In the adjacent county of Suffolk the village of Kersey was an early centre of clothmaking, and gave its name to a type of cloth which was afterwards made in a great number of districts. The kerseys of Suffolk and Essex were exempted in 1376, with other narrow cloths, from keeping the assize of coloured cloths,[587] and just a century later the measurement for kerseys was set out as 18 yards by 1 yard.[588] Curiously enough the chief trouble with the assize of kerseys, at least in the sixteenth century, was not short measure, but over long, the explanation being that kerseys paid export duty by the whole cloth, and it was therefore to the merchant's advantage to pay duty on a piece of 25 yards rather than to pay the same duty on 18 yards.[589] Kerseys were largely made for export, and a petition against restrictions tending to hamper foreign trade was presented, about 1537, by the kersey weavers of Berks., Oxford, Hants, Surrey, and Sussex, and Yorkshire.[590] These counties were the chief centres of the manufacture, though Devonshire kerseys were also made; in Berkshire, Newbury was then the great seat of the industry, and the kerseys of John Winchcombe ('Jack of Newbury') in particular had a more than local fame. Hampshire kerseys was the generic name applied to these made in Hampshire, Sussex, and Surrey, but in earlier times the Isle of Wight had almost a monopoly of the manufacture in the district. The ulnage accounts for Hampshire in 1394-5 give ninety names of clothiers for the Isle of Wight,[591] who made 600 kerseys, and no other kind of cloth, and about a century later we find a draper complaining that when he had bargained with a London merchant for a certain number of 'kersys of Wyght' worth £6 he had been put off with Welsh kerseys worth only £4, 13s. 4d.[592]
Suffolk did a considerable trade in a cheap, coarse variety of cloth known as 'Vesses or set cloths' for export to the East; and, as it was the recognised custom to stretch these to the utmost, and they were bought as unshrunk, this class of cloth was exempted in 1523 from the regulations as to stretching cloth.[593] Possibly these Vesses were connected with the 'Western Blankett of Vyse (Wilts.) and Bekinton.'[594] Blanket is found in 1395 as made at Maldon and, on the other side of England, at Hereford, while at an earlier date, in 1360, Guildford blanket was bought for the royal household.[595] As Norwich had its 'monk's cloth' and 'canon cloth,' presumably so called from its suitability for monastic and canonical habits, unlike the fine cloth of Worcester, which, we are told, was forbidden to Benedictines,[596] so we find that the newly made knight of the Bath had to vest himself in 'hermit's array' of Colchester russet.[597] Most of the cloths made in Essex were 'streits,' or narrow cloths, of rather a poor quality, being often coupled with the inferior cloths such as cogware and Kendal cloth. Of the latter a writer of the time of Henry VIII. says, 'I knowe when a servynge manne was content to goo in a Kendall cote in sommer and a frysecote in winter, and with playne white hose made meete for his bodye.... Now he will looke to have at the leaste for Somere a cote of finest clothe that may be gotten for money and his hosen of the finest kerseye, and that of some straunge dye, as Flaunders dye or Frenche puke, that a prynce or a greate lorde canne were no better if he were [wear] clothe.'[598]
By the sumptuary law of 1363 farm labourers and others having less than 40s. in goods were to wear blanket and russet costing not more than 12d. the ell.[599] In a list of purchases of cloth in 1409, narrow russet figures at 12d. the ell, while of the other cheap varieties short blanket, short coloured cloth, rays, motleys and friezes varied from 2s. to 2s. 4d. the ell.[600] Of friezes the two chief types in use were those of Coventry and Irish friezes, which might either be made in Ireland or of Irish wool: these seem to have come into use about the middle of the fourteenth century, as in 1376 Irish 'Frysseware' was exempted from ulnage,[601] and about the same time purchases of Irish frieze for the royal household become more common, as much as nearly 3000 ells of this material being bought in 1399.[602]
With such local varieties as Manchester cottons, Tauntons, Tavistocks, Barnstaple whites, Mendips, 'Stoke Gomers alias thromme clothes,'[603] and so forth, space does not permit of our dealing, while by the limitation which we have set ourselves the 'new draperies' are excluded, and we may thankfully leave on one side 'arras, bays, bewpers, boulters, boratoes, buffins, bustyans, bombacyes, blankets, callimancoes, carrells, chambletts, cruell, dornicks, duraunce, damask, frisadoes, fringe, fustyans, felts, flanells, grograines, garterings, girdlings, linsey woolseyes, mockadoes, minikins, mountaines, makerells, oliotts, pomettes, plumettes, perpetuanas, perpicuanas, rashes, rugges, russells, sattins, serges, syettes, sayes, stamells, stamines, scallops, tukes, tamettes, tobines, and valures.'[604]
CHAPTER IX
LEATHER WORKING
The dressing of skins and preparation of leather must have been one of the most widely diffused industries in medieval times, even if it is a little exaggeration to claim that it was a by-product of most villages.[605] Two different processes were employed, ox, cow, and calf hides being tanned by immersion in a decoction of oak bark, while the skins of deer, sheep, and horses were tawed with alum and oil, and the two trades were from early times kept quite separate, tanners and tawyers being forbidden to work skins appropriated to each other's trade. A certain concentration of the industry must have been brought about in 1184, when orders were issued that no tanner or tawyer should practise his trade within the bounds of a forest except in a borough or market town,[606] the object being to prevent the poaching of deer for the sake of their skins. Market towns had the further advantage of being well supplied with the raw material, as butchers were compelled to bring the hides of their beasts into market with the meat, and the tanners had the sole right of purchase, no regrater or middle-man being allowed to intervene, while on the other hand the tanners were not allowed to buy the hides outside the open market.[607] Towards the end of the sixteenth century it was said[608] that 'in most villages of the realm there is some one dresser or worker of leather, and ... in most of the market towns three, four, or five, and many great towns 10 or 20, and in London and the suburbs ... to the number of 200 or very near.' Casting back, we find at Oxford in 1380 there were twelve tanners, twenty skinners, twelve cordwainers, or shoemakers, and four saddlers,[609] while in 1300 there were at Colchester forty householders employed in the various branches of the leather trade.[610]
Originally, no doubt, the leather dresser worked up his own leather, and as late as 1323 it would seem that at Shrewsbury cordwainers were allowed to tan leather,[611] but in 1351 the tanners and shoemakers were definitely forbidden to intermeddle with each other's craft, and a series of regulations, parliamentary and municipal, served to separate the tanners, the curriers, who dressed and suppled the rough tanned hides, the tawyers, and the various branches of leather-workers.
The stock in trade of the tanner was simple. The inventories of the goods of half a dozen tanners at Colchester in 1300 are identical in kind though varying in value;[612] each consists of hides, oak bark, and a number of vats and tubs. In the case of the tannery at Meaux Abbey[613] (the larger monastic houses usually maintained their own tanneries) in 1396 rather more details are given. There were in store cow and calf leather, 'sole peces, sclepe, clowthedys, and wambes' to the value of £14, 10s. 4d., 15 tubs and various tools, such as 3 'schapyng-knyfes' and 4 knives for the tan; 400 tan turves (blocks of bark from which the tan had been extracted), and 'the tan from all the oaks barked this year.' The raw hides had first to be soaked, then treated with lime to remove the hair, and then washed again before being placed in the tan vat. Consequently leather-dressers settled 'where they may have water in brooks and rivers to dress their leather; without great store of running water they cannot dress the same.'[614] In 1461 William Frankwell, when making a grant of a meadow at Lewes, reserved the right to use the ditch on the south side of the meadow for his hides,[615] and complaints of the fouling of town water supplies by leather workers were not unusual.[616] The process of tanning was, and for the best leather still is, extremely slow; the hides were supposed to lie in the 'wooses' (ooze, or liquor) for a whole year, and stringent regulations were issued to prevent the hastening of the process, to the detriment of the leather. The bark from which the tan was obtained, and which was so important a feature of the process that 'barker' was an alternative name for tanner, had to be only of oak, the use of ash bark being forbidden; nor might lime or hot liquor be used, the imbedding of the vats in hot beds of old tan being prohibited.