INDUSTRIES Two hundred maydens did abide. In peticoats of stammel * red, And milk-white kerchers on their head ; Their smocke sleeves like to winter snow That on the westerne mountaines flow, And each sleeve with a silken band Was featly tied at the hand ; These prettie maids did never lin" But in their place all day did spin ; And spinning so with voyces meet, Like nightingales they sung full sweet. Then to another loom came they, Where children were in poor array. And every one sat picking woll The fineste from the course to pull. The number was seven score and ten, The children of poor silly men. And these, their labours to requite, Had every one a penny at night Beside their meate and drink all day, Which was to them a wondrous stay. Within another place likewise Full fiftie proper men he spies ; And these were shearemen 3 every one, Whose skill and cunning there was showne. And hard by them there did remaine Full foure score rowers * taking paine. A dye-house likewise had he then, Wherein he kept full fortie men ; And likewise in his fulling mill, Full twenty persons kept he still. This fulling-mill was at Bagnor, a hamlet of Speen. The waste ground adjoining the mill is called ' Rack Marsh,' and so late as the end of the eighteenth century the old posts which formed the framework for drying the cloth were observable. 5 We will pass over the poetical description of the food supplied to the workmen, the butcher, baker, brewer, five cooks and six scullion boys. The author tells of ' the warehouses, some being filled with wool, some with flocks, some with woad and madder, and some with broad cloth and kersies ready dyed and drest, beside a great number of others, some stretched on the tenters, some hanging on poles, and a great many more lying wet in other places.' We may take this ac- count as a fairly accurate description of a great merchant's clothing establishment in the time of the Tudor monarchs. Winchcomb of Newbury, according to Deloney's biography, took a leading part among the clothiers of England in obtaining freedom of trade with foreign countries. By reason of war many foreign merchants were 1 Stammel a kind of fine worsted. 2 Lin cease or stop. 3 Shearemen or Sheremen clothworkers.
- Rowers those who smoothed the cloth with
rollers. ' Netubury and its Environs, p 171. prevented from coming to England, and English merchants were forbidden to trade with France or the Low Countries. Hence the clothiers' stocks grew amazingly large, and they were forced to sell their goods at a very low rate. Wages were reduced, and many weavers, shearmen, spinners and carders were dismissed from their employment. Not half the looms were being worked. The New- bury clothier wrote a letter to the chief cloth- ing towns in England arranging for a petition to the king. This was presented by 120 persons, two representatives being sent from each town. The king received it graciously, and it was finally agreed that ' the merchants should traffic freely one with another, and that proclamation thereof should be made as well on the other side of the sea as in our land.' Cardinal Wolsey however for a time delayed the matter, calling forth the spirited speech of the Newbury clothier ' If my lord cardinal's father has been no hastier in killing calves than he is in dispatching poor men's suits, I doubt he had never worn a mitre.' However the matter was finally concluded, and ' in a short space clothing again was very good and poor men as well set on work as before.' a Fuller says of him that ' he was the most con- siderable clothier, without fancy or fiction, England ever beheld. Another eminent clothier of Newbury was Thomas Dolman, whose factory was in Northbrook Street. He was more ambitious of social rank than honest Jack of Newbury, who declined the honour of knighthood, preferring ' to rest in his russet coat a poor clothier to his dying day.' Thomas Dolman's father was probably William Dolman, manager of Winchcomb's works, to whom ' Jack ' left a legacy of 10. He attained to great wealth and built Shaw House, expending on it 10,000. The house was completed by his son, also named Thomas. The weavers of Newbury, on his abandoning cloth-making, invented the rhyme : Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable sinners, Thomas Dolman has built a new house, and turned away all his spinners. Of this Dolman a later writer states : ' Newbury supplied another manufacturer Deloney does not state his authorities, but his story is confirmed in its main outline by Lord Herbert's account of the disputes of the merchants with the cardinal, and their fears lest Henry's declaration of war with the emperor in 1528 should derange the whole system of the national industry. He speaks of ' the sullen merchants, ' little moved by the cardinal's menaces, and tells how at length they gained the day. 339
