EMINENT CLOATHIERS OF THIS COUNTY.
[IN this chapter there is a long “Digression of Cloathiers of other
Counties,” full of curious matter, which is here necessarily
omitted.—J. B.]
... SUTTON of Salisbury, was an eminent cloathier: what is become of
his family I know not.
[John] Hall, I doe believe, was a merchant of the staple, at Salisbury,
where he had many houses. His dwelling house, now a taverne (1669), was
on the Ditch, where in the glasse windowes are many scutchions of his
armes yet remaining, and severall merchant markes. Quaere, if there are
not also wooll-sacks in the pannells of glass? [Of this house and
family the reader will find many interesting particulars in a volume by
my friend the Rev. Edward Duke, of Lake House, near Amesbury. Its title
will explain the work, viz. “Prolusiones Historicæ; or, Essays
Illustrative of the Halle of John Halle, citizen and merchant of
Salisbury in the reigns of Henry VI. and Edward IV.; with Notes
illustrative and explanatory. By the Rev. Edward Duke, M.A., F.S.A.,
and L.S. in two vols. 8vo. 1837.” (Only one volume has been
published.)—J. B.]
The ancestor of Sir William Webb of Odstock, near Salisbury, was a
merchant of the staple in Salisbury. As Grevill and Wenman bought all
the Coteswold wooll, so did Hall and Webb the wooll of Salisbury
plaines; but these families are Roman Catholiques.
The ancestor of Mr. Long, of Rood Ashton, was a very great cloathier.
He built great part of that handsome church, as appeares by the
inscription there, between 1480 and 1500.
[William] Stump was a wealthy cloathier at Malmesbury, tempore Henrici
VIII. His father was the parish clarke of North Nibley, in
Gloucestershire, and was a weaver, and at last grew up to be a
cloathier. This cloathier at Malmesbury, at the dissolution of the
abbeys, bought a great deale of the abbey lands thereabout. When King
Henry 8th hunted in Bradon Forest, he gave his majesty and the court a
great entertainment at his house (the abbey). The King told him he was
afraid he had undone himself; he replied that his own servants should
only want their supper for it. [See this anecdote also in Fuller’s
Worthies, Wiltshire.—J. B.] Leland sayes that when he was there the
dortures and other great roomes were filled with weavers’ loomes. [The
following is the passage referred to (Leland’s Itinerary, vol. ii. p.
27.) “The hole logginges of th’ abbay be now longging to one Stumpe, an
exceeding rich clothiar, that boute them of the king. This Stumpe was
the chef causer and contributor to have th’ abbay chirch made a paroch
chirch. At this present tyme every corner of the vaste houses of office
that belongid to th’ abbay be full of lumbes to weeve cloth yn, and
this Stumpe entendith to make a strete or 2 for cloathiers in the back
vacant ground of the abbay that is withyn the town waulles. There be
made now every yere in the town a 3,000 clothes.” See “Memorials of the
Family of Stumpe”, by Mr. J. G. Nichols, in “Collectanea Topographica
et Genealogica”, vol. vii.—J. B.]
Mr. Paul Methwin of Bradford succeeded his father-in-law in the trade,
and was the greatest cloathier of his time (tempore Caroli 2nd). He was
a worthy gentleman, and died about 1667. Now (temp. Jacobi II.) Mr.
Brewer of Troubridge driveth the greatest trade for medleys of any
cloathier in England.