland and Spain.
Dr. Bowden's final service is to suggest an answer to a crucial
question: why did our woollen cloth fall in the esteem of
foreigners? an answer which does not depend on any change in
the ration of original sin, deceptiveness or skill possessed by the
ordinary English weaver. His suggestion - which I will not
reveal here - takes us back to where the wool trade had always
begun, to the pastures of rural England: and it serves to explain
Foreword
IX
the rapid development of one transformed section of the cloth
industry in the seventeenth century, the worsted cloths.
Finally, it is appropriate to record that Dr. Bowden's work
was first made possible by the generous donation which Mr.
W. H. Dean made to this Department soon after the War in
order to stimulate academic research into the woollen industry.
As befitted a graduate of a Department whose first Head had
been]. H. Clapham, Mr. Dean made the funds available both
for economists and economic historians; and from them arose
Dr. Bowden's study as well as those of Dr. K.]. Allison on wool
and cloth in East Anglia and Dr. E. M. Sigsworth's Black Dyke
Mills.
M. W. BERESFORD
Prqfessor of Economic History
Department of Economics
The University, Leeds
August 1961
PREFACE
This book originated in my interest in that picturesque figure,
the Halifax wool driver. What started as a local study oflimited
scope took on more substantial proportions when I discovered
that a mass of largely unexplored manuscript material existed
which threw light on national developments in the wool trade
hitherto unsuspected or imperfectly understood. My results
were submitted as a thesis for the degree of Ph.D. at Leeds in
1952. Since then, the interest kindly shown by fellow economic
historians and others has encouraged me to pursue my research
further and to produce the present study.
The author of even a short book must owe many debts. It is a
pleasant duty to record my gratitude to the University of Leeds
for the award of a Dean Research Scholarship in 1949, which
made it possible for my thesis to be written. I am likewise
grateful to the University of Sheffield for financial assistance
from the Knoop Research Fund, which has enabled me to
examine additional source material, and so to strengthen or
modifY certain of the conclusions previously reached.
Like most historical research workers, lowe much to the
knowledge and enthusiasm of archivists and librarians in many
places. In this connexion I am especially indebted to officials of
the Public Record Office, British Museum, Brotherton Library
in the University of Leeds, Henry E. Huntington Library,
Institute of Historical Research, National Register of Archives,
National Library of Scotland, Newcastle Central Reference
Library, and the County Record Offices of Essex, Kent,
Lancashire, Lincolnshire and Oxfordshire. My thanks are also
due to the Society of Antiquaries and the Yorkshire Archae
ological Society for permission to use their libraries, and the
Earl of Scarbrough, Mr. T. Cottrell-Dormer, Mrs. E. Dunlop,
Mrs. A. Heneage, Mr. M. Kirkby and Miss M. Simpson for
allowing me to examine manuscripts in their private possession.
I am grateful also to the editors of the Yorkshire Bulletin of
Economic and Social Research and of Wool Knowledge for authority to
reproduce material published in these two journals.
xu Preface
For advice, help and criticism, I am indebted to a wide circle
of teachers, colleagues and friends. But I should particularly like
to thank for their interest and encouragement Professor A. J.
Brown, Professor R. H. Tawney and Mr. Lawrence Stone; for
the preparation of maps, Miss M. Thom and Mr. H. Walkland;
and for the task of typing the manuscript from my handwriting,
Miss P. Beardmore and Miss P. Rudiforth. My greatest debt,
however, is to Professor M. W. Beresford, who first aroused my
interest in economic history and has since been both guide and
mentor in the labyrinth of historical research.
P.J.B.