Medieval English Wool and Woollen Textile Trade

I

Introduction

Medieval English Wool and Woollen Textile Trade, trade in wool and woollen textiles manufactured in England between the 11th and the mid-16th centuries, an important element of both the medieval English economy and trade with Europe.

II

From the 11th to the 13th Century

The early development of the wool trade and woollen textile industry in England is disappointingly under-recorded. Besides many smaller sheep flocks, the Domesday Book, which was compiled mostly in 1086, records some flocks of more than 1,000, including 2,100 at West Walton, in Norfolk, 1,300 at Southminster, in Essex, and 1,037 at Cranborne, in Dorset, implying that there was already a market for wool. Although there is no direct evidence of wool exports at that time, it is likely that they already contributed to the influx of silver into England in the late Anglo-Saxon period. The early history of cloth exports is equally obscure. Guilds of urban textile workers are recorded from Lincoln and Winchester in 1130, and from some other towns in subsequent decades, but there is little direct evidence for cloth exports until the early and mid-13th century, when Stamford, Beverley, York, Lincoln, Northampton, and Louth had some international reputation as manufacturing centres. Probably both raw wool and woollen cloth exports had responded to the expansion of European economies in the later 12th century.

Most of the English woollen cloth exported was a heavy fabric known as broadcloth; its commercial importance is suggested by royal attempts to regulate standards of manufacture from 1196. A metrical list of English places from about 1250 singles out four towns for their specialized cloth manufactures—Lincoln for scarlets, Stamford for haberget, Blyth for blanket, and Colchester for russet—all of which were probably known on the Continent at that date. Scarlet was an expensive broadcloth worn only by the conspicuously wealthy. Today the word survives only as the name of a colour, because scarlet cloth was often dyed with an expensive red dye. However, the name derives from the German or Flemish word scar, cognate with the English “shear”, and signified that the cloths were shorn (made smooth by shearing off superfluous fibres). Haberget was a high-quality fabric named after ring mail because of its characteristic diamond twill pattern. The two other English cloths mentioned, Colchester russets and Blyth blankets, were cheaper fabrics.

The success of English textiles in overseas markets, between perhaps 1150 and 1250, was destined not to last. As the cloth trade of Flanders expanded during the 13th century, English cloths were gradually driven out and Flemish cloths invaded the English home market. Some specialized urban industries that had developed in the previous hundred or so years suffered a setback. By the reign of Edward I, in the late 13th century, membership of the weavers' guilds of York, Winchester, Oxford, and Lincoln was declining. English cloths virtually disappeared from the Continent. A poem of the early 14th century, the Dit du Lendit, rehearsing the fabrics sold at the great fair of Lendit, at Compiègne, near Paris, lists 80 different cloth towns, none of which were in England. Meanwhile, English cloth-making for the home market continued to grow to meet the requirements of a rising population. The expansion was chiefly of local fabrics made from inexpensive wools that could be made into peasants' and artisans’ clothing. This was the sort of fabric for which some simple mechanization was possible; fulling mills, for thickening cloth, were introduced into the English countryside from the 1180s onward and became numerous by 1300. Cloths made primarily for local sale were either undyed or dyed very cheaply, offering little challenge to the skills of urban craftsmen.

The failure of English cloth to compete with Flanders abroad was partly compensated by rising exports of raw wool. England had a unique position in the trading world of the 13th century since as a source of fine wool the kingdom had no effective competitor. Sheep farming developed as big business on many manors whose lords organized their resources as productively as possible. By 1260, for example, the Holderness sheep flocks of Isabel de Forz, Countess of Devon and Aumale, were organized as a single scheme of management under a stock-keeper with about ten subordinate shepherds. There were about 7,000 sheep on different manors whose wool was sold centrally by the estate administration. This enterprise was exceptionally large, but even smaller manorial lords often operated a comparable system of interconnected flocks. The greatest quantity of exported wool nevertheless came from the flocks of peasants, for whom wool was a valuable source of cash. This was made possible by the middleman activities of merchants and others who bought up the produce of smaller producers to sell it on to exporters. In 1262, the people of Lincoln, afraid of foreign competition in cloth-making, complained to the king that monasteries were buying up wool from laymen in the county and then selling it together with their own to overseas merchants. Exports had expanded to the point where they dominated the organization of the home wool trade.

Although there were numerous wealthy English wool merchants, Flemings held a major share in the wool trade throughout the years up to 1270. They had been granted trading privileges throughout the dominion of Henry III in 1236. Later in the 13th century, Flemish exporters were eclipsed by Italians. There was a severe breakdown of Anglo-Flemish diplomatic and commercial relations between 1270 and 1275. Quite apart from political problems, 13th-century Flemish ascendancy was also undermined by the superior finance and business organization of Italian firms, and the reign of Edward I may be thought of as an age of Italian hegemony in the wool trade. Being able to control large funds of money, Italians often lent money to English wool producers on the security of the wool crop, thereby gaining control of large supplies of wool at a good price even before the sheep were sheared. A surviving letter of 1285 lists 20 monasteries committed to supplying wool to the Riccomanni firm, on contracts varying from 2 to 11 years. Usually, each monastery contracted to supply the whole of its wool clip. Some of these contracts explicitly envisaged that a monastery would secure wool from other local producers. The abbey of Meaux, in Yorkshire, for example, was committed to buying wool from Holderness “towards Bridlington and towards Kirkham as far as York”. Italians also bought from lay estates, including, between 1260 and 1280, the wool produced by Isabel de Forz. The Italians supplied English wool to the cloth-makers of Flanders, and from the late 13th century, to Italy itself.

Because England was in so unchallengeable a position as a supplier of fine wools, Edward I was able to introduce new taxes on wool exports as a source of royal revenue to fund his military campaigns. In 1275 he began to raise a tax of six shillings and eight pence (approximately 33yp) a sack. This duty from all merchants was supplemented in 1303 by an additional levy of three shillings and four pence (16yp) a sack from foreign merchants, so that English merchants (“denizens”) paid six shillings and eight pence (33yp) a sack and foreigners (“aliens”) paid ten shillings (50p). The taxation of wool exports rapidly became the main element in the medieval English customs system. Indeed, between 1294 and 1297 Edward I temporarily made the tax very much steeper when he persuaded merchants to accept his “maltote” of £2 a sack. The institution of customs duties on wool in 1275 makes it possible to chart the movement of wool exports from then on. It seems likely, on all the evidence relating to the size of sheep flocks, trading contracts, and business organization, that wool exports were larger in the last quarter of the 13th century than ever before. In that case, the customs figures start early enough to chart their peak levels. Except for a few severe setbacks, the figures suggest a generally rising trend between 1279 and 1280 (23,957 sacks) and 1304 and 1305 (46,382 sacks). This second figure was never exceeded throughout the 14th and 15th centuries.

III

From the 14th to the Mid-16th Century

During the 14th century the relative importance of raw wool and cloth exports began to change, chiefly as a result of heavy duties imposed on wool exports from 1336, in preparation for war with France (see Hundred Years’ War). Initially, this taxation was negotiated through agreements with wool merchants. It was as heavy as Edward I’s maltote of 1294-1297, but all the more burdensome because its collection initially involved heavy royal regulation of the trade and the constitution of privileged groups of merchants as exporting monopolies. These taxes were allowed to become a permanent, major addition to the income of the English Crown. For several years, parliaments sought to gain control of them, and had succeeded in doing so by 1351, when the monopolistic organization imposed in the early years of the war was abandoned. Higher taxes did not oppress wool growers in England, since they could be passed on to customers overseas, but they adversely affected those overseas manufacturers whose quality depended upon English wools. They probably raised the price of fine wools abroad by about one third. This had a severe effect upon the costs of making even the most labour-intensive Flemish fabrics since raw wool accounted for over half their price as unfinished cloth. The fine textiles of Flanders were not the only ones to suffer, though. In the past, England had sold abroad many of its poorer wools, like those of East Anglia, which often compared well in overseas markets with alternatives of equivalent quality. So, manufacturers of cheaper cloths also faced higher raw material prices; indeed, the fixed rate of £2 a sack was more prohibitive for the export of cheaper wools than of dear ones because it was a larger proportion of the total price of the sack of wool.

English manufacturers, by contrast, paid no tax on the wool they bought, and export dues on cloth were light; even in 1347, when both foreign and English merchants had to pay export duties on cloth, the duty amounted to only 2 per cent of the value of the cloth. English manufacturers were better able than before to compete in the home market and to sell cloth profitably abroad. So despite the ravages of the Black Death, the later 14th century was a period when increasing amounts of English cloth were exported. A number of urban industries benefited conspicuously, notably those at York, Norwich, Salisbury, Coventry, and Colchester, each of which had its own specialized varieties. The dimensions of broadcloths continued to be regulated; each cloth was to measure 24 yards (21.9 m) by 1• yards (1.6 m) and required about 84 lb (38 kg) of wool. Other forms of cloth, however, such as eastern England’s worsteds, straights, and russets, contributed considerably to the growth of exports. The effective protection bestowed by taxes stimulated enterprise in some regions whose wools were generally not of the highest quality. Among the areas of rapid expansion were parts of East Anglia and Essex, notably around Norwich, Bury St Edmunds, Hadleigh, and Colchester. Norfolk worsteds, Suffolk straits, and Colchester russets were all increasingly exported from the 1350s. The wide variety of cloths exported from the 1350s, and the increased number of markets abroad, strongly supports the idea that England owed its successes to new circumstances of supply rather than to changing taste.

Medieval international cloth merchants inevitably handled middle-quality and luxury cloths more than the type of cloths that poor people wore. Those were lightly dyed and crudely made, and too cheap to be worth transporting over long distances. Even middle-quality cloths might be very sensitive to transport costs; it seems, for example, that the sort of fabrics made in eastern England would travel to places on the Continent where they could be transported by sea, but that they would not bear the cost of long journeys over land. Since transport costs were increasing in line with rising labour costs in the 14th and 15th centuries, the prospects for international trade in cheaper cloths were even poorer than they had been in the 13th century. By implication, the growth of English cloth exports represented the development of various better grades of cloth. Some of these were nevertheless lighter than England’s traditional broadcloths; the worsteds of Norfolk, for example, were more like the woollen cloths used for modern dress.

One expanding market of the later 14th century was Gascony, a specialized wine-producing region; it paid Gascons to export their wine in return for good quality cloths which they could not produce so advantageously themselves. This market was one which English merchants, especially those from Bristol, captured from the Flemings after 1350. Its importance is indicated by signs that when Gascony was ravaged by war between 1369 and 1374 this had a severe effect upon the export of English cloths. The Baltic Sea area, which had no textile industries of more than very local significance, was another region of increased overseas activity. The townsmen, churchmen, and nobility of the eastern Baltic bought cloths from Flanders, Brabant, or England, in exchange for the export of various local products, especially furs. Merchants from Bristol, London, Colchester, Norwich, King’s Lynn, Boston, Beverley, Hull, and York are all in evidence in Prussia in the 1350s and 1360s. Merchants from Germany and Scandinavia (see Hanseatic League) also became increasingly involved in English cloth exports, their share of the total rising to about one fifth by the early 15th century. Other expanding markets in this period were in Spain and Ireland.

Continuing growth was arrested at times during the 15th century by deep recessions caused by monetary disturbances and the stagnation of overseas demand, particularly in c. 1402-1415 and again in c. 1449-1465. The latter period—the great slump of the mid-15th century—was associated with high unemployment and popular unrest in the textile regions of southern England. However, there was a considerable boom in the years 1438-1448, which encouraged some new developments, and total cloth exports began to rise again vigorously from about 1470. The late 15th-century expansion to unprecedented levels of trade was encouraged by improved commercial relations with the Duchy of Burgundy by treaties of 1467, 1478, and 1496. Exporters now concentrated on trade to the Low Countries through the staple port of Antwerp, though from there cloth was carried to other parts of Europe. English cloth exports enjoyed a long period of expansion into the 1540s. The share of native English merchants in the cloth export trade was adversely affected in the depression of c. 1402-1415, when it fell to less than half, but for most of the period it averaged 50-60 per cent of the total.

As the declining export of raw wool implies, English merchants of the 15th century were much more likely to be enriched by the profits of the textile trade than by exporting wool, and the numerous so-called “wool churches” to whose funding they contributed would be more properly designated “cloth churches”. The growth of cloth exports in 1438-1448 and from 1470 onward—more vigorous in both periods than any developments in the home market—encouraged a new phase of development in English cloth manufacture. By 1500, cloth merchants, or clothiers as they came to be called, were often significant employers, putting out wool to be spun and yarn to be woven in the households of spinsters and weavers. Much of the expansion of textile manufacture in this later period was away from the larger cloth towns towards smaller manufacturing centres such as Hadleigh and Lavenham (both in Suffolk), Trowbridge and Bradford-upon-Avon (both in Wiltshire), Newbury (Berkshire), Cullompton, Totnes, and Tiverton (all three in Devon), Bisley, Minchinhampton, and Nailsworth (all three in Gloucestershire), Halifax, Leeds, Wakefield, and Bradford (all four now in West Yorkshire), Kendal (now in Cumbria), and Ruthin (in Denbighshire, Wales). The manufactures of these scattered centres were commonly sent through the port of London, so that the cloth trade contributed heavily to the city’s development as a commercial metropolis. London handled over 80 per cent of total cloth exports by the 1530s.

The introduction of heavy duties on wool exports from 1336 did not mean an immediate decline for raw wool exports. There was a boom in cloth-making in Flanders in the 1350s, induced by the concentration of spending power into fewer hands as a result of the Black Death. At least some Continental manufacturers managed to accommodate the higher level of taxes, so that wool exports of the 1350s ran at a level almost as high as in the early 14th century. With the ending of the post-Black Death spending spree, though, English tariffs had a more damaging effect on Continental producers. By the late 1380s, wool exports had fallen to unprecedented low levels, and continued to decline through the 15th century. Exports contracted from an annual average of 32,666 sacks in the years 1356-1360 to 16,890 a year in 1395-1400, and had collapsed to below 4,000 sacks a year by the 1530s. The importance of duties on wool for royal income encouraged successive kings to accept an organization of the trade involving both particular staple ports through which wool had to pass and also the organization of wool merchants into a formal company. As a result, English merchants acquired a strong control over the trade. In the 14th century, various ports both in England and abroad were chosen as the staple, but from 1399 it was fixed at Antwerp.

The increase in cloth exports at the expense of wool exports during the 14th and 15th centuries was highly beneficial to the English economy because of the considerable value added by the textile industry. Although not yet a major component of English employment, the textile industries were locally very important in some regions, and often offered a good living at a time when other opportunities were unforthcoming. The growth of textiles manufacture also meant that the period 1470-1540 was one of larger and more numerous sheep flocks in many parts of England, and helps to account for the later interest in enclosure shown by many landlords during the Yorkist (see York, House of) and early Tudor periods.