To the worshipful master mayor and his brethren.
Be it known, Right Worshipful, that we be a certain number of poor weavers who do use our trade within this town of Nottingham, thereby to maintain ourselves our wives and children, according to the laws of God and the King's Majesty's laws. It is not unknown unto your worship how the burgess weavers have sought, and at this present do seek, to put us down from working, thereby to work the utter undoing of us and of our poor families. We humbly do entreat your Worships' favours with equity to consider of our poor estates, who do not offend them nor work within their freedom or composition, if they have any. Your Worships may understand they do trouble us more of malice than for any hindrance they receive by us, for that we see men of other trades, both in this corporation and others, not being burgesses, yet work in manner as we do, unmolested or troubled. Therefore we beseech your Worships that we may have liberty to use our trades for the maintenance of ourselves, our wives, and children, and if there be anything due either to Master Mayor or any of his Worships' officers we are ready to discharge it; but as for the weavers, we know no reason or authority they have to claim anything of us, neither do we find ourselves able to bear so heavy a burden as they would lay upon us.
16. Extracts from the London Clothworkers' Court Book [Unwin, Industrial Organization in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, pp. 229-234], 1537-1627.
July 13, 1 Mary. All the company had warning to keep their servants from unlawful assemblies and that they have no talk of the council's matters as they will answer at their uttermost perils.
January 16, 1-2 Mary. The wardens of the yeomanry brought into the hall a new chest with iii locks and iii keys to serve to put their money in, wherein was by them put in ready money xiiijl. vis. xid., the Mr. of the Company having one key, the upper warden of the yeomanry another key, and one of the assistants of the yeomanry to have the third key.
Also it was agreed that the said Wardens of the Yeomanry shall have such orders as hath been here taken, concerning such articles as they ought amongst themselves to observe, to be entered in their book to the intent they may better keep them.
July 13, 2 Mary. It is agreed that from henceforth all such apprentices as shall come out of their years, being of the handicraft, shall before they be sworn be tried and seen by the Wardens of the Yeomanry, whether they be workmen able to serve in the common weal or not.
November 29, 1567. This day the whole company of the handicraftsmen were warned to be here according to the order taken by the last court day, and these articles following were read unto them, and they all with one voice consented to every of the said articles, and made humble request with willing hearts as they professed that these said orders may be forthwith put in execution with diligence, affirming the same orders to be profitable to them all.
Item that there shall be eight or ten persons elected and chosen by the wardens and assistants to have the view of all the merchants' cloths hereafter to be wrought within the company, and that no person of this company to fold, take, or press or to deliver to the owner any merchant's cloth before the same cloth be viewed and seen by two of the said persons so appointed. And the said cloths so by them seen and found truly wrought, that is to say rowed, barbed, first-coursed and shorn from the one end to the other according to the statute last made, they to set the common seal of the house to every such cloth in token of true workmanship done upon the same. And every such cloth as shall be by the said searchers or any of them found faulty in workmanship, or that shall be folded, tacked, pressed, or delivered to the owner before it be viewed and sealed in form aforesaid, every workman of such cloth or cloths to pay for a fine of every such cloth xxs....