1369. Robert le Potter gives 12d. for licence to get earth for making pots until the following Michaelmas.
1372. Thomas le Thrower takes up land in Thursfield.
1405. Robert Potter is recently dead in Burslem.
1448. Richard Adams and William his brother are amerced for digging clay (argillium) in the common road between Sneyd and Burslem.
In several of the leases of land by copy of Court Roll of the fifteenth and sixteenth century the right to dig marl or clay (argillium or luteum) is conceded, but I suspect it was usual even then to use such marl as manure. The filling in of pits or lakes (laca) in the roads is also a constant cause of trouble in these Rolls, but they may have been due to honest wear and tear and not to the temptations of a cheap raw material.
It should be mentioned however that we have hardly one quarter of these early Tunstall Court Rolls, and must not assume that these few casual notices of clay or pots is exhaustive. We now skip a century and pass to:—
1549. The jurors present Richard Denyell for that he dug mud called clay (fodit luteum vocatum cley) in the King’s way at Bronehillslane (Brownhills), and in Burselem.
1604. Penalty laid (i.e. sub pœna). It is ordained by the jury that any person who digs “argillum vocatum clay” in a certain way called Wall Lane, which shall be prejudicial to the passage by that way, or if he do not fill up the same well and sufficiently, shall forfeit to the lord 6s. 8d.
So far still no mention of potting. Various leisured people began now to describe England, relating what they saw and heard. Many of them dealt with Staffordshire, but they notice no special and curious feature about the North Staffordshire moorlands. Leyland in 1537, Camden in 1586, Erdeswick in 1590, say nothing of a “Potteries.” Speed’s list of the Shire products in 1625 omits pottery.
It is just possible that some of the impetus for the local manufacture may have come from the dissolution of the monasteries. There is reason to believe, judging from the remains at the Cistercian Abbey of Hulton, that the monks there made such encaustic tiles as are to this day called Cistercian. Now Hulton Abbey and the Abbey’s grange of Rushton both lie in Burslem parish. Some rudimentary practice in the art and mystery of potting may well have come from the seven[2] scattering brethren of this dissolved monastery, and may account in part for the development which was to come.