Hides, both raw and tanned, ranked with cloth as a leading article of trade, both home and foreign;[617] and, like cloth, tanned leather was early subject to examination by searchers, appointed either by the craft gild or by the town authorities. As a rule the searcher's seal was affixed in the market, or at the particular 'seld' or hall where alone leather might be sold, but at Bristol in 1415 the searchers were empowered to examine the hides at the curriers' houses before they were curried.[618] The curriers, whose business it was to dress the 'red' hides with tallow,[619] rendering them smooth and supple, were not allowed to dress badly tanned hides.[620] Several grades of tanning were recognised, the most lengthy and thorough workmanship being required for leather intended for the soles of boots and rather less for the uppers. When forty-seven hides belonging to Nicholas Burle, of London, were seized in 1378 as not well tanned, he admitted that they were not fit for shoeleather, but urged that he intended to sell them to saddlers, girdlers, and makers of leather bottles: a mixed jury of these various trades, however, condemned the hides as unfit for any purpose, and they were forfeited.[621]
Although there was thus an efficient control exercised over tanned leather, the tawed soft leathers used by glovers, pointmakers, pursemakers, saddlers, girdlers, coffermakers, budgetmakers, stationers, etc., seem for the most part to have escaped supervision, with the result that at the end of the sixteenth century the markets were flooded with counterfeit leathers.[622]
| 'All Tawed leather is dressed with | { | Oil, as | { | Buff Shamoys | } | of the first and best sort. |
| { | or with Alum and Oker as the hides of | { | Horse, Stag, Hind, Buck, Doe, Calf, Dog, Seal, Sheep, Lamb, Kid. |
'The leather dressed with oil is made more supple, soft and spongey, and is wrought with a rough cotton, as bayes and fresadoes are, the cotton being raised in the fulling mill where cloth is fulled, and serveth for the more beauty and pleasure to the wearer.
'The leather dressed with alum and oker is more tough and "thight," serving better for the use of the poor artificer, husbandman, and labourer, and a more easy price by half, and is wrought smooth or with cotton which is raised by hand with a card or other like tool, and as the alum giveth strength and toughness, the oker giveth it colour, like as the oil doth give colour to Buff and Shamoys.
'And this diversity of dressing, with oil or alum, is to be discerned both by smell and by a dust which ariseth from the alum leather....
'All Shamoys leather is made of goat skins brought for the most part out of Barbury, from the "Est countries," Scotland, Ireland, and other foreign parts, unwrought, and is transported again being wrought. And there is much thereof made from skins from Wales and other parts within the realm.... Being dressed with oil it beareth the name Shamoys, but being dressed with alum and oker, it beareth not the name or price of Shamoys, but of Goat skins.'
'Shamoys[623] is made of goat, buck, doe, hind, sore, sorrell, and sheepskins. The true way of dressing is in "trayne oyle," the counterfeit is with alum and is worth about half.... Shamoys dressed in train oil can be dressed again three or four times, and seem as good as new, but dressed in alum it will hardly dress twice and will soon be spied. And when Shamoys dressed in alum cometh to the rain or any water they will be hard like tanned leather, and Shamoys in oil make the cheapest and most lasting apparel, which the "low countrie man and the highe Almayn" doth use.'
Frauds in the preparation and sale of leather were of frequent occurrence, and in 1372 the mayor and aldermen of London ordained penalties for the sale of dyed sheep and calf leather scraped and prepared so as to look like roe leather. At the same time the leather dyers were forbidden to dye such counterfeit leathers, and also to use the brasil or other dye provided or selected by one customer for the goods of another.[624] With the same object of preventing frauds the tawyers who worked for furriers were not allowed to cut the heads off the skins which they dressed, and were also liable to imprisonment if they worked old furs up into leather.[625] Further penalties for false and deceitful work, especially in the making of leather 'points and lanyers,' or laces and thongs, were enacted in 1398.[626] With the growth of capitalism during the reign of Elizabeth the control exercised by the Leathersellers' Company became almost nominal, some half a dozen wealthy members of the company getting the whole trade into their own hands. By buying up the leather all over the country, they forced up prices; having, moreover, a practical monopoly of tawed leathers they were able to make the glovers and other leather workers take the dressed skins in packets of a dozen, which contained three or four small 'linings' or worthless skins.[627] They also undertook the dressing of the skins, and cut out the good workmen by scamping their work and employing men who had only served half their seven years' apprenticeship.[628] They also caused dogskins, 'fishe skynnes of zeale,' calf, and other skins to be so dressed as to resemble 'right Civill [i.e. Seville] and Spannish skynnes,' worth twice as much. These skins were dressed 'with the powder of date stones and of gaule and with French shomake that is nothinge like the Spannish shomake, to give them a pretie sweete savor but nothinge like to the civile skynnes, and the powder of theise is of veary smale price and the powder of right Spannish shomake grounded in a mill is wourth xxxs the clb weight, which shomake is a kynd of brush, shrubb, or heath in Spayne and groweth low by the ground and is swete like Gale[629] in Cambridgshire and is cutt twise a yeare and soe dried and grounded into powder by milles and dresseth all the Civile and Spannish skynnes brought hither.'[630] To remedy these frauds there was a general demand that tawed leather should be searched and sealed in the same way as tanned, and in 1593 Edmund Darcy turned this to his own advantage by obtaining a royal grant of the right to carry out such searching and sealing. This was opposed by the leather-sellers, on the grounds that it would interfere with the sale and purchase in country districts if buyer and seller had to wait till the searcher could attend, and that the proposed fees for sealing were exorbitant, amounting to from a ninth to nearly a half of the value of the skins. They also said that if a seal were put on, it would almost always be pared away, washed out, or 'extincte by dying' before the leather reached the consumer.[631] Upon examination the suggested fees were found to be too large, and a table of the different kinds of leather and their values was drawn up, and fees fixed accordingly:[632]—
| White Tawed | Value | Fee |
| Sheep skins | 7s.—3s. the doz. | 2d., 1d. |
| Kid and fawn | 4s. 6d.—1s. 8d. " | 2d., 1d. |
| Lambs | 4s. 4d.—1s. 8d. " | 2d., 1d. |
| Horse[633] | 5s.—2s. 6d. each | 2d. |
| Dogs | 4s.—1s. 6d. the doz. | 2d., 1d. |
| Bucks | 4s.—3s. 4d. each | 8d. the doz. |
| Does | 2s. 4d.—1s. 8d. " | 8d. " |
| Calf | 12s.—4s. the doz. | 6d., 3d. |
| Goat | 2s. 6d. each—3s. 6d. the doz. | 6d., 2d. each. |