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The Many Different English Cloths Produced in The Tudor Period Were Dominated by Broadcloths and Kersies

You read in The Wall Street Journal that 30-day T-bills currently are yielding 8 percent. Your brother-in-law, a broker at Kyoto Securities, has given you the following estimates of current interest rate premiums:

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128 views1 page

The Many Different English Cloths Produced in The Tudor Period Were Dominated by Broadcloths and Kersies

You read in The Wall Street Journal that 30-day T-bills currently are yielding 8 percent. Your brother-in-law, a broker at Kyoto Securities, has given you the following estimates of current interest rate premiums:

Uploaded by

Yassi Curtis
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The many different English cloths produced in the Tudor period were dominated by broadcloths and

kersies, and current evidence shows Winchcombe producing kersey cloths on an industrial scale:
[23]
 over 6,000 cloths each year in the 1540s. Each kersey was about a yard (0.9m.) wide, and 17–18
yards long.[24] The scale of his production is also indicated by his purchase of dyes: woad was his
most important dye, frequently delivered by the cartload. One order survives for 541 cwt., or over 27
tons of woad.[25]
Many workers were involved in the various stages of production, which included spinning and
weaving. Fulling took place in local mills and the finished kersies were exported via London
to Antwerp, where they were recognised in the 1530s and 1540s as the best of their kind.
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography says that Winchcombe's cloths "came to enjoy an
unquestioned superiority, not only in Antwerp, where they were in great demand, but also in markets
in Italy, the Levant, Germany, Hungary, and elsewhere, where they had the greatest renown…" [26]
The value attached to his cloth is illustrated by evidence of an order from Thomas Cromwell for
1,000 cloths,[27] and that English merchants overseas would sometimes only sell Winchcombe cloths
to those who would purchase inferior cloths at the same time.
Although Winchcombe has in the past been credited with founding England's first factory, no
documentary evidence of a weaving workshop has yet been traced. However, the quantity of cloths
produced suggests a workshop of perhaps 30–50 looms.

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