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Original Article

The Tapestry Trade in Elizabethan London: Products, Purchasers, and Purveyors

Pages 18-33 | Published online: 12 Nov 2013

Notes

  • Starkey D, (ed.), The 1547 Inventories of Henry VIII (1998); M. Hayward, The Whitehall Inventory of 1542 The Palace and its Keeper, 2 vols (2004); T. P. Campbell, Henry VIII and the Art of Majesty, Tapestries at the Tudor Court (Newhaven, Conn., 2007).
  • Jardine L, Worldly Goods (1996), 384–400. For an idea of the highest-quality tapestries, see: T. P. Campbell, Tapestry in the Renaissance: Art and Magnificence (New York, 2002); T. P. Campbell, Tapestry in the Baroque Threads of Splendor (New York, 2007); and G. Delmarcel, Flemish Tapestries (1999), trans. Alastair Weir. For a tapestry town, see G. Delmarcel and E. Duverger, Bruges et la Tapisserie (Bruges, 1987).
  • Smith LB, Catherine Howard (Stroud, 2010), 171; M. A. Everett Green (ed.), Calendar of State Papers 1598–1601, 131–32; The National Archives (TNA), E 115/255/30, E 115/245/7.
  • Judge AV, The Elizabethan Underworld (1930), 431; J. R. Dasent (ed.), Acts of the Privy Council 1600–01 (1890–1964), 176.
  • Luu L, Immigrants and the Industries of London, 1500–1700 (Aldershot, 2005); N. Goose and L. Liên, Immigrants in Tudor and Early Stuart England (Brighton; Portland, Oreg., 2005). L. L Peck, Consuming Splendor (Cambridge, 2005), contains only five references to tapestry, a serious underesti- mate of its importance. Much of her information for the sixteenth century was outdated at the time of writing. W. B. Thomson, History of Weaving, London (1906, 1933), is an inadequate guide, even in its revision of 1973.
  • Sandys W, ‘A Copy of Archbishop Parker’s Goods at the Time of his Death’, Archaeologia, xxx (1844), 1–30.
  • Campbell TP, ‘The National Trust Tapestry Collection’, in , Marko K, (ed.), Textiles in Trust, Proceedings of a Symposium, September 1995 (1997), 147–55. Helen Wyld is currently cataloguing the Trust’s tapestries.
  • Campbell, Henry VIII, 159.
  • Hefford W, ‘Flemish Tapestry Weavers in England:1550–1775’, in , Delmarcel G, (ed.), Flemish Tapestry Weavers Abroad (Leuven, 2002), 43–61; H. L. Turner, ‘Tapestries Once at Chastleton House and Their Influence on the Image of the Tapestries called Sheldon: a Re-assessment’, Antiquaries Journal, 88 (2008), 313–43. On-line at <http://www.tapestriescalledsheldon.info/pdfs/NEWPP41Chastleton revision.pdf>
  • For example: the inventory of Hendrik van Beeringhen 1581, in J. Denucé, Antwerpener Teppichkunst in Quellen zur Geschichte der Flamischen Kunst, vol. iv (Antwerp, 1936), 30–36; E. Roobaert, ‘De Brusselse Tapijtindustrie rond 1520, Tapijthandelaars, Grotere en Kleinere Weef ateliers, Legwerkers in Loondienst en Kartonschilders’, Revue Belge d’Archéologie et d’Historie de l’Art, lxxi (2002), 3–46; and J. Duverger, ‘Frans Witspaen, Tapijtwever en Tapijthandelaar te Oudenaarde en te Gent’, Artes Textiles, 8 (1974), 26–49.
  • Raine J, (ed.), Wills and Inventories from the Registry of the Archdeaconry of Richmond, Surtees Society, 26 (1853), 275–81, 268–70, 281–83; E. Roberts and K. Parker (eds), Southampton Probate Inventories 1447–575, Southampton Record Series, 34, 2 vols (1991–1992). On provincial shops in general, see T. S. Willan, The Inland Trade (Manchester, 1976).
  • Saunders A, (ed.), The Royal Exchange, London Topographical Society, publication no. 152 (1997), 89; I. Archer, The History of the Haberdashers Company (Chichester, 1991), 26.
  • Levey S, An Elizabethan Inheritance; the Hardwick Hall Textiles (1998).
  • Fisher FJ, ‘The Development of London as a Centre for Conspicuous Consumption in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th series, 30 (1948), 37–50.
  • Lodge E, Illustrations of British History, 2 vols (1791), vol. I, no. cxii, 150–52. His father had ‘bought of Thomas Farraunt, upholsterer, of seven peces of beests and flowers’: TNA, PROB 11/76 (1539).
  • The Parlement of Pratlers, facsimile edition (1928).
  • Gras NSB, The Early English Customs System (Cambridge, Mass., 1918); A. M. Millard, ‘London’s Import Trade 1600–40’ (PhD thesis, London, 1956).
  • Willan TS, A Tudor Book of Rates (Manchester, 1972).
  • Ibid., xxx–xxxii.
  • Ibid., xii, xix.
  • Campbell, Henry VIII, 299–301.
  • Import figures printed in: B. Dietz, The Port and Trade of Elizabethan London, London Record Society, 8 (1972), 152–55; and E. Lamond, A Discourse of the Common weal of this Realm of England (Cambridge, 1893), 63–65, 85, 126.
  • The wider complexities and complications of the customs system are discussed by F. C. Dietz, English Public Finance, 1558–1641 (1964, 2nd edn), 305–27; further difficulties of interpretation by the editor of the only book edited and published, that for 1567–1568, Dietz, Port and Trade.
  • Delmarcel G, Flemish Tapestry Weavers Abroad (2000).
  • TNA, E 190/4/2.
  • TNA, E 190/5/5, E 190/8/2, E 190/9/5; E 190/14/2. Later books stop recording cargo details.
  • TNA, E 190/8/2, E 190/14/5.
  • Kirk R E G, Kirk E F, (eds), Returns of Aliens dwelling in the City and Suburbs of London from the Reign of Henry VIII to that of James I, Publications of the Huguenot Society of London, Quarto Series, 10 in four parts (Aberdeen, 1900–1908), Leman, i, 318; ii, 201; Virkin, I, 475.
  • TNA, E 190/8/2.
  • Scouloudi I, Returns of Strangers in the Metropolis 1593, 1627, 1635, 1639, Huguenot Society of London, Quarto Series, vol. 57 (1985), Beedall, no. 57; A. J. Jelsma, and O. Boersma (eds), Acta von het Consistorie van de Nederlandse gemeente te London 1569–1585 (‘s-Gravenhage, 1993), 799; Kirk and Kirk, Aliens, ii, 312, 319, 428, 440, 442.
  • Kirk and Kirk, Aliens, i, 417; ii, 26, 155, 168, 201, 203, 204, 207, 209, 210, 212, 233, 270, 337, 341, 383, 411, 415; iii, 69(4), 329, 347; W. J. C. Moens (ed.), The Marriage, Baptismal and Burial Registers 1571 to 1874 … of the Dutch Reformed Church, Austin Friars, London (Lymington, 1884), s.v. baptisms.
  • Kirk and Kirk, Aliens, ii, 208, 210, 211, 271, 428, 440, 442; iii, 29, 52, 109(2), 124, 125, 126, 128, 129, 274, 442.
  • Kirk and Kirk, Aliens, iii, 129, 131, 151, 165, 217, 235, 236, 253, 260, 268, 272, 273, 292; Moens, Registers, s.v. marriage, baptisms.
  • Kirk and Kirk, Aliens, iii, 258.
  • TNA, E 190/14/5; Kirk and Kirk, Aliens, ii, 326; iii, 53, 109, 124–25, 151, 215.
  • Maxwell Lyte H, Stevenson W H, (eds), The Manuscripts of the Duke of Rutland, Historical Manuscripts Commission (HMC) (1905); Courcellis was paid in 1616–1617, 510, 511; later purchases were in 1619, 518, and in 1624, 526.
  • Levey, An Elizabethan Inheritance, 23–26. Mulmaster is possibly Wylliam de Mulenmeester (Kirk and Kirk, Aliens, ii, 414), mentioned in the Dutch Church Register of 1588.
  • London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), Surrey Probate Records, DW/PA/5/1593. It is likely that William de Miliner, with whom she also did business, had similar connections, possibly being a member of the Molenaer or Meulenaer family.
  • TNA, PROB 11/68.
  • L. Stone, An Elizabethan Gentleman Horatio Palavicino (Oxford, 1956).
  • Schrickx W, ‘Denijs van Alsloot en Willem Tons in London in 1577’, Artes Textiles, viii (1974), 47–64; C. Maeyer, ‘Denijs van Alsloot (voor ca 1573–1625) en de Tapijtkunst’, Artes Textiles, 1 (1953), 3–11.
  • British Library, MS Cotton, Galba C.VIII, ff. 72, 76; for Bow/n/deson, see Kirk and Kirk, Aliens, ii, 336, 341, 389(2); iii, 20, 48, 93, 109(2). Compare the arrangements with G. Delmarcel and C. Dumortier, ‘Cornelis de Ronde, Tapestry Weaver in Brussels (d.1569)’, Revue Belge d’Archéologie et d’Histoire de l’Art, lv (1992), 41–67.
  • Lomas S C, (ed.), Calendar of State Papers Foreign 1584–85 (1916), 454, 626; R. B.Wernham (ed.), CSP Foreign 1589 Jan–July (1950), 196, 204, 223, 339, 404, 407; J. Bruce (ed.), Leycester Correspondence, Camden Society, 27 (1844), 223, 256, 413.
  • Putnell E K, Hinds A B, (eds), Report on the Mss of the Marquess of Downshire at Easthampstead Park, Berks, HMC (1936), ii, 434.
  • Hefford, ‘Flemish Tapestry Weavers’, 43–61; Turner, ‘Tapestries once at Chastleton House’, 333–35, 46, now on-line at <http://www.tapestriescalledsheldon.info/p34_learn_index_pdfs.htm>
  • Printed in Kirk and Kirk, Aliens.
  • Turner HL, ‘Working Arras and Arras Workers: Conservation in the Great Wardrobe under Elizabeth I’, Textile History, 43:1 (2012), 43–60. With this is associated: <http://yourarchives.ntionalarchives.gov.uk/index.php?title=Arras_men>
  • See Turner, ‘Working Arras’, online at <http://www.tapestriescalledsheldon.info/pdfs/WorkingArras.pdf>
  • See note 41; Michael Ots or Hoots (Kirk and Kirk, Aliens, ii, 299) and Hoots (Kirk and Kirk, Aliens, ii, 386).
  • Biographies are at <http://tapestriescalledsheldon.info/p34_learn_index_pdfs.htm>, now archived at <http://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20120425060043/http://www.tapestriescalledsheldon.info/pdfs/NEWPP39Emigre1GtWardrobe.pdf?%20 emigre%20tapestry%20weavers%20london>
  • Page W, Aliens in England 1509–1603. Letters of Denization and Acts of Naturalization, Publications of the Huguenot Society of London, Quarto Series, vol. 8 (1893), 182; Scouloudi, Returns, no. 826.
  • Kirk and Kirk, Aliens, ii, 284, 334.
  • Kirk and Kirk, Aliens, iii, 25, 60, 97, 121; LMA, London Archdeaconry Court, Registers, vol. 5, f. 101.
  • Scouloudi, Returns, no. 646, 187.
  • LMA, London Archdeaconry Court, Registers, vol. 5, f. 441; Act Book, vol. 6, f. 31.
  • LMA, Court Minute Books, Christ’s Hospital, MS 12,806/2, f. 118v, f. 194; LMA, Repertories of the Court of Aldermen, vol. 19, f. 268.
  • National Art Library, London, Special Collections KRP.D.30, ff. 98, 59.
  • Nevinson JL, Catalogue of English Embroidery (1938), 15, V&A T.317–1898; A. J. B. Wace, ‘A Pair of Gloves with Tapestry-woven Gauntlets’, Embroideress, no. 42 (1932), 990–94, figs 1336-7-9; G. Wingfield-Digby, The Victoria and Albert Museum, Catalogue of Tapestries Medieval and Renaissance (1980), 81, uncertainly dated, and probably much later, a sweet-bag intended to hold lozenges is embellished with the tree of life.
  • Image at <http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O78862/book-cover/>
  • Similar depictions of the Nativity can be seen at <http://archives.getty.edu:30008/getty_images/digitalresources/tapestries/0181948.jpg>
  • St Clare Byrne M, (ed.), The Elizabethan Home Discovered in Two Dialogues by Claudius Hollybaud and Peter Erondell (1925), 50.
  • Image at <http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O317800/cushion-cover/>, V&A T.86-1913.
  • Turner HL, ‘Some Small Tapestries of Judith with the Head of Holofernes; Should They Be Called Sheldon?’ Textile History, 41:2 (2010), 19–39, on-line at <http://dx.doi.org/10·1179/174329510X12798919710590>
  • Kent Archive Office, Maidstone, Sa/Ac 4, f. 193, Sa/Zb/5; H. T. Riley (ed.), Corporation of Sandwich, Royal Commission on History MSS 5th Report (1876), 569.
  • Christie’s South Kensington, 23 Nov 2005, lot 3, illustrated.
  • Burrell Collection, Glasgow, 47·17; V&A T.195–1914. <http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O78778/cushion-cover/>. The initials HS/P identify the probable first owner as Henry Sacheverell and his wife Petronilla; for his family, see <http://www.tapestriescalledsheldon.info/pdfs/NEWPP38Which Sacheverell.pdf>
  • Turner HL, ‘Walter Jones of Witney, Worcester and Chastleton: Re-writing the Past’, Oxoniensia, 73 (2008), 33–43; Burrell Collection, Glasgow, 47·21. This tapestry and the Sacheverell arms have long been regarded as products of William Sheldon’s venture at Barcheston, but the success of the attempts by Sheldon and by William Cecil at Stamford to foster the industry outside London are impossible to judge. No products can be certainly attributed, for the simple reason that none is documented. The set of four tapestry maps with the Sheldon family arms was commissioned by Ralph Sheldon (d. 1613), but tapestry maps did not form a business staple, and nor can they be shown to have been woven at Barcheston. Such labels should thus be regarded with caution; see H. L.Turner, ‘Tapestries Once at Chastleton House’, online at <http://www.tapestries calledsheldon.info/pdfs/NEWPP41Chastleton revision.pdf>
  • Walker was under-clerk by 1552; see BLib, Stowe MS 571, f. 25; for his will, see TNA, PROB 11/75; for his wealth, see TNA, C 142/230/29; W. H. Rylands, Grants of Arms, Harleian Society, 66 (1915), 265. The tapestry is in private hands.
  • Hasler PW, Members of the House of Commons, 1558–1603 (1982), with some mistakes; as clerk of stables in R. Lemon (ed.), CSP Domestic 1547–80, 611 (1856).
  • Palmer CJ, Continuation of Manship’s History of Great Yarmouth (1856), 173; Norfolk Record Office, Y/C4/272, ff. 58v–59.
  • Burrell Collection, Glasgow, accession 47·4. Different origins are proposed in: G. Delmarcel, Tapisseries anciennes d’Enghien (Mons, 1980), 22–3; and Hefford ‘Flemish Tapestry Weavers’, 43–44.
  • TNA, PROB 11/81.
  • Turner HL, ‘A Case of Mistaken Identity: The ‘Sheldon’ Tapestries of the Four Seasons at Hatfield House Reconsidered’, Emblematica, 19 (2012), 1–27; whether or not they have a woven date (1611) is debatable. Less certainly, because there is no known English link, Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Fall 2010), 25.
  • Buchanan I, ‘Michiel de Bos and the Tapestries of the ‘Labours of Hercules’ after Frans Floris (c. 1565), New Documents on the Tapestry Maker and the Commission’, Revue Belge d’Archéologie et d’Histoire de l’Art, lxiii (1994), 37–61.
  • HMC, Downshire, iv, 243, 507.
  • Standen EA, ‘The Carpet of Arms’, Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 20 (1962), 221–31; W. Wells, ‘The Luttrell Table Carpet’, Scottish Art Review, xi:3 (1968), 14–18.
  • <http://www.tapestriescalledsheldon.info/pdfs/NEWPP39Emigre1GtWardrobe.pdf>, archived at <http://webarchive.org.u/>; Schrickx, ‘Denijs van Alsloot en Willem Tons’.
  • Pine J, The Tapestry Hangings of the House of Lords (1739), recently recreated as paintings for the House of Lords, English press reports, 18 Jun 2010. Two other commissions — their subjects unnamed — were also given to Spierincx by King James I; the first was for three pieces of ‘fine tapestry’, which cost £251 10s., and the second was for two tapestries at a cost of £254. See: TNA, SO 3/3, 26 Sep 1607; and TNA, SO 3/5, 15 Dec 1610.
  • Collins A, (ed.), Letters and Memorials of State, 2 vols (1746), vol. I, 359, 360–61, 386.
  • HMC, Hatfield House IV (1892), 138.
  • Lemon R, (ed.), Calendar of State Papers Domestic 1581–1590 (1865), 708.
  • Burgon JW, Life and Times of Sir Thomas Gresham, 2 vols, (1839), (i) 303–304.
  • Green M A E, (ed.), CSP Domestic 1595–97 (1869), 485, 496, 548.
  • HMC, Downshire, ii, 3, 434; none is named in the inventory of the completed house, 1611, published in G. Beard, Upholsterers and Interior Furnishing in England 1530–1840 (1997), 285–86.
  • TNA, SP 77/10, f. 352r, on-line at <http://yourarchives.nationalarchives.gov.uk/index.php? title=SP_77/10>
  • HMC, Downshire, ii, 214–15, 232; iv, 212, 282; iv, 497, 501.
  • TNA, SP 77/10, f. 352r; HMC, Downshire, iii, 369; iii, 376–77; iv, 154, 169.
  • HMC, Downshire, iv, 160, 164, 165.
  • National Art Library, London, Special Collections, KRP D.30, f. 101.
  • Kingsford C L, (ed.), HMC, Report on manuscripts of Lord De L’Isle and Dudley preserved at Penshurst Place, I (1925), 278, Kenilworth inventory, 1588.
  • Levey, An Elizabethan Inheritance, 19, 22–23.
  • Quoted from R. Trevelyan, Sir Walter Raleigh (2002), 412; A. Latham and J. Youinge (eds), Letters of Sir Walter Raleigh (Exeter 1999), Appendix 2.
  • Hatfield House deeds, 118/12, with thanks for the reference to the Archivist, Mr Robin Harcourt Williams.
  • Shirley E P, (ed.), ‘An Inventory of the Effects of Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton 1614’, Archaeologia, 42 (1867), 347–78, esp. 359, 362 (Dacre), 355, 359 (Wolsey); Campbell, Henry VIII, 136, 202–3.
  • Lestrange Ewen C, Lotteries and Sweepstakes (1932), 34–65.
  • Harrison W, Description of England (1577), ed. G. Edelen (Ithaca, N. York, 1968), 201–2.
  • Brears P, (ed.), Yorkshire Probate Inventories 1542–1689, Yorkshire Archaeological Society Records Series, 134 (1972), 24–28.
  • Stowe J, A Survey of London (1598), ed. C. L. Kingsford, (Oxford, 1908), 2 vols, vol. i, 12.
  • Jackson CanonJE, ‘Amy Robsart’, Wiltshire Archaeological Magazine, xvii (1878), 47–93, esp. 92–93. The earl also made use of Richard Hyckes (the queen’s arrasmaker) as an intermediary, but probably not as the weaver [as suggested by J. Clarke, ‘A Set of Tapestries for Leicester House in The Strand: 1585’, Burlington Magazine, cxxv (1983), 283–84], to acquire a set of four tapestries containing his arms. One is displayed in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and two are in the Burrell Collection. Current thinking is that the tapestries were woven abroad and that Hyckes acted as the importer.

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