References
- Abbreviations
- BM British Museum
- Ec HR Economic History Review
- HMC Historic Manuscripts Commission
- NRO Norfolk Record Office
- PCC Prerogative Court of Canterbury
- PRO Public Record Office
- Penelope Corfield, ‘A provincial capital in the late seventeenth century: The case of Norwich ’, in Peter Clark and Paul Slack (eds), Crisis and Order in English Towns, 1500–1700 (London, 1972 ), pp. 262–310 — hereafter Corfield; Ursula Priestley, ‘The Fabric of Stuffs: the Norwich textile industry, c. 1650–1750’, Textile History, 16, No. 2 (1985), pp. 183–210 — hereafter Priestley.
- Neil McKendrick, John Brewer and J. H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society (London, 1983 ), pp. 41–42.
- Priestley, pp. 202–03; Trevor Fawcett, ‘Argonauts and Commercial Travellers: the Foreign Marketing of Norwich stuffs in the late Eighteenth century’, Textile History, 16, No. 2 (1985 ), pp. 151–82.
- Note the distinction between them by Sir Josiah Child in A New Discourse of Trade (1693), pp. 132–34.
- ‘.. . indeed they are arrived to a great perfection in their worke so fine and thinn and glossy’ — Celia Fiennes in Christopher Morris (ed.), The Illustrated Journeys of Celia Fiennes (London, 1982 ),p. 137; ‘Our stuffs are so thin that they will not bear seals; they drop off commonly’ — statement by a stuffs dealer in 1692, in HMC 17, House of Lords Mss, 1692–3, p. 37.
- Priestley, pp. 191–98.
- D. C. Coleman, ‘An Innovation and its Diffusion: the New Draperies’, Ec HR, 2nd Ser., 22 (1969 ), pp. 417–29.
- W. Hudson and J. C. Tingey, The Records of the City of Norwich (Norwich, 1906 –10), 11, pp. lxxvii–lxxxvii.
- K. J. Allison, ‘The Wool Supply and the Worsted Cloth Industry in Norfolk in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Leeds, 1955 ), pp. 653–58; John James, The History of the Worsted Manufacture in England (London, 1857), p. 128.
- The techniques of hotpressing are described in the 1731 and 1751 editions of Chambers’s Cyclopaedia and quoted by James, op. cit., p. 288. By the nineteenth century the high gloss achieved by heavy pressing was considered undesirable as it rendered the fabric liable to spotting: Andrew Ure, Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures and Mines (London, 1846 ), p. 1329.
- The sources for these extracts are as follows: PRO, PCC Series, Prob 4; NRO, Norwich Consistory Court and Norwich Archdeaconry Court probate inventories. I am indebted to both Record Offices for permission to quote from documents in their custody.
- The Norwich City Council recognised the practice: NRO, Mayor’s Court Book 20, f.235r.
- Thomas Fuller, The History of the Worthies of England (1662; 1840 edn), p. 488.
- Two recent books go a long way to sorting out the difficulties: Eric Kerridge, Textile Manufactures in Early Modem England (Manchester 1985); Florence M. Montgomery, Textiles in America, 1650–1870 (London and New York, 1985).
- Pattern books dating from 1763 and 1769 respectively can be seen at the Victoria and Albert Museum and at the Bridewell Museum, Norwich; Montgomery, op. cit., illustrates swatches of Norwich Stuffs, c. 1760, from the Bibliotheque Forney, Paris.
- Kerridge, Textile Manufactures in Early Modem England, pp. 42–45.
- I am grateful to Natalie Rothstein of the Victoria and Albert Museum for information about the use of silk.
- Journal of the Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, Nov. 1718-Dec. 1722, p. 113.
- E. S. de Beer (ed.), The Diary of John Evelyn (Oxford, 1955 ), III, p. 595.
- Daniel Defoe, A Tour through England and Wales, ed., G. D. H. Cole (London, 1928 ), pp. 61–62.
- Priestley, p. 183.
- Corfield, pp. 277–79.
- Priestley, pp. 198–99.
- HMC 17, House of Lords MSS, 1692–3, p. 37.
- For a discussion of the reasons for the omission of clothing see Margaret Spufford, The Great Reclothing of Rural England (London, 1984 ), pp. 125–29.
- See, for example, the inventory of Joan Hill, widow of a yeoman, dated 1708: J. S. Moore, The Goods and Chattels of our Forefathers: Frampton Cotterell and District Probate Inventories, 1539–1806 (1977), pp.186–88.
- NRO, Norwich City Assembly Book, 1714–31, f. 103.
- Sir Josiah Child, Brief Observations concerning Trade and Interest of Money, p. 7, in Child, Selected Works, 1668–1697 (Farnborough, 1968).
- A. H. John, ‘Aspects of English Economic Growth in the First Half of the Eighteenth Century’, in E. M. Carus-Wilson (ed.), Essays in Economic History II (London, 1962 ), pp. 360–73.
- C. Wilson, England's Apprenticeship, 1603–1783 (London, 1965), pp. 76–77.
- Peter Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance (Oxford, 1989 ), passim; Peter Clark (ed.), The Transformation of English Provincial Towns, 1600–1800 (London, 1984), pp. 13–61; Adrienne Rosen, ‘Winchester in transition, 1500–1700’ in Peter Clark (ed.), Country Towns in Pre-industrial England (1981), pp. 144–95.
- Similar considerations may have boosted trade in furnishing fabrics, for which many Norwich Stuffs were equally suitable, since the urban preoccupation of the gentry may have involved the purchase of a town house or the refurbishment of rented lodgings.
- P. Harth (ed.), The Fable of the Bees (1714; Penguin edn, 1970 ), p. 152.
- Dorothy Davis, The History of Shopping (London, 1966 ), p. 147; T. S. Willan, The Inland Trade (Manchester, 1976), pp. 99–101.
- Barrie Trinder and Jeff Cox (eds), Yeomen and Colliers in Telford (London, 1980 ), pp. 20–41.
- It is never possible to state positively that particular items of a mercer’s stock, even if named Norwich Stuffs, were actually made there, since they were widely copied, and similar silk-and-worsted mixtures were manufactured in London and Canterbury, although in smaller quantities.
- Peter Clark, Transformation of English Provincial Towns, p. 20.
- G. H. Kenyon, ‘Petworth Town and Trades, 1619–1760 ’, Sussex Archaeological Collections, 98, Part II, pp. 92–95.
- Defoe, Tour, p. 132.
- Abingdon, Berkshire Record Office, DIAI/196/135; Ilminster, PRO, PCC, Prob 4/8598; Wolverhampton, Lichfield Joint Record Office, John Hickman, 1701; I am grateful to Mrs Nancy Cox for supplying me with information from her computer records about mercers in Lichfield, Shrewsbury, Coventry and Wellington, and to David Vaisey for the Abingdon reference.
- J. T. Bagley (ed.), ‘Nicholas Blundell’s Diaries’, Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire (1968 and 1970), 11, pp. 65–67, 86.
- Anne Buck, ‘Buying Clothes in Bedfordshire, 1700–1800 ’, below.
- R. Campbell, The London Tradesman (London, 1747), p. 197.
- PRO, PCC, Prob 4/8070: this inventory is the most legible and informative of the few mercers’ inventories for the City of London in the series Prob 4. The reason for the scarcity may be that many mercers conducted their business from premises in the inn-yards, and are likely to have been domiciled outside the city boundaries.
- BM, Ambrose Heal collection of Tradecards and Shopbills; other examples are held by the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Museum of London, and the Guildhall Library, London.
- Kerridge, Textile Manufacturers in Early Modem England, p. 84. It is possible that ‘the most fashionable mixtures’ may have meant crapes made in black and white. (See the reference to John Steward’s advertisement on page 203 above.)
- E. A. Wrigley, ‘A simple Model of London’s Importance in Changing English Society and Economy’, Past and Present, XXXVII (1976 ), pp. 60–61.
- The port of Great Yarmouth was notably under-used as an outlet for Norwich textiles until the mid-eighteenth century. See J. D. Murphy, ‘The Town and Trade of Great Yarmouth, 1740–1850 ’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of East Anglia, 1979), pp. 59–61.
- Priestley, pp. 199 and 201.
- Hudson and Tingey, Records of the City of Norwich, pp. 259–66.
- Quoted by James, History of the Worsted Manufacture in England, Appendix, pp. 6–7.
- The word clothier in the sense of a textile entrepreneur is never found among Norwich or Norfolk archives.
- Evidence for this rests on P. Millican (ed.), The Register of the Freemen, 1548–1713 (Norwich, 1934).
- Priestley, p. 195.
- Sun Fire Insurance Registers, Vols 10–88, Guildhall Library, London.
- A. R. Mitchell, ‘The Port and Town of Great Yarmouth and its Economic and Social Relationships with its Neighbours on both Sides of the Seas: An Essay in the History of the North Sea Economy’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 1978 ), p. 163.
- Allison, ‘Wool Supply and the Worsted Cloth Industry’, p. 79.
- J. A. Chartres, ‘Road Carrying in England in the Seventeenth Century: Myth and Reality’, EcHR, 2nd Ser., XXX (1977 ), pp. 73–94.
- Dr Chartres has demonstrated the geographical link between stage-coach and carrier services and inns in certain districts of the capital: ‘The Capital’s Provincial Eyes: London Inns in the Early Eighteenth Century’, London Journal, III (1977 ), pp. 24–39.
- PRO, PCC Prob 4/580.
- I am grateful to Geoff Egan of the Museum of London for this information.
- NRO, MS 15950, ‘Exceptions against the Londoners practize to bring us to a Hall’ (undated, probably 1611).
- See note 59.
- Bedfordshire Record Office, P.BW P/W 1713 (I am indebted to Anne Buck for this reference).
- Celia Fiennes in C. Morris ed., op. cit., p. 233.
- Defoe, Tour, p. 82.
- Willan, Inland Trade, pp. 126–47.
- J. A. Chartres, Inland Trade in England, 1500–1700 (London, 1977), pp. 52–53.
- Bristol Reference Library; I am indebted to Trevor Fawcett for this reference.
- R. G. Wilson, Gentlemen Merchants (Manchester, 1971 ), pp. 55–56.
- Nicholas Blundell’s wife ordered herself a ‘black and white Callico Suite’ in 1708 (Bagley, op. cit., 1, p. 192).
- Natalie Rothstein, ‘The Calico Campaign of 1719–21’, East London Papers, Vol. 7 (1964 ), pp. 3–21.
- NRO, Norwich City Assembly Book, 1714–31, f. 103.
- Hudson and Tingey, Records of the City of Norwich, p. xc; The Saturday Evening Post, July 1719, Nichols Newspapers, Bodleian Library, Oxford.
- Priestley, 202–03.