English Economic History: Select Documents

by Unknown

What you shall do in Turkey, besides the business of your factorship.

1. Forasmuch as it is reported that the woollen cloths dyed in Turkey be most excellently dyed, you shall send home unto this realm certain ... pieces of shred, to be brought to the Dyers' Hall, there to be shewed, partly to remove out of their heads the too great opinion they have conceived of their own cunning, and partly to move them for shame to endeavour to learn more knowledge, to the honour of their country of England and to the universal benefit of the realm.

2. You shall devise to amend the dyeing of England, by carrying hence an apt young man brought up in the art, or by bringing one or other from thence of skill, or rather to devise to bring one for silks, and another for wool and for woollen cloth....

3. Then to learn to know all the materials and substances that the Turks use in dyeing, be they of herbs, simple or compound, be they plants, barks, wood, berries, seeds, grains, or mineral matter....

5. And in any wise, if anile that coloureth blue be a natural commodity of those parts, and if it be compounded of an herb, to send the same into this realm by seed, or by root in barrel of earth, with all the whole order of sowing, setting, planting, replanting, and with the compounding of the same, that it may become a natural commodity in this realm, as woad is, to this end, that the high price of foreign woad (which devoureth yearly great treasure) may be brought down....

8. The wools being natural, and excellent colours for dyeing by this means here also natural, in all the art of clothing then we want but one only special thing. For in this so temperate a climate our people may labour the year throughout ... and the people of this realm by the great and blessed abundance of victual are cheaply fed, and therefore may afford their labour cheap. And where the clothiers in Flanders, by the flatness of their rivers, cannot make water-mills for their cloths, but are forced to dress and thicken all their cloths by the foot and by the labour of men, whereby their cloths are raised to an higher price, we in England have in all shires store of mills upon falling rivers.... Then we have also, for scouring our cloths, earths and clays.... Then also have we some reasonable store of alum and copperas here, made for dyeing.... Then we have many good waters apt for dyeing, and people to spin and to do the rest of all the labours we want not. So as there wanteth, if colours might be brought in and made natural, but only oil; the want whereof if any man could devise to supply at the full with anything that might become natural in this realm, he, whatsoever he were that could bring it about, might deserve immortal fame in this our commonwealth....

10. And if you shall find that they make any cloth of any kind not made in this realm, that is there of great use, then to bring of the same into this realm some "mowsters,"[309] that our people may fall into the trade, and prepare the same for Turkey. For the more kinds of cloth we can devise to make, the more ample vent of our commodity we shall have, and the more sale of the labour of our poor subjects that else for lack of labour become idle and burdenous to the commonweal, and hurtful to many. And in England we are in our clothing trade to frame ourselves according to the desires of foreign nations, be it that they desire thick or thin, broad or narrow, long or short, white or black.

11. But with this proviso always, that our cloth pass out with as much labour of our people as may be, wherein great consideration ought to be had. For (if vent might so admit), as it were the greatest madness in the world for us to vent our wool not clothed, so were it madness to vent our wool in part or on the whole turned into broad cloth, if we might vent the same in kersies; for there is a great difference to our people between the clothing of a sack of wool in the one and the like sack of wool in the other, of which I wish the merchant of England to have a great care as he may for the universal benefit of the poor; and the turning of a sack of wool into bonnets is better than both, etc. And also not to carry out of the realm any cloth white, but dyed, if it may be, that the subjects of this realm may take as much benefit as is possible, and rather to seek the vent of the cloths dyed with the natural colours of England than such as be dyed with foreign colours.

Thus giving you occasion, by way of a little remembrance, to have desire to do your country good, you shall, if you have any inclination to such good, do more good to the poor ready to starve for relief than ever any subject did in this realm by building of almshouses, and by giving of lands and goods to the relief of the poor. Thus may you help to drive idleness, the mother of most mischief, out of the realm, and win you perpetual fame, and the prayer of the poor, which is more worth than all the gold of Peru and of all the West Indies.

[309] i.e. Samples.