The Trowbridge Woollen Industry, As Illustrated by the Stock Books Of

WILTSHIRE ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY 1Recorbs Jfiranch VOLUME VI FOR THE YEAR 1950 Impression of 350 copies SPANISH % /Z TCHWX + £95 /ZE@ffl J8? SA @KWRV& %®EBWR @I@\/ifq £sRR<%@ @fifi]I N: Sqqm PPRZOW PLATE I. SPANISH WOOL MARKS, MAINLY I804-1818. fr omispie THE TROWBRIDGE WOOLLEN INDUSTRY AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE STOCK BOOKS OF JOHN AND THOMAS CLARK 1804-1824 EDITED BY R. P. BECKINSALE, D.Phil. DEVIZES 1951 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY HEADLEY BROTHERS LTD IO9 KINGSWAY LONDON WC2 AND AS!-IFORD KENT CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION vii STOcK BOOKS OF MESSRS. J. AND T. CLARK I INDEX OF PERSONS AND PLAcES 229 INDEX OF SUBJECTS 242 ILLUSTRATIONS PLATE I SPANISH WOOL MARKS, MAINLY I804-I818 Frontispiece PLATE II SPANISH WOOL MARKS, MAINLY I818-I824, AND GERMAN WOOL MARKS, I821-I824 Facing p. xxxvi INTRODUCTION 'EARLY HISTORY OF THE TROWBRIDGE WOOLLEN INDUSTRY‘ The Wiltshire woollen industry in general and that of Trowbridge in particular were already old and vigorous when the Clark family first appears in its records. During the late fourteenth century, the county lay in the midst of England's most productive area for woollens, which stretched ‘ from Southampton and Winchester, through Salisbury, across the lower Cotswolds to Bristol and Gloucester '.‘ The advantages which Trowbridge itself derived from this excellent industrial location were partly offset by certain deficiencies iI1 the local site from the point of view of textile manufacturing. Old Trowbridge stood largely upon ‘ a rokky hillet ’ which was, and still is, half-encircled by the river Biss, a small stream ill-suited to drive water-wheels. This hillock consists of Com- brash, a Shelly, calcareous rock-series through which the Biss here cuts a wide, fioodable valley. Early Trowbridge sought the knoll for safety from the floods that afiiicted the clays and alluviurn round about, a.I1d upon it centred many of the routes and much of the marketing activity of the surrounding vale. Yet the town's industrial growth was somewhat hampered by lack of water-power for driving fulling-stocks and of a water-supply soft enough for good scou1ing. Fortunately for Trowbridge and for most of Wiltshire, the woollen trade until well into the seventeenth century consisted largely of white, undressed cloths that went to the Continent for finishing. The woollen industry was, in fact, dependent more on organization and capital than on purely geographical advantages for cloth-making. It happened that for the giving out and collecting of raw materials and cloths from and to cottages, Trowbridge had decided advantages. Some of its clothiers had grown wealthy long before the visit of Leland in c. 1538, who noted the benefactions of James Terumber, a very rich clothier, and the buildings erected by John Horton, clothier of the neighbouring town of Bradford. Leland also mentions ‘ old Bayllie ’, another local clothier, and his son who ‘ now drapeth yn the town, and also a 2 miles out of it at a place yn the way to Farley-castel ’ ; and concludes with the fact that ' One Alexandre is now a great clothiar in the town '.3 This Alexander Lang- ford, to give him his full name, rivalled Thomas Yerbury and Thomas Long as the leading clothier of Trowbridge iI1 the mid-sixteenth century.4 I I am indebted to Miss G. F. (‘ Truda') Clark for supplying details of her family incor- porated in this introduction and for much assistance with the sections on manufacturing processes, to Mr. R. B. Pugh for helping me to frame the ‘Methods of Editing ' section and for many other suggestions and to Miss Mary Potter for drawing the Plates. 2 H. L. Gray, ‘ The production and exportation of English woollens in the fourteenth century ', in English Historical Review, XXXIX (1924), 21. 3 Leland, Itinerary . (ed. L. T. Smith, 1907-Io), I, I35. I36. 4 G. D. Ramsay, The Wiltshire Woollen Industry in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (I943) ,' Wilts. Notes 6- Queries, I. (I893-5), I55-9. vii INTRODUCTION Thomas Long in I545 owned nine manors and was assessed for subsidy at £8—-or double that of the famous William Stumpe of Malmesbury—while a certain Anthony Passion, who traded much with the Hansards, was asked to pay £73 There is no reliable evidence of early foreign influence on the cloth industry at Trowbridge although about I580 the Flemish cloth-makers of Seend are said to have moved hither because the Seend water-supply was ferruginous and unsuitable for woollens. Nor is there much reason to expect it, as the white, or unfinished broadcloths sold well abroad except during the temporary upset caused by ‘ Alderman Cockayne’s Project ’. The first strong foreign influence appears in the reign of James II when William Brewer of Trowbridge had three Germans or Poles brought to instruct local cloth-workers, with the result that he was soon driving the greatest trade in England for medley cloths. The influence of foreign wools began to be felt somewhat earlier than that of foreign workers. Spanish merino wool was coming into the West of England by the mid-sixteenth century, but fine medley cloths were not made on any scale in Wiltshire until after r6oo. By 1657, Westbury, only three miles to the south, was producing ‘ broad medley cloths ’, and two decades later, according to a reliable pamphleteer, the manufacture of Spanish medleys was all done in this corner of Wiltshire and Somerset within a compass of twenty miles, less than one hundred principal clothiers being concemed in it. Bradford and Trowbridge were the great rivals ; the one on the Bath Avon with better water for fulling and ampler power for milling, the other having the advantages of a much superior road system with ‘correspondingly better access to the London market. Bradford rose to pre-eminence on broadcloths and heavily-milled fabrics; Trowbridge began to depend more on narrow cloths and medleys, which were usually-——but not invariably—-dyed in the wool and not in the say or in the piece. THE EARLY HISTORY OF CLARKS, THE CLOTHIERS It was against this background of medley cloths, Spanish wools and severe local rivalry that the Clark firm arose. The firm seems to have been established at Trowbridge about I680, but the connexion between the founder's family and the West Country is probably much older. Certainly the firm ranks with Early’S of Witney, Fox's of Welling- ton and Playne’s of Avening as the oldest Surviving textile firms of the West of England. Clarks’ possess original pattern and batt books which date from the early eighteenth century and form an indisputable com- mentary on the quality and nature of good-class cloths of the day. Trowbridge and Bradford were at this time the prime centres of the greatest medley—producir1g region of England, which stretched from Cirencester and Gloucester fifty miles southward to Sherbome in Dorset, and from Devizes twenty miles westward to Bristol. Those two rival towns were the most eminent in the drainage basin of the Bath Avon I P.R.O. Exch. K.R. Subsidies (E179)/I97/230; Ramsay, op. cit., 48. INTRODUCTION ‘for the making of fine Spanish cloths, and for the nicest mixtures’. In addition Defoe afiirms that the ‘ finest medley Spanish cloths in the whole world " were made hereabouts, and in spite of his love of super- latives there is no reason to doubt his judgment, as he dealt occasionally with Clarks' of Trowbridge. Although many entries have been lost, the following survive: ‘ Irth February I721. I promise to pay to Mr. Daniell Defoe or order £30 three months after date value received as witness my hand. John Allin. Cat in Comhill ’ ; ' October 22nd I723. Received of Mr. Daniell Defoe his note of hand two months after date for £54.I6.o.' By this time, the trading connexions of Trowbridge with London were well established and were destined never to be broken, although considerable business was done with merchants at Taunton, Bridgwater, Exeter and Tiverton. ' The clothing of Wflts ', as Defoe says, ‘ comes all by land-carriage to London, and goes down again by land-carriages to all parts of England." There was not, as in the North, that carriage of goods by horse-packs, the Wflts traders being ‘ gentlemen clothiers ', not ‘ pedlars' ! Among these gentlemen clothiers John Clark (I702-I78o)3 was outstanding. On IIth December, I736, he received through his London Agent, Samuel Vanderplank, ‘ By bill to his Grace the Duke of Somerset £I,OO0.0.0 ’. But the name of Trowbridge had long been known farther afield than in the ducal homes of England, and on 4th May, I747, John Clark received through an agent a request from the Empress of Russia for ‘ plump cloths and good full colours’. John Clark became a kind of merchant adventurer, owned half-shares in ships, and did a considerable trade with Portugal. In I763, we read ' For 5 pipes of port wine £I47.Io.o ’, which together with other entries may be connected with the fact that John Clark, at least for some years, owned a brewery at Frome.‘ Two sons of this John Clark much concern us. John Clark, junior, or the Reverend John Clark, as he was always known in later life, greatly extended the woollen business and yet found time to indulge in the fashionable arts. He became a man ‘ of deep piety, a musician of no mean order, and a fair poet, judged by the standards of the eighteenth century. He was versed in astronomy, and had his own observatory at his residence, Pole Barn House, where also he built and installed an organ '.5 An eloquent preacher, he was a devout follower of George Whitfield and helped to found and became the first pastor of the I D.

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