Page:A book of the west; being an introduction to Devon and Cornwall.djvu/321

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TUCKING MILLS
249

The old chapel of S. Laurence in the town, now converted into a grammar school, belonged to the guild of the cloth-workers, and their seal became the arms of the borough: On a mount vert, a chapel with spire, in dexter chief the sun tin splendour, in inister a crescent moon, in dexter base a teasel, in sinister a saltire. The teasel and sun and moon were emblematical of the chief staples of the place; the woollen trade and the mining interests.

The old fulling-mills were locally termed tucking-mills, and the extent to which cloth-working was carried on in South Devon is shown by the prevalence of the surname Tucker.[1]

The process of manufacture given by Westcote, in 1630, is as follows:—

"First, the gentleman farmer, or husbandman, sends his wool to the market, which is bought either by the comber or spinster, and they, the next week, bring it hither again in yarn, which the weaver buys, and the market following brings that hither again in cloth, when it is sold, either to the clothier, who sends it to London, or to the merchant, who, after it hath passed the fuller's mill, and sometimes the dyer's vat, transports it. The large quantities whereof cannot be well guessed, but best known to the custom-book, whereunto it yields no small commodity, and this is continued all the year through."

The clothier was a man of some means, that bought the yarn or abb in the Tuesday's market from Cornish and Tavistock spinners, who kept this

  1. For what follows on the woollen trade I am greatly indebted to a paper by Mr. P. F. S. Amery in the Transactions of the Devonshire Association, 1879.