Page:The Victoria History of the County of Lincoln Volume 2.pdf/420

Rh clothiers for licence to buy and sell their wool through Lincolnshire, shipping at Boston Haven.

In 1559 it was found that in diverse (sic) years then past the clothiers in the broad looms, so far from making twenty broad cloths, had made few or none. But the citizens, if they could not set up a profitable manufactory, would attempt to keep the poor employed, so in 1591–2 a knitting school was established, and John Cheseman, the knitter, undertook to set on work in his science all such as were willing to come to him or were sent to him by the aldermen, and to hide nothing from them 'that belongeth to the knowledge of the said science.' Spinning, dressing of wool, and keeping a mill were included, as well as knitting, and Cheseman provided ten wheels for which he was paid 4s. 8d. In 1624 Gregory Lawcock undertook to set all the poor of Lincoln upon work to spin, knit stockings, weave garterings, make stuffs and other manufactures of wool, and out of the gain to clothe the same poor; and £60 was to be lent him and £20 given to provide tools, bring workmen, and establish manufacturies, besides £10 yearly for teaching young spinners, while every citizen and other inhabitant of ability should wear at least one suit of apparel and one pair of stockings of such cloth or stuff as should be made in the city. But in 1629 this agreement with Lawcock was found to be so generally disliked that he was dismissed. Meanwhile the guild of the Lincoln weavers still maintained and enforced its privileges and regulations.

In a suit in 1635 the society of Weavers asserted their privileges within 12 miles of the city. A Scothorne weaver, a witness on their behalf, said that he knew the defendant, and he was brought up in the trade of a weaver under a Scothorne weaver, 3 miles from Lincoln, within the compass, jurisdiction, and power of the corporation of the society of weavers, and there was a custom used, 'and hath been time out of mind within the said city and compass,' that everyone setting up the said trade within the said compass of 12 miles shall pay for his upset 6s. 8d., and 6d. yearly towards the paying of the king's fee farm rent, and he had heard of a custom belonging to the said society that no weaver within the said 12 miles should take, fetch, or entertain any work or things to work out of the city and carry it into the country and there work it into cloth, and he himself was punished for this offence by the graceman, warden, assistants and society. It appears from other evidence that the defendant was a weaver, living at Greetwell, and that he had received yarn into his house and made it into cloth or 'Linsey woolsey,' and that Robert Peake, the graceman, with two others of the company of weavers, went to his house and did then and there threaten him that they would seal up his looms, unless he would give them a mark for every piece that he wrought of Lincoln work. It was stated that the weavers of the city took greater wages for weaving cloth than the country weavers did, and a country weaver said a weaver of Lincoln took 4d. for work for which he would take 3d. The weaving trade still went on, the evidence now being for the country districts. We find two young men put as apprentices to a weaver at Irby in 1676, a weaver at Lissington in 1668, one at Sutton in 1677, and one at Kirton in 1788. In 1787 the well-known Stuff Ball was established for the encouragement of native woollen manufacture, and held for two years at Alford, and afterwards at Lincoln. The ladies used to wear stuff gowns, and the gentlemen stuff coats, waistcoats, and breeches.

Amongst other craft-guilds at Lincoln were those of the fullers and the tailors. A provision of the Fullers' Guild in 1297 was that none of the craft should work in the trough, and none should work at the wooden bar with a woman, unless with the wife of a master or her handmaid. It seems that the fullers' work had then already risen to beating the newly-made cloth, lying in a trough, with bars or poles, and was no longer 'cloth walking.' Other provisions were, that none should work after dinner on Saturdays, nor on any days which they ought to keep as festivals, according to the law of the church: and that if a stranger to the city came in he might, upon giving 1d. to the wax, work with the brethren and sisters, and his name should be written on the roll, the penalty for not keeping the ordinances being half a pound of wax. The Tailors' Guild in 1328 ordained that if any master [tailor] took anyone to live with him as apprentice in order to learn the work of the tailor's craft, the apprentice should pay 2s. to the guild, or his master for him, or else the master should lose his guildship: and that if any master of the craft kept any lad or 'sewer' of another master for one day after he had well known that the lad wrongfully left his master, and that they had not parted in a friendly and reasonable manner, he should pay a stone of wax.

The ordinances of the company of Tailers were confirmed in 1679. They are too long