The fortunes of urban fullers in fourteenth-century England^*

Abstract

During the fourteenth century English cloth manufacture underwent an important transformation, both in terms of its organization and quality of product. Indeed several alterations in the international trade in cloth from the end of the thirteenth century, principally caused by chronic warfare throughout Europe, indirectly contributed to the severe decline of clothmaking in English towns. Eventually English cloth-makers reduced their production of cheaper coarse light woollens (serges) and moved towards the production of heavy-weight broadcloths.¹ The former had been produced throughout north-western Europe and dominated the Mediterranean market during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The export of these lighter fabrics largely, though not entirely, sustained textile production in English towns.² Various civil, regional and international conflicts in the Mediterranean Basin at the end of the thirteenth century increased transport costs and almost eliminated cheaper textiles from this market.³ Through the following decades English textile workers focused on the production of cheap worsteds, a coarse light woollen cloth, which required very little or no fulling. Moreover, the abundance of high quality wool was exported as a raw material and the demand for quality cloth was satisfied by imports from Flanders.⁴ This situation changed upon the accession of Edward III as a series of measures were introduced by the new government to favour the development of a native cloth industry.⁵ The effects of these measures on urban industries became visible only in the late 1340s as the English cloth-workers began moving from cheap coarse worsteds to the production of heavily finished broad cloths. By the end of the fourteenth century England developed from an exporter of raw wool into a producer and exporter of quality finished broadcloth.⁶ These changes seem to have presented opportunities for fullers, too, and, as a result, their status improved.

Although fullers formed an important part of the late medieval English cloth-making industry, there is still no in-depth and focused study in which their role has been systematically examined. This craft has only incidentally been dealt with in various studies of medieval English towns and their fortunes appear to have been different depending on the area. In fourteenth-century Exeter fullers seem to have attained the status of those who had marketed the cloth and were not just employed as piece workers.⁷ Richard Britnell argued that the fullers of Colchester were more likely than any other group to be earning large profits, given the type of cloth they produced.⁸ Derek Keene came to similar conclusions while examining medieval Winchester.⁹ In her unpublished Ph.D. dissertation on the drapers of London, Eleanor Quinton noticed that during a short period in the second half of the fourteenth century, the fullers of London dominated the city’s trade in broadcloth, but that they lost their importance to the drapers at the beginning of the 1380s.¹⁰ In her wake John Oldland added that, during the fourteenth century, fullers in London were foot-fulling luxury cloth produced in the city that was sold to royal and aristocratic households.¹¹ Conversely in her study of craftsmen in York, Heather Swanson viewed the fullers’ craft as rather depressed.¹² In late medieval Suffolk, Nicholas Amor has shown that very few fullers managed to conduct high-value businesses and that the great majority of them were very poorly remunerated for the amount of work they did.¹³ According to Penny Dunn the situation was similar in late-medieval Norwich.¹⁴ On the other side of the English Channel, David Nicholas reached similar conclusions for the city of Ghent and argued that the fullers’ occupation required the fewest skills and for that reason was the lowest paid.¹⁵ Nicholas’s views were, however, challenged by John Munro several years later.¹⁶

After Eleanora Carus-Wilson’s provocative 1941 article on the ‘industrial revolution’ of the thirteenth century, much scholarly attention was turned to the invention of the fulling mill and the spread of its use. Carus-Wilson claimed that the development of fulling mills was the main reason for cloth production to move from urban environments to hilly rural areas at the end of the fourteenth century. This caused steady industrial growth in the countryside.¹⁷ Later scholars vigorously challenged her views.¹⁸ The whole debate was summarized and analysed by the late John Munro, who defended Carus-Wilson’s argument in part.¹⁹ However, the most plausible interpretation of the advent of fulling mills has recently been offered by John Oldland. He argued convincingly that the development of fulling mills was a result of a structural change within the English cloth industry as it moved from the production of worsteds to full woollens. Fulling mills initially developed in rural areas because the local demand was predominantly for low-quality cloth; the consequences of damaging such cloth with heavy fulling were limited.²⁰ However, luxury cloth production for more sophisticated customers remained in cities, where the risk of damaging cloth by mechanical fulling, for a small reduction in cost, was something that guild-regulated corporate bodies were unwilling to take.²¹ In some urban environments like Winchester and Colchester, where lower range broadcloths were produced, the use of fulling mills actually enhanced the status of fullers and was probably encouraged by the local authorities.²²

Improvements in technology lowered the risk of ruining fine cloth during its manufacture in fulling mills only after the fourteenth century, making them more acceptable to urban guilds.²³ Their significance will therefore not be problematized here. My focus will be on the development of this craft and on fullers as individuals from political, economic and social points of view. Most of the aforementioned authors agree that the general position of urban fullers in England improved from the mid fourteenth century with the growth of the English woollen cloth industry. In several English towns by the 1390s, fullers even acted as entrepreneurs and were better off than most other artisans involved in clothmaking.²⁴ How this change came about has still not been fully explained. Why and how did fullers come to prominence? In what follows, I will argue that while external factors caused urban fullers to lose importance at the end of the thirteenth century, they grew spectacularly in number by the mid fourteenth century thanks to the shift of English clothmaking towards the manufacture of heavily finished broadcloths. Although there were some regional differences, of all the textile trades the fullers enjoyed the greatest improvement in their economic and political situations compared with the first half of the fourteenth century. They pushed this success even further through the formation of formal associations and gains in political leverage. Some of this success was related to the increased demand for types of cloth that started to be produced in England from the 1350s, as most of them required fulling. However, their new success was more due to the fullers’ ability to improve the skills required for the finishing of quality cloth and thus to position themselves as the inevitable link between the manufacture and sale of cloth.

Depending on geographical area, medieval English sources allude to fullers variously. In the north they were known as ‘walkers’ as they literally walked on the cloth.²⁵ In south-western parts of the country, such as Bristol, Salisbury or Exeter, they were called ‘tuckers’.²⁶ In other cloth-making towns they were simply referred to as ‘fullers’. In the late middle ages, after the preparation of the wool there were three steps in the manufacture of cloth that preceded fulling. In order to soften the wool for the heavy process of carding, spinning and weaving, oil was used to prepare the yarn. After these stages of manufacture, when the cloth arrived with fullers, it was still full of grease and their principal task was to remove this and other impurities. They did this by washing the cloth in hot water mixed with such additives as fuller’s earth or urine. Indeed, this combination of washing and rinsing with several agents made the cloth more receptive to dye mordant. It also shrank the wool until it became thoroughly felted and thus stronger and more durable. After that, the same cloth was dried and stretched on tenter frames until it reached the correct dimensions. While hung on the frame the cloth was brushed with teasels to raise the nap.²⁷ The entire process of producing standardized quality broadcloth, if foot-fulled, required between three and five days labour from a master fuller and two journeymen or apprentices.²⁸

The growing importance of fullers in English urban areas is evident from their increased visibility in the sources from the mid fourteenth century. The documentary evidence suggests that in the first half of the century, the presence of fullers in English towns was rather low. This was mainly linked with external factors and the situation in the main export markets. Due to increased transport costs as a result of warfare, the English product was uncompetitive. Oldland has offered a plausible complementary hypothesis. He argued that coarse wool fabrics, which were mainly produced in rural areas in the early fourteenth century, not only rendered serges uncompetitive on the international market, but also undermined many urban textile industries. Indeed, the English producers moved from serges to coarse worsteds at this time and to full woollens only from the middle of the century.²⁹ This structural change in the production of cloth attracted numerous fullers into towns and partly explains the increased number of fullers who became freemen.

The admissions to the freedom of the city of York show that between 1300 and 1340 there were only four people described as fullers who became freemen.³⁰ Fullers were very rarely involved in litigation in the early borough court records of Colchester; only six of them appear in the taxation of 1301, while the first freemen appear in 1341.³¹ Apart from the freedom registrations in 1309–12, there is no other direct evidence of admissions to the freedom of London for the period of this study.³² In the city’s Letter Books and Memoranda Rolls, the number of those mentioned as fullers increases noticeably from the 1360s.³³ The fullers operating their business in London at the beginning of the fourteenth century were associated with the occupation of the dyers. The former had probably endured a status subordinate to the dyers as was the case in thirteenth-century Winchester.³⁴ In theory the fullers’ craft was clearly recognized in London: the ordinances from 1298 stipulate that cloth made in the city of London was not to be carried to the fulling mills by fullers, weavers or dyers, but to be fulled by foot. Yet, the people who had sworn to enforce this practice were two burellers, two weavers, two dyers and two tailors.³⁵ This subordinate status of fullers is visible in practice. In 1310, dyer Godfrey Loveyne was accused of sending undyed cloth to be fulled outside the city contrary to the ordinance of 1298. He pleaded guilty and paid a 20s fine and was sworn together with another dyer, John de Lesne, to ensure that no weaver, fuller or dyer would carry cloths outside the city that were brought to them to be fulled by foot.³⁶ This suggests that fullers were represented by dyers.

The fullers clearly suffered from the decline in the production of quality cloth in London. This is further confirmed by the lay subsidy tax from 1292 and the surviving rolls of freemen in London. Neither makes any mention of fullers.³⁷ Because of this absence of work in the clothmaking industry, one might speculate that the dyers would be demoted and, given the proximity of the two trades, might have taken on the fulling of cloth themselves. However, this never seems to have happened. As the richest and most skilled craft in the process of clothmaking, the dyers managed to supplement their income by becoming involved with lucrative ventures, such as trading in wine and wool.³⁸ Their financial power allowed them to gain control of the fullers’ work and hire them for such little demand as there was for fulled broadcloth before the mid fourteenth century. The fullers may still have been subordinates of the dyers even in 1353. An ordinance of that year suggests masters of fullers were summoned together with the dyers in order to swear that none of them would take more work than that to which they were accustomed before the plague of 1348–9. Again, five dyers were elected to observe these ordinances and two fullers as their assistants.³⁹ A slight change is visible in comparison with the beginning of the fourteenth century. The fullers finally brokered the agreement that concerned their craft. With sufficient work for both trades, a clearer distinction between dyers and fullers rapidly emerged. The dyers had the ordinances regulating their craft approved by city officials in 1362, while the fullers did so a year later. The only craftsmen who were to act as a regulatory body and observe the ordinances were the ‘best men’ of fullers.⁴⁰

The entrants into the freedom of York and Norwich who claimed the craft of fulling increased in number from the 1350s. No fuller (nor any dyer) became a freeman of York between 1307 and 1325. Only three fullers did so in the 1340s, while there were twenty-five dyers from 1326 until 1350. This might suggest the same pattern as in London and that the fullers were subordinate to the dyers. Moreover there were eighteen fullers admitted into the freedom of the city of York in the course of the 1350s, which is a nine-fold increase compared to the preceding decade.⁴¹ The numbers and entrepreneurial activity of the Colchester fullers made an impression on the borough court from the very beginning of the resurgent English woollen cloth industry. Between 1352 and 1379 there were fifty individuals described as fullers in the local sources. One Thomas Clerk brought three debt pleas to its borough court in 1353–4, and the bailiffs listed him as both fuller and merchant on all three occasions.⁴² The demand for fulled cloth in this town is further evidenced by the conversion of three grain mills to fulling mills around the same time.⁴³

The proportion of fullers in the group of known textile workers in the city of Norwich rose from 13 per cent in 1320–39 to 22 per cent in 1377–99. More significantly, fifty-four fullers were identified in the last quarter of the fourteenth century compared to only ten in 1286–1305 and another ten in 1320–39.⁴⁴ From the 1350s, new items such as fuller’s earth, kettles and hammers figured among the imports in the particulars of the customs accounts in Great Yarmouth, suggesting an increase of local activity in fulling.⁴⁵ This is further confirmed by the existence of the fulling house in 1375, when Roger Halesworth was fined for blocking the gutter running from the said house with the accumulation of waste from his fulling.⁴⁶ This suggests that the fullers of lower standing would have one assigned place to bring their cloths for fulling, as was the case in late fourteenth-century towns in Normandy, where numerous fouleries were attested.⁴⁷

Fullers who became freemen in English towns during the second half of the fourteenth century were attracted from both the surrounding countryside,⁴⁸ and also from the other side of the English Channel. After the failed revolt against Count Louis of Male in the county of Flanders in 1345–9, thousands of textile workers were banished and subsequently welcomed in England by Edward III.⁴⁹ In York, for example, four fullers, whose origins were stated, were admitted to the freedom in 1352. Georgius Fote was a banished fuller from Flanders; John de Beverley, John Lang and John Otur were from the neighbouring manors in Yorkshire: Beverley, Castleford and Cottingham.⁵⁰ Numerous fullers from the Low Countries settled in other English towns and there is no evidence of conflict with native fullers as there was between the weavers.⁵¹ The evidence suggests that the fullers of London had no problems with those from the Low Countries. For example, the prominent fuller John Dorsete accused Simon Gardiner, also a fuller of London, of the theft of his apprentice John Braban in 1367, suggesting that the fullers from the Low Countries did not necessarily seek work with their fellow compatriots.⁵²

The banishments after the revolt were not the only cause for migration to England. Some fullers may have left Flanders for economic reasons. On two occasions, in 1355 and 1367, the fullers of Dendermonde complained to Count Louis of Male that ‘bad and small wages’ prevented them from ‘winning their bread’ in ‘these expensive times’.⁵³ These trends suggest two conclusions. First, that most of the cloth made in urban areas was not produced by the fulling mills. Second, that if people were willing to leave their home towns in order to become fullers elsewhere they stood to make gains where they went.

Craft guilds were groups of men from a specific occupation who joined with their fellows in exclusive associations which were designed to protect their interests against competition, as well as to ensure quality control and to provide training, mutual support and friendship.⁵⁴ Craft guilds existed only among those groups of artisans who could afford to support some sort of formal organization, which could then be used to supervise manufacturing output and artisans.⁵⁵ The case of fullers’ guilds in England supports this argument and we can observe this through the rise and fall in importance of several English textile centres over the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Before the decline of the English textile industry discussed above, the Italian and Castilian price lists and other commercial documents from the mid thirteenth century include scarlets and coloureds from Lincoln as well as the English Stamfords and Northamptons.⁵⁶ It was no coincidence that Lincoln shows evidence of the existence of a fullers’ guild in 1297.⁵⁷ The fullers of Norwich seem to have had formal association around the same time, in 1293.⁵⁸ Of course, the decline of the English textile industry at the end of the thirteenth century impacted on its textile guilds. For example, the weavers of Oxford successfully petitioned Edward I that the annual farm of £6, which they had paid since the twelfth century, should be reduced to 42s.⁵⁹ The guild of weavers in Lincoln stopped paying their farm in 1320 and the fullers’ guild there simply ceased to exist.⁶⁰ In Winchester, where the evidence of the earliest fullers’ guild in England was attested in 1130, the guild seems to have been dissolved sometime in the thirteenth century and then reconstituted in 1364,⁶¹ which confirms the hypothesis that the textile industry left the town by 1270.⁶² The city of Leicester, once an important textile centre, was completely deserted by these craftsmen at the beginning of the fourteenth century.⁶³

After several decades of decay, it was in Lincoln that the fullers’ guild ordinances were first reiterated in 1337.⁶⁴ Nine years later fullers’ ordinances were drawn up for the first time in the city of Bristol, suggesting the start of a growing cloth industry there.⁶⁵ By the 1360s, guilds of fullers in other towns had regained ordinances or developed some formal guild structure, which suggests that the textile industry was reviving across the country. The content of these ordinances was mostly very similar. The extant ordinances of fullers in English towns were entered into the various local judicial documents in order to be ratified by the local political elite. They contained clauses about the regulation of work within the craft, the marketing of the product and protection from competition. Only those craftsmen with sufficient skills and wealth were allowed to become members. Naturally, the main concern behind the last two rules was to ensure the quality of the product. There were also regulations about the election of masters and wardens. Finally, the ordinances paid a great deal of attention to the relationship between masters and apprentices.

Some fullers’ guilds had an exclusive character and accepted new members only on condition of a certain wealth. In York, for example, regulations of 1364 stressed that in order to become a master fuller in the city, one was obliged to possess goods to the value of 40 marks.⁶⁶ In London, the fullers’ ordinances approved in 1363 also addressed the relationship between masters and apprentices, as well as the conditions for entering the fullers’ guild. No stranger was allowed to set up a shop before he had been examined by the master fullers in order to establish whether he possessed sufficient skills to do so. Only once that was established was he to be made free by the mayor and aldermen. There were twenty-seven ‘best men’ of the craft sworn to observe these articles. From that time onwards two to four bailiffs were elected to supervise the good behaviour of all guild members and their names were recorded annually in the city’s Letter Books.⁶⁷

In 1376 fullers petitioned the mayor and aldermen of London in order to forbid the use of urine in the first stage of fulling, to prevent foreigners from exercising the craft and to ban the hurers (makers of shaggy fur caps) from using the same fulling mills on the outskirts of London where fullers fulled their cloths.⁶⁸ Urban authorities obliged and enacted an ordinance with respect to the fullers’ petition. Unlike the ordinances of 1363, this one was supported by fifty-five best men of the mistery, suggesting a huge rise in the importance and numbers of fullers in the city. A year later in Winchester similar regulations for fullers were issued and, as in London, the craft was to be governed by four elected stewards.⁶⁹ The ordinances of fullers in Bristol were brokered by twelve most notable men of the craft and six were to be elected in order to maintain the articles.⁷⁰ Some historians have emphasized that the fraternal, social and religious aspects of craft guilds were the most important reasons for artisans to belong to an association.⁷¹ However, most of the ordinances of fullers are silent on these subjects. The sole exception is the ordinances of the fullers of Lincoln which include several clauses relating to pious concerns of members.⁷² Caroline Barron has suggested that by presenting ordinances for ratification, craft guilds were usually seeking approval at the court of aldermen that was almost entirely composed of merchants who would naturally be more interested in economic rather than the social and religious aspects of the association.⁷³

Several towns regulated production through borough courts rather than chartered craft guilds. In Exeter the fullers united formally into a guild only in the first half of the fifteenth century. However, during the fourteenth century the city’s authorities were concerned with the quality of cloth the fullers made and of the materials they used for its production. These municipal attempts to regulate the craft were recorded in the so called mayor’s tourn court, as fullers were occasionally fined for using urine instead of fuller’s earth.⁷⁴ Despite the general entrepreneurial success of fullers in fourteenth-century Colchester, the first evidence of their formal association comes only in 1407.⁷⁵ However, similarly to Exeter, local magistrates tended to enforce some sort of economic regulation by using the lawhundred court. The ordinances aimed at regulating the textile and other crafts were framed not in the name of the masters and brethren of various guilds, but in the name of the bailiffs and commonalty of Colchester.⁷⁶ After the outbreak of the Black Death fines related to fulling make their mark in the court records. For example, Richard Webbe and three other men were fined for purchasing unfulled cloth in 1359.⁷⁷ The increased number of fullers in the town from the 1350s prompted the authorities to issue a local by-law which forbade the sale of unfulled cloth to the non-burgesses of Colchester.⁷⁸ Presumably, the bailiffs in Colchester were concerned with men taking unfinished cloth for fulling outside of the city, and thus protected the local fullers. Other fines recorded in the borough court were related to the quality of fulling. John Pylat, for example, was accused of having fulled four pieces of cloth for William Buk so improperly that the end customers in Bordeaux refused to pay the full price.⁷⁹ The leet court of Great Yarmouth was more concerned with fines for the environmental issues arising from the work of fullers. For example, John Whitbrood was fined on several occasions for throwing waste into the street and blocking the watercourse.⁸⁰ The fact that Exeter, Colchester and Great Yarmouth were all estimated to have had fewer than 4,000 inhabitants in the fourteenth century was probably the main reason why the control of the workforce was possible through social policing and required no formal organization of fullers.

In fourteenth-century Flanders, craft guilds acted as urban governmental institutions in their own right and represented a vehicle for different political ideas.⁸¹ The most influential were the textile guilds, which, when their voice was not heard within the urban elites, did not hesitate to organize all sorts of collective action such as general strikes or even armed rebellions.⁸² Between 1302 and 1360 weavers and fullers were involved in a wave of revolts against the count and the urban elite, more commonly known as patricians (poorters). The revolts secured positions for them in the urban governments of the county’s most important cities, Ghent and Bruges.⁸³ Such structures where textile guilds exerted extensive political influence on urban governments developed much earlier in Flanders than in other regions in medieval Europe.⁸⁴

Although craft guilds in England never attained the importance of those in Flanders in terms of political and socio-economic force, similar patterns might be observed. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, brotherhoods of merchants were usually foundational to English civil governments that were to become what are commonly known as boroughs.⁸⁵ Townsmen would elect masters or wardens of these merchant guilds who would act on their behalf on matters of ‘common interest’.⁸⁶ From the thirteenth century onwards merchant guilds were gradually replaced by different urban institutions. Persons who had been masters and wardens of merchant guilds developed new functions and became officers commonly known as the bailiffs and mayors. They usually came from the top ranks of urban society and the town governments consisted of the wealthy mercantile elite. Indeed, in the middle ages, political aspiration in municipal government was linked either with commercial success or ability as a lawyer.⁸⁷ By the fourteenth century, in most English towns these merchant guilds lost their importance, and craft guilds or sophisticated borough administration began to assume a similar political role.⁸⁸ Nevertheless, Gervase Rosser believed that craft guilds did not have much to do with urban politics, but rather patronage and social networks within other guilds that were not necessarily formed around a particular craft.⁸⁹ This was not entirely the case in fourteenth-century London. Prosopographical information shows that fullers and other craftsmen who held office in craft guilds were indeed the source of political influence.⁹⁰ Swanson argued that civic authorities, as such, controlled and manipulated craft guilds to procure ordinances to suit the officers’ own interests.⁹¹ We should bear in mind that formal craft associations were also vertical organizations and that they consisted of members who were rich, middling and poor.⁹² They were usually run by wealthier members, the so-called ‘guild elite’. Within the guilds of weavers and fullers, these members would be concerned with the organization of production and marketing, rather than with making cloth. Their first customers were the representatives of the local mercantile elite who also acted as urban officers.⁹³ It thus becomes obvious that the guild elite of the textile crafts usually had good relationships with the officers of the urban government.

The guild of London fullers might have started as the parish fraternity and gradually developed into a craft guild. The evidence of collective action in order to exercise political pressure became more obvious after their ordinances were approved. Five fullers were imprisoned in 1364 for insisting on an interview with the king in an ‘irregular and foolish’ manner.⁹⁴ Among those were William Motishunte, William Berkhamstede and John Sheme who had attached their names to the ordinances as ‘the best men of the trade’ a few months earlier.⁹⁵ It is not clear why they demanded an interview with the king. Like the members of the textile guilds in Flanders, the cloth-workers of London possibly initiated a sort of violent collective action as they were later released on ‘mainprise for their good behaviour, and on the understanding that they would inform the officers of the City of any confederacies or conspiracies made in taverns or other secret places against the peace’.⁹⁶

Ensuring that all members of the guild behaved seems to have been a part of the collective action that sometimes caused disturbances in London. In April 1366 the aforementioned William Motishunte, William Berkhamstede, John Sheme and fourteen other fullers (masters and journeymen) were brought to the mayor’s court in order to answer to the king and commonalty of London on plea of contempt and trespass. Indeed, after a general meeting of the fullers at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, one of them, John Draycote, was assaulted by others but survived thanks to the intervention of the mayor’s serjeant. Seventeen instigators of the attack ordered the journeymen fullers in the city to stop working until he was found. The fullers followed the instructions and crossed London Bridge in order to meet at the Priory of St. Mary Southwark, whence John Draycote presumably fled and was placed in custody.⁹⁷ It seems that the main reason was that John Draycote was accused of theft in Southwark on 16 October 1365 of ten ells of green woollen cloth that belonged to a draper of London, William Clavering.⁹⁸ This proto-strike is the perfect example of cohesion between all members of the guild. Some of the participants were bailiffs, while others were apprentices and presumably piece workers. They all acted together in order to capture one of the members who committed a crime and thus violated the moral values of the association. A few months after the incident, on September 1366 John Draycote appeared at king’s bench and the jury acquitted him of this felony. However, he was still obliged to go on a pilgrimage to Rome, an arrangement that might have been forced internally by the guild. The fact that he had not appointed fullers as his attorneys while on pilgrimage implies that he had nothing further to do with the fullers’ guild, assuming he ever returned to London.⁹⁹

Apart from violent collective action, solidarity was also expressed in other ways and resulted in the growth of the political influence of the fullers’ guild. A particular feature of the government of London during the fourteenth century was the existence of the Common Council. By the end of the thirteenth and throughout the fourteenth centuries, each ward of London would elect between two and seventeen of men to act as representatives in the city’s government together with the mayor and aldermen. The councilmen were usually the richer men of the wards, such as vintners, grocers and drapers, and would in general tend to represent the mercantile interests. This was bound to change after 1351 when the craft guilds managed to impose a different election procedure with representatives of the crafts instead of wards.¹⁰⁰ At this stage thirteen crafts were each asked to send two of their members to the Guildhall and to treat with the mayor, aldermen and sheriffs on important business touching the state of the city.¹⁰¹ Neither at this stage nor in 1352 did the fullers’ guild have their own representatives.¹⁰² The next surviving evidence of the election of crafts to the Common Council dates to 1376 when forty-seven crafts were asked to send representatives and four members of the fullers’ guild were present.¹⁰³ This was the same number of representatives as dyers, or weavers; only the richer crafts such as drapers, mercers, grocers and fishmongers had six, while twenty-six other crafts had only two representatives. The fact that fullers were a part of the Common Council with a higher number of representatives than most other lesser crafts suggests that this was more a result of the rise of the political importance of the fullers’ guild than of the turbulences in the civic government in London in the 1360s.¹⁰⁴ Economic factors in London during the 1370s were in their favour too as the increasing demand for undyed cloth on both domestic and export markets allowed the fullers to reach this kind of prominence.¹⁰⁵ But this was about to change. From this moment on, their political and economic leverage would gradually diminish, almost disappearing by the end of the century.

By the time the representatives of crafts were summoned for the Common Council in 1381, the importance of fullers had declined and they sent only two members, William Stoket and Richard Skeet.¹⁰⁶ It was not only the political importance of the fullers’ guild that was in decline, but that of other lesser crafts as well. After several years of lobbying, the mercantile elite managed to influence the city’s officials and shift the election back to wards in 1384.¹⁰⁷ At subsequent meetings of the Common Council during the 1380s, the most numerous representatives from the textile guilds were naturally the drapers with eight to twenty representatives a year.¹⁰⁸ The weavers had two representatives and the fullers only one, Peter Persholt in 1384 in Dowgate Ward, and none again after that.¹⁰⁹ The explanation for this decline in political prominence comes from developments in London’s cloth market during the second half of the fourteenth century, as discussed below.

As in London the political power of fullers in Winchester grew together with their economic success. Recovery in cloth production immediately affected the town of Winchester and its fullers. From a town that had been deserted by fullers at the end of the thirteenth century, Winchester became a place where at least sixty-one fullers were working in 1354–5. Their general absence was reflected in terms of political influence. Before the mid fourteenth century, among the clothmaking trades only dyers were able to make an impact on office holding. Between 1300 and 1340 they twice had members serve as bailiffs, while fullers and weavers had were unrepresented. From the 1350s, however, fullers began to make their mark. By 1370 two fullers acted as the town’s bailiffs. Their position was strengthened when their guild was officially reconstructed in 1364.¹¹⁰ It seems that formal association allowed fullers to lobby in their own favour and thus obtain the position of mayor in 1366–7.¹¹¹ From this moment on the fullers replaced the dyers in the city government and retained this power until the end of the fifteenth century.¹¹²

Although there were no craft guilds in Exeter or Colchester, prosperity in terms of wealth was the determining factor for residents becoming office holders. Kowaleski has shown that the mercantile elite of fourteenth-century Exeter created a type of oligarchy, confining political power to a handful of wealthy men. Although social mobility was possible, there is no evidence that fullers attained office before the fifteenth century.¹¹³ In 1372 the constitution of Colchester had been amended to reform the local government and its electoral system. Instead of only two bailiffs who handled the borough court and the town’s finances, two additional governing bodies were created: one charged with overseeing financial administration, the other an advisory body of councilmen. Thereafter, the local government consisted of two bailiffs and twenty-four councilmen (eight auditors and sixteen others) who served as executive officers for numerous matters that affected the town.¹¹⁴ A similar body of twenty-four men existed in Norwich. As in Colchester, their main purpose was to elect the bailiffs each year.¹¹⁵ Other responsibilities included making decisions and enforcing by-laws that would concern the town’s population as a whole. Although no fuller of Norwich ever attained the position of bailiff during the fourteenth century, their standing within the town cannot have been negligible as they provided representatives to the council of the twenty-four at least twice.¹¹⁶ On the other hand, the fullers of Colchester were able to take the office of bailiff on several occasions. The rise in the importance of fullers from the 1350s, meant that they were now included in decision making and the enforcing of by-laws not just for their members but for the whole town. As the fullers sat together in urban institutions with the representatives of parliament, this gain in political leverage locally might also have influenced some royal decisions that were highly beneficial to them, such as the introduction of the aulnage subsidy.

The rise in the fullers’ status in the mid fourteenth century gained impetus under Edward III in 1354 when it became compulsory for cloth to be fulled before it was sealed by the aulnager.¹¹⁷ The establishment of the aulnage subsidy in the 1350s was key as the aulnager had to check dimensions and it was the fuller who stretched the cloth. It became customary to pay the subsidy only after the cloth was fulled. In many towns, as in London, fullers took local cloth to the aulnager. This raised the importance of fullers relative to other clothmaking trades. Sometimes it also meant that the fullers sold directly to the merchant and took over the finishing of the cloth. For example, William Slenge commissioned John Boydon to full a mixed cloth according to measures, to take it to the aulnager, and then to sell it to William Lockington, while satisfying William Slenge’s due.¹¹⁸ Thus the fullers, in some towns, became clothmaking entrepreneurs: for cloth to be sold on the market, it had to pass through their hands. A Flemish weaver living in London, Peter le Bakere, was fined for selling unfulled cloth to Henry Leberd in 1364.¹¹⁹ On top of the royal proclamation of 1354, in Colchester a local by-law was enacted that limited the sale of unfulled cloth only to burgesses of Colchester.¹²⁰ This meant that for any cloth destined for sale, either fullers earned a wage or, if they organized the whole process of production and sold it to drapers or alien merchants for export, they enjoyed a share of the profit. In most cases, fullers were probably not involved in processing the cloth, but only acted as middlemen between the artisans, the aulnager and merchant or the final customer. It became so common for fullers to buy and sell cloths that in 1366 a fuller of London, Nicholas Potyn, was referred to as draper of London in a case brought against him by John Isle and his wife Margaret for a trespass alleged to have taken place in Sundridge, Kent.¹²¹ As we shall see below, Potyn dealt with the sale of large quantities and varieties of cloth. He was therefore easily taken for a draper.

Gains in living standards after the Black Death enabled more consumers to purchase cloth of better quality, benefiting fullers and other urban textile manufacturers.¹²² By the mid fourteenth century fulled woollens were transformed from an exclusive to an everyday cloth that rapidly displaced worsteds and serges.¹²³ Higher domestic demand increased the quality of fulling and enhanced the ability of fullers to work on cloth that would become more competitive on international markets too. The improvement of fullers’ skills can be observed in judicial sources from the 1350s onwards, where one can see that they were producing new types of cloth to the specifications of the end customer. In Colchester John Couper was accused of detaining blue, tawny and red pieces of cloth that he was supposed to have fulled for Robert Bresyngam in 1384. A year later Peter Heyward fulled woollen cloth of ‘brown tequeling’, worth 27s for Rose Waterne.¹²⁴ In London Dunstan Harcherigge, a draper, brought three cloths, two ‘plunkets’ and one blanket for fulling to William Motishunte, which the latter spoiled by letting them shrink by 4 ells.¹²⁵ Moreover the Flemish weavers in London, who produced rays and organized the whole manufacturing process themselves, were entrusting the fulling tasks to local workers.¹²⁶ Rays were a medium quality fabric dyed-in-the-piece that required specialist skills. Wools were prepared and cloth woven to emphasize the weft and compress the warp threads, the cloth was carefully foot fulled so as not to obscure the pattern, and it required specialized finishing.¹²⁷ As can be seen, the fullers had not only developed the skills to work on these better quality and more expensive cloths, but increased demand caused the quantities they produced to increase as well.

The aulnage accounts, which record the payment of a fee for the measurement and sealing of woollen cloths, are the best direct source to evaluate the involvement of fullers in the textile industry. Although there is a very good survival rate of particulars and totals, spanning from the mid fourteenth to the sixteenth century, the accounts do contain some limitations. Indeed, the entries in the accounts for the totals of cloth brought to the aulnager in the 1350s do not take into account types of woollens such as kerseys, straits and other narrow cloths that were produced in the eastern parts of the country, and, therefore, must be interpreted with care as they understate the amount of cloths produced.¹²⁸ Some of the aulnage accounts from the second half of the fifteenth century in the south-western parts of England were fraudulent and must be used with extreme caution.¹²⁹ However, the particulars of aulnage accounts from the 1370s in London and those from the 1390s for several other towns are more reliable, particularly as most of the individuals who paid the subsidy can be identified in other local sources. The one minor caveat is that there was no single format for keeping these records: some accounts contain more details than the others.

In London the particulars of aulnage accounts are extant for the period from 1374 until 1379 with smaller gaps in 1375 and 1376.¹³⁰ These accounts are extremely valuable. No particulars survive for this period for any other part of England. All of the surviving London rolls were kept up daily and contain the names of individuals, the number of cloths sealed by aulnager, as well as the amount of subsidy paid. They distinguish short and long cloths of the assize and contain separate membranes for rays and coloured cloth. No occupations were recorded. The only way to trace the fullers is through other sources in London. As mentioned above, in 1376, fifty-two fullers attached their names as the best men of the craft to observe the ordinances. Thirty-six of them brought cloth to the aulnager in 1374–5 and forty-seven in 1376–7. As cloth was sealed daily, the names of these individuals appear several times in these accounts. The number becomes even more impressive when one examines how frequently the fullers’ names appear in the rolls. Out of 932 persons whose names have been identified in the accounts, the fullers were by far most commonly represented. They brought cloth to the aulnager 325 times in 1374–5 and 433 times in 1376–7. Far below them were the drapers with only seventeen and thirty-four appearances. In the next two surviving records, a sharp drop in appearances is noticeable as the fullers brought cloth to the aulnager 160 times in a nineteen-month period in 1377–9 and only eighty-five in 1380. But the fullers still appear most frequently.¹³¹

The prominence of fullers is even greater if we look at the number of cloths they were bringing to the aulnager. Including the membranes showing the large quantities of rays that were almost exclusively brought to the aulnager by the Flemish weavers living in the city,¹³² John Oldland calculated that there were 1,342 cloths on average per year sealed with the aulnager in London during the 1370s.¹³³ Out of the total amount of cloth produced in London the fullers accounted for 1,061 or 90.07 per cent in 1374–5; 871 or 83.18 per cent in 1376–7; and 1,714 or 60.75 per cent during a nineteen-month period in 1377–9 (see Table 1).¹³⁴ Apart from William Aldewerk, a saddler, who brought twelve cloths to be sealed, other individuals who were not associated with the trade of fulling usually aulnaged only one piece of cloth.¹³⁵ These patterns suggest that fullers at the time were able to buy cloth from weavers and then sell it on to the drapers and merchants. Although the fullers’ numbers drop in the last account, they were still aulnaging significantly more cloth than any other textile workers. Individually, only four fullers managed to bring more than fifty cloths to the aulnager in a single year. William Corner brought fifty-five, John Oumfray brought sixty, William Doder brought fifty, while Simon Gardiner aulnaged ninety-three cloths in 1374–5.¹³⁶ Other fullers generally brought from ten to forty cloths per year (see Table 1).¹³⁷ There were signs of large-scale entrepreneurship among fullers, though most of the trade remained in the hands of small entrepreneurs. The four fullers just mentioned, along with some others, probably operated business by organizing the whole production of cloth and then marketing it themselves. Some others such as Geoffrey Wocking, who attached his name to the ordinances of 1363, is found working on contract twice in the following years.¹³⁸

Apart from the improvement of skills and the increased demand for better quality cloth, the prominence of fullers in the sale of London-produced cloth may have been due to the fact that the city’s textile tradesmen were still adapting to the new realities of the city’s cloth market in the second half of the fourteenth century. Until 1350 the drapers had a major interest in imports of luxury Flemish cloth and exports of English wool. They had to deal with several minor problems of their own. With Edward III’s ban on denizen exports of wool in 1353, they were temporarily excluded from the distribution of wool. With the rise of the London cloth industry they lost a large part of their income through the decline of imported cloth.¹⁴¹ Their interests would later shift towards the marketing and export of domestic cloth. However, this transition during the 1350s reduced the drapers’ financial power to organize the employment of the city’s clothworkers at every stage of production and allowed the craftsmen to act increasingly often as middlemen in the sale of cloth. The weavers improved their situation shedding their earlier subordination to the burellers at the beginning of the fourteenth century, though were unable to end their dependence on wages. A payment of the twenty marks fee farm to the crown did not help and the weavers suffered severely from competition with the Flemish and Brabantine weavers who had immigrated to London in the 1350s.¹⁴² In contrast, the fullers were exempted from the fee farm, and working on rays, scarlets and better quality cloths produced by Flemish weavers was beneficial to them.¹⁴³

Some fullers in London were thus able to accumulate significant wealth during this period. In 1371 a Fleming, John Combere, ran off with the wife of a fuller, Thomas Harding. As well as Harding’s wife, Combere took the fuller’s woollen and linen cloth, blankets and other goods valued at 100 marks.¹⁴⁴ John Dorset brought a trespass case in the court of common pleas against another London fuller, John Wykhal, who entered Dorset’s house and carried off goods valued at £20.¹⁴⁵ In 1360 John Kedor, a fuller, was accused in a writ of account of having received £30 in advance from a certain Benedict Hardlee and of failing to provide the merchandise on time.¹⁴⁶ Nicholas Potyn had 200 marks worth of cloth, which he stored in 1367 in his shop as the share of goods which Ralph de Cauntebrigge, a prominent fripperer (a dealer in old clothes) of Cornhill ward, left after his death to his wife Sibile.¹⁴⁷ In a will enrolled in 1386, William Doder made financial bequests of £47 to his family, friends and charitable organizations apart from his gifts of his house and cloths.¹⁴⁸ Thomas Clerk’s will, which was enrolled eight years later, was similar.¹⁴⁹ It comes as no surprise that most of these individuals had been bailiffs of the fullers’ guild or representatives at the Common Council at some point.¹⁵⁰

Edward III needed immense amounts of ready money to fund his campaigns during the Hundred Years War, and the populace was expected to pay their share. The biggest burden had fallen on denizen and alien merchants, who expected privileges in return.¹⁵¹ Making such loans in order to gain influence and change the course of events in one’s favour was very common practice in the late middle ages.¹⁵² The collection of these loans was documented on several occasions from 1337 until 1375. In the first two decades of the Hundred Years War, Edward turned to the commercial community whenever the crown needed loans. However, when more substantial sums were required, from 1357 onwards, the corporate bodies of London were included in these forced loans. Thus in 1363, the guilds of drapers, mercers, weavers and twenty-five other craft associations contributed to this loan.¹⁵³ The fullers, as a guild, were not involved. However, some prominent fullers such as John Olescombe, William Doder, John Cook, Nicholas Potyn and William Stoket sent in two and a half marks individually.¹⁵⁴ Given the fact that fullers had succeeded in enrolling their ordinances only few months earlier,¹⁵⁵ this loan might have been part of a bargain. The loan definitely helped the individual career of Nicholas Potyn who was promoted to the office of king’s searcher in the following years.¹⁵⁶ Later, in 1370 and in 1371, another loan was forced from Londoners. No fullers were among the ninety-three individuals who made this payment, as these comprised the city’s mercantile community. Indeed, it is not surprising that they were absent as this loan was forced by an embargo that was placed on all foreign trade in 1369. The mercantile community of London saw a bigger prize: the government would abolish the ban in return for the merchants advancing the loan.¹⁵⁷

Those who acquired any wealth, did so for the most part by their involvement in production and sale of cloth. From the 1350s fullers were acting increasingly often as middlemen and marketing the finished product themselves. However, there is also evidence that they worked the cloth themselves. Simon Gardiner, a fuller who aulnaged ninety-three pieces of cloth in 1374, was found working on others’ cloths. In 1374 he fulled thirteen cloths for Yohn Yerdele and his wife Isabella, which the Yerdeles sold on to William Grenyngham.¹⁵⁸ Four years earlier, William de Clifton from Southwark had brought an action in king’s bench where he claimed to have entrusted cloth worth ten marks to Simon Gardiner to be fulled for a decent wage. Through his inexperience, the plaintiff alleged, Gardiner had torn the cloth to such an extent that the profit was completely lost.¹⁵⁹ Fullers were also involved in the trade of materials used for fulling such as tongs, teasels and fuller’s earth. In the particulars of the customs accounts for wool exported from London in 1365–6 there were no fullers.¹⁶⁰ Neither is there any evidence to suggest that fullers had their own wool and distributed smaller quantities to other cloth manufacturers. However, it seems that fullers in several English towns were expanding their activity on the finishing side of clothmaking. It became increasingly common for Winchester fullers to dye the cloths themselves. Fullers were found owning a dye-house on their property, while others were fined for throwing ‘wodgor’ (woad) into the water. Some, such as Robert Hall, bought madder.¹⁶¹ In Colchester, too, the evidence suggests that the fullers had an interest in dyeing. In 1384 William Pakke, a fuller, was accused of owing money for hiring a dye-house.¹⁶² Even more direct evidence is the case of 1375 where John Deyer, a prominent fuller of Colchester, claimed that weaver John Tynyot owed him 6s 8d for wool dyeing.¹⁶³ Dyers were also encroaching on fullers’ business. William Fisher, a dyer from Salisbury, had obtained the use of mill for grinding malt and grain and was sued by Deyer for having used the mill for other purposes (presumably to full cloths).¹⁶⁴ Although it comes as no surprise that the fulling mills were used by the dyers too, it suggests that a prominent dyer from Winchester, Gilbert Forester, took the position of the keeper of the town’s fulling mill in 1402 not just for the political prestige.¹⁶⁵

While several individuals managed to become rich, most other fullers were probably in the middling rank of the city’s population. For example, even though William Motishunt operated a successful fulling business in London for some two decades, in his will of 1380, he was able to bequeath only 5s to the church of St. Andrew Hubbard where he was buried, and a bed, tunic and hood to Thomas Hugon.¹⁶⁶ Some fullers in a similar situation, such as Richard Hay for example, tried to express their discontent. In 1364, Hay was falsely accused of spreading the news of a conspiracy against the leading men of the city.¹⁶⁷ This was undoubtedly related to the letters patent of 1364 which gave the drapers an exclusive right to market cloth in the city.¹⁶⁸ Of course the first in the line of fire would be the middling rank of fullers such as Richard Hay who would be stuck with piece work forever.

If we look at the aulnage accounts of other English towns in the 1390s, the situation resembles 1370s London. The fullers were absent from the accounts only in York, where they brought in all only two-and-half cloths to the aulnager in 1395–6.¹⁶⁹ In Winchester, on the other hand, out of 159 names that appear in the 1394–5 particulars, the occupation can be ascribed to sixty-one individuals, which probably understates the importance of fullers. There were fifteen fullers who were by far the most numerous of those with known occupations, followed by nine dyers and eight weavers. Fullers were also responsible for the manufacture of more than a third of cloth or 540.5 pieces out of 1,510.5 sealed by the aulnager that year (see Table 1).¹⁷⁰ Most of the cloth that figured in the Winchester aulnage accounts was probably a standard twenty-four-yard long broadcloth, as all sealed cloths are recorded as sine grano.¹⁷¹ Moreover, on the dorse of the membrane with the particulars of aulnage, the officers swore that no scarlets or coloureds were sold in the town. They added, however, that two rays were confiscated.¹⁷² Among the fullers, William Bolt was especially prominent. He was responsible for the sale of sixty-three cloths in 1394–5 and for another eighty-two in 1397–8.¹⁷³ Fullers were undoubtedly producing this cloth, but two of them went directly to Southampton and loaded it for export without engaging local merchants as middlemen.¹⁷⁴ Some of the fullers, such as John Strinour earlier in the century, sold cloth overseas through his contacts in Southampton.¹⁷⁵

An analysis of the 1394–5 account in Colchester confirms the importance of the artisan entrepreneur in the industry. Fullers were engaged in the wholesale disposal of manufactures to the same extent as in London. Out of 161 individuals who paid the subsidy, eighty-eight were fullers. Two types of cloth can be identified: cloths of assize and straits.¹⁷⁶ In total, 849 cloths were sealed by the aulnager. Fullers were responsible for 461, or 55 per cent (see Table 1). Some fullers were particularly prominent, such as John Dawe who brought 101 cloths to the aulnager and Richard Bawde who brought another forty-two. Both of them hired spinners, weavers and fullers to work for them¹⁷⁷ and sold cloth to other persons,¹⁷⁸ suggesting that they might have organized both the fulling and the marketing of cloth. Other fullers were bringing between five and twenty-seven cloths during this year. In comparison, while observing the aulnage accounts of the same year and the developments in the court rolls of Exeter, Kowaleski came to similar conclusions.¹⁷⁹

A mixed picture appears when we look at the particulars of aulnage for Salisbury, at least for the fullers who we can identify in the accounts. However, this mixed picture might be due to the fact that the local sources are lacking and we have to rely on the analysis of those who were described as fuller by the aulnager. According to the number of cloths sealed, we notice that production in Salisbury reached its peak during the very last years of the fourteenth century before it entered a severe decline in the early fifteenth.¹⁸⁰ Most fullers were small dealers who probably worked for others or took unfinished cloths to full and sell while paying the weavers’ dues later. Many of the fullers brought fewer than ten cloths a year to the aulnager.¹⁸¹ However, some of them seem to have possessed remarkable entrepreneurial abilities. For example, John Corscoumbe was responsible for the manufacture of 307 cloths in 1394–5.¹⁸² His activity reached beyond Salisbury. It seems that he either co-ordinated production or bought cloths in Wells, since he accused Richard Lodere at the court of common pleas of the unjust detention of rays that Lodere was supposed to bring to Salisbury.¹⁸³

Apart from the aulnage accounts, the surviving particulars of the poll tax records of 1377–81 might shed some light on the wealth of fullers in urban areas. These records are somewhat problematic as each of three assessments had peculiar features. In 1377 each individual, male or female older than fourteen, was assessed at an equal rate of 4d. The 1379 assessment was levied on persons over sixteen years old, but differently according to status. Labourers and servants paid 4d and artisans 6d, 1s or more and the upper ranks of society at higher rates.¹⁸⁴ The last assessment of 1380–1, which sparked the Peasants’ Revolt, is actually the most detailed and the only one that can be used for the purpose of this study. These returns contain the names of persons over fifteen years old who paid the subsidy in proportion to their income. The sample chosen here are the returns for Hadleigh, Canterbury, Southwark and Oxford as in these towns the occupations of people who paid the tax were stated systematically allowing us to trace fullers.¹⁸⁵ As can be seen in Table 2, in these four towns fullers represented between 10 per cent and 25 per cent of all textile workers.

The poll taxes are the best evidence of how fullers differed in wealth, relative to clothmaking crafts of similar social standing. Some of them, such as Walter Ward, John Moreworhte and James Munde in Canterbury paid the subsidy of 8s or 9s in 1379 and probably owned substantial business networks.¹⁸⁶ On the other hand, five fullers in the same return paid far smaller amounts that ranged from 6d to 12d.¹⁸⁷ Nevertheless, the fullers generally seem to have been richer than the weavers (see Table 2). In Southwark it seems that the fullers were in the shadow of those from London. All the four Southwark fullers named in the account paid 2s, but their number was relatively low for the size of the town. The cases of Simon Gardiner and John Draycote, discussed above, strongly suggest that the drapers and tailors of Southwark engaged London fullers to finish their cloth.¹⁸⁸ On the other hand, while the account for Hadleigh is incomplete, all those involved in textile crafts were clearly prospering. According to this return, about 20 per cent of the population were involved in the cloth industry.¹⁸⁹ There were eight fullers and six paid the amount of 2s, while the remaining two fullers paid 12d. It is significant that the drapers were assessed at the same range, suggesting the existence of entrepreneurship among fullers. Out of the sixteen drapers recorded, thirteen paid 2s, one paid 18d, and two paid 12d. In 1381 the cloth trade in Oxford was still strong and had not yet entered the decline that characterized the fifteenth century.¹⁹⁰ Out of 1,150 recorded in the poll tax, 164 were involved in the cloth industry (see Table 2).¹⁹¹ If we include their servants, the number increases to 276, or 24 per cent of the whole taxable population. That significant sums could be earned is shown by the fact that the weaver John Denton paid 8s. Although fullers paid slightly more for the subsidy on average (see Table 2), they were less numerous. There were fifteen fullers, which is fewer than half the number of weavers. The highest amount was paid by Thomas Hosebond, who was assessed at 3s 4d, followed by John Gersyndon who paid 3s.¹⁹² Other fullers were assessed at 2s or less.

The fulling mill presented an expensive investment and Fullers were very unlikely to own one themselves. For example, the cost of construction of a fulling mill in 1545 in Otham near Maidstone in Kent was £88.¹⁹⁴ In 1387 the existing mill in Great Shelford in Cambridgeshire was rebuilt as a combined corn and fulling mill for £15 12s 6d.¹⁹⁵ Indeed fulling mills were quite a financial risk. Profitable return was no certainty. They were costly to maintain, the cost depending on the availability of carpenters and their willingness to make repairs for a reasonable wage. Mills were liable to the effects of bad weather and flooding, and damage to the millpond, all of which required frequent repairs. Providing materials and wages for the carpenter could have added up to costly and unpredictable expenditure.¹⁹⁶ Most of those discovered so far were seigneurial fulling mills which were rented to fullers for an annual fee that ranged from 6s 8d to £6 6s 8d.¹⁹⁷ In order to reduce costs of rent and maintenance, fullers usually co-leased the mills with millers, carpenters or other fullers. Such arrangements brought their own risk of unpredicted damages. In 1360 Thomas Brynchele of Hadle in Kent claimed that damage on the weir was the fault of his co-lessee, fuller John Wolford, and that the latter should pay for the repairs.¹⁹⁸

Despite all the financial setbacks a lease of a fulling mill might bring, there was a boom among fullers as lessees in the second half of the fourteenth century. Between 1350 and 1450, thirty-five fullers were attested, compared to only three in the following century.¹⁹⁹ The fullers’ rise in status, and the conversion of the grain mills to fulling mills in the years after the Black Death, allowed some fullers to invest adventurously.²⁰⁰ The fulling mill in West Harnham, a suburb of Salisbury, already recorded in 1299, changed hands several times between 1350 and 1400.²⁰¹ In 1362 the same mill was leased for life by George Joce, a fuller from Salisbury, who engaged William de Sernington from West Harnham to repair the millpond and the meadow for a term of twenty years.²⁰² In 1377 John Pynnok, a weaver and descendant of the same family who owned the mill in 1299, brought a plea against John Bennet for negligent maintenance of the mill at West Harnham.²⁰³ It is not clear whether this was the same fulling mill or whether there were two different mills. However, we do know that both lessees still operated their business around this fulling mill in 1381, as George Joce brought a plea where he accused John Bennet of an assault at West Harnham.²⁰⁴ A decade later, another fuller from Salisbury, Nicholas Hoghton, also took a fulling mill on a lease for life in the neighbouring Winterbourne Ford.²⁰⁵ In Colchester those fullers who did not hold a principal lease of a fulling mill had to hire a mill in order to have their cloths fulled. In 1385 a fuller was sued for 3s 4d that he was alleged to owe for mill hire for fulling 100 ells and two dozen cloths.²⁰⁶ Earlier, in 1380, John Bertelot, a fuller, was charging other fullers of Colchester between 17s and 22s for thickening and washing of cloth at the North Mill.²⁰⁷ From the fifteenth century onwards, the ownership, leases and management of the fulling mills would shift into the hands of clothiers, who possessed much more capital than the fullers.²⁰⁸

One of the big questions about fullers is why, towards the end of the fourteenth century, they lost importance in London and York yet prospered in Winchester and Colchester. By letters patent in 1364, the fullers, dyers and weavers of London were barred from buying and selling cloth, as the drapers were granted the exclusive right to buy and sell cloth within the city.²⁰⁹ Further, many new drapers who settled in London during the 1360s increased the production of broadcloth in their towns of origin by selling these products in the capital.²¹⁰ Many London fullers worked on this cloth in order to increase the quality of finishing. However, from the 1380s the provincial cloth that flooded the London market in increasing volumes reached the same quality as cloth produced locally.²¹¹ So what did the fullers do? Most of the wealthier fullers seem to have become drapers. Nicholas Potyn was already referred to as draper and fuller in the 1360s and there are indications that sons of prominent fullers were engaged as drapers at the end of the fourteenth century. Examples include Richard Cornewaile (fuller), Benedict Cornewaile (draper), William Lyndeseye (fuller), Richard Lyndeseye (draper), Gilbert Spencer (fuller), Richard Spencer (draper), Robert Baas (fuller) and John Bas (draper).²¹² Other fullers seem to have stopped fulling, but were still involved in finishing. Indeed, provincial cloth had probably been fulled by the time it reached London, but its quality was often doubtful and the London fullers had to check the quality and do whatever was necessary to prepare the cloth for aulnage and for further finishing with the shearmen.

Most historians would agree that by the end of the thirteenth and the early fourteenth centuries, the English cloth industry had declined but was far from dead. The disruption in the Mediterranean markets forced the English producers as a whole to turn to the exports of raw wool and to reorient their cloth production from the production of serges to the production of worsteds, which required very little or no fulling. This pushed urban fullers almost to disappearance in the first quarter of the fourteenth century, or at least to become marginalized and subordinate to dyers, as their work was not required for the existing demand on the domestic market. This state of affairs lasted for about half a century until changes in the English cloth industry from the 1340s worked in the fullers’ favour. With the growth of the domestic market for quality woollens, manufacture moved from coarse cheap worsteds to heavily-fulled woollens. As a consequence, the number of fullers increased rapidly. The towns became new centres of cloth production and trade presenting fullers with particularly good opportunities. Regular supply of high-quality wool, an increased number of weavers and the proximity of foreign and native merchants who acted as middlemen to satisfy the greater demand for fulled woollens would of itself have benefited the fullers financially. However, this rise in demand caused them to improve their skills and the quality of their fulling. By the 1360s, fullers became a politically organized craft in most English towns, with some fullers also becoming serious entrepreneurs. Around the same time the structure of cloth production was such that fullers’ involvement began to threaten some of the dyers’ and drapers’ activities, and this was particularly visible in London, Winchester and Colchester.

From the start of Richard II’s reign, as the drapers of London became unable to rely solely on an income derived from imported cloths, they sharply redefined their position in the city’s cloth market.²¹³ The fullers and their entrepreneurial activity suffered and they were reduced to wage workers by the beginning of the fifteenth century. Similar trends may have occurred slightly earlier in York where the decline in the fullers’ importance was visible before 1377. In contrast, the fortunes of the second half of the fourteenth century allowed the fullers of Colchester, Winchester and Exeter to continue prosperously throughout the fifteenth century. Eventually, however, they succumbed to the same fate as their counterparts in London, York and other towns, and conceded their organizational activities to clothiers. In the wider context the evidence suggests that it was the London fullers who enjoyed the most conspicuous improvements in wealth and status, at least until they were usurped by the drapers. Thereafter, the evidence shows that the provincial fullers enjoyed more sustained improvements in their status, implying that urban clothmaking continued to respond not only to changes in consumer demand and technology, but to political and legislative initiatives.

Footnotes