The fortunes of urban fullers in fourteenth-century England
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The fortunes of urban fullers in fourteenth-century
England*
Milan Pajic
University of Cambridge
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Abstract
In the first half of the fourteenth century, for various reasons connected to the international
market, urban clothmakers in England underwent a steady transition from producing light coarse
cheap woollens, known as worsteds, towards producing heavily finished full woollens. One of the
main beneficiaries of this shift were the urban fullers, as their economic position considerably
improved relative to other textile trades. This article examines the development of their craft,
looking at individual fullers in urban areas. It demonstrates how urban fullers rose to prominence
throughout the fourteenth century.
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
* I would like to thank Mark Ormrod, John Oldland, John Lee, Jan Dumolyn and the anonymous reviewers
for Historical Research for their help and advice.
1
J. Munro,‘Three centuries of luxury textile consumption in the Low Countries and England, 1330–1570: trends
and comparisons of real values of woollen broadcloth (then and now)’, in The Medieval Broadcloth: Changing Trends
in Fashions Manufacturing and Consumption, ed. K. Vestergard and M.-L. B. Nosch (Oxford, 2009), pp. 1–73, at p. 2.
2
A mild climate, with hot springs and autumns, made the Mediterranean regions the most suitable markets for
these lighter fabrics. See J. Munro, ‘The “industrial crisis” of the English textile towns, c.1290–c.1330’, in Thirteenth
Century England VII, ed. M. Prestwich, R. Britnell and R. Frame (Woodbridge, 1999), pp. 103–42, at pp. 138–9,
P. Chorley,‘English cloth exports during the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries: the continental evidence’, His-
torical Research, lxi (1988), 1–10, at pp. 2–4; E. Miller,‘The fortunes of the English textile industry during the thirteenth
century’, Essays in Economic History Presented to Professor M. M. Postan, Economic History Review, xviii (1965), 64–82.
3
For details on these wars, see J. Munro, ‘Industrial transformations in the north-west European textile trades,
c.1290–c.1340: economic progress or economic crisis?’, in Before the Black Death: Studies in the ‘Crisis’ of the Early
Fourteenth Century, ed. B. M. S. Campbell (Manchester and New York, 1991), pp. 110–48. Cloths from England were
still present in French and Spanish parts of the Mediterranean but seem to have disappeared from the south Italian
and Levant trades (Chorley, ‘English cloth exports’, p. 7).
© The Author(s) 2020. DOI:10.1093/hisres/htz003 Historical Research, vol. 93, no. 260 (May 2020)
Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Institute of Historical Research. All rights reserved.
For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com228 The fortunes of urban fullers in fourteenth-century England
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-
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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
4
Surviving customs accounts show that the exports of wool from 1305–40 stood at 30,000 sacks on average per
year, while 10,000 cloths were imported from Flanders (E. Carus-Wilson and O. Coleman, England’s Export Trade
1275–1547 (Oxford, 1963), pp. 40–9). Exports of English cloths were confined to mid-priced serges produced locally
and estimated to be four times lower than imports. Moreover, the confiscation records and purchases for the Great
Wardrobe suggest that imports from Flanders were high quality coloured cloths (Miller, ‘Fortunes of the English
textile industry’, p. 78; T. H. Lloyd, Alien Merchants in England in the High Middle Ages (Brighton, 1982), pp. 48–52;
J. Oldland, The English Woollen Industry, c.1200–1560 (London and New York, 2019), pp. 10–11, 169–70).
5
Statutes of the Realm, i. 280–1. A statute from 1337 prohibited the exports of wool and imports of foreign
cloths. Every man or woman was allowed to produce cloth and alien clothworkers were invited to settle wherever
they wanted within the realm.
6
Numerous works have engaged in debates over the success of English cloth production; however, these will
not be detailed here. See Miller, ‘Fortunes of the English textile industry’, pp. 64–82, J. Munro, Wool, Cloth and
Gold: the Struggle for Bullion in Anglo-Burgundian Trade, 1340–1478 (Brussels and Toronto, 1973) and J. Munro, ‘Symbi-
osis of towns and textiles: urban institutions and the changing fortunes of cloth manufacturing in the Low Coun-
tries and England, 1280–1570’, Journal of Early Modern History, iii (1999), 1–74, at pp. 12–18.
7
M. Kowaleski, Local Markets and Regional Trade in Medieval Exeter (Cambridge, 1995), p. 152.
8
R. Britnell, Growth and Decline in Colchester 1300–1525 (Cambridge, 1986), p. 77.
9
D. Keene, Survey of Medieval Winchester (Oxford, 1985), i. 304–6.
10
E. Quinton, ‘The drapers and the drapery trade of late medieval London, c.1300–c.1500’ (unpublished King’s
College, London, Ph.D. thesis, 2001), pp. 112–18.
11
J. Oldland, ‘The London fullers and shearmen and their merger to become the clothworkers company’,
Textile History, xxxix (2008), 172–92.
12
H. Swanson, Medieval Artisans: an Urban Class in Late Medieval England (Oxford, 1989), p. 40.
13
N. Amor, From Wool to Cloth: the Triumph of the Suffolk Clothier (Bungay, 2016), p. 160.
© The Author(s) 2020. Historical Research, vol. 93, no. 260 (May 2020)The fortunes of urban fullers in fourteenth-century England 229
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
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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
14
P. Dunn, ‘After the Black Death: society and economy in late fourteenth-century Norwich’ (unpublished
University of East Anglia, Ph.D. thesis, 2003), pp. 160–2.
15
D. Nicholas, The Metamorphosis of a Medieval City: Ghent in the Age of van Arteveldes, 1302–1390 (Lincoln, Neb.,
1987), p. 155.
16
J. Munro, ‘Industrial entrepreneurship in the late medieval Low Countries: urban draperies, fullers, and the
art of survival’, in Entrepreneurship and the Transformation of Economy (10th–20th Centuries): Essays in Honour of Herman
van der Wee, ed. P. Clep and E. van Cauwenberghe (Leuven, 1994), pp. 377–88, at p. 380.
17
E. Carus-Wilson, ‘An Industrial Revolution of the thirteenth century’, Economic History Review, xi (1941),
39–60.
18
Miller, ‘Fortunes of the English textile industry’, pp. 71–2. A. Bridbury, Medieval English Clothmaking: an
Economic Survey (London, 1982), pp. 16–26.
19
J. Munro,‘Symbiosis of town and textiles’, pp. 12–20. In his later work he also criticized Carus-Wilson’s thesis.
See J. Munro, ‘Industrial energy from water-mills in the European economy, 5th to 18th centuries: the limitations
of power’, in Economia e Energia secc. XIII-XVIII, Atti della Trentaquattresima settimana di studi a cura di Simonetta
Cavaciocchi (Florence, 2003), pp. 223–69, at pp. 248–55.
20
In Amor’s view rural fulling mills were built by lords as speculative, and generally unsuccessful, attempts to
promote clothmaking on their manors (Amor, From Wool to Cloth, pp. 152–3).
21
Oldland, The English Woollen Industry, pp. 138–40.
22
Keene, Survey of Medieval Winchester, i. 305–6; Britnell, Growth and Decline, p. 74.
23
P. Malanima, I piedi di legno. Una macchina alle origini dell’industria medievale (Milan, 1988), pp. 110–4. J. Oldland,
‘Clothmaking in London 1270–1550’ (unpublished Royal Holloway, University of London, Ph.D. thesis, 2003),
p. 29.
Historical Research, vol. 93, no. 260 (May 2020) © The Author(s) 2020.230 The fortunes of urban fullers in fourteenth-century England
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
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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
24
Keene, Survey of Medieval Winchester, i. 305–6; Britnell, Growth and Decline, pp. 74–6.
25
Swanson, Medieval Artisans, p. 40.
26
Kowaleski, Local Markets, p. 151.
27
G. De Poerck, La draperie médiévale en Flandre et en Artois: technique et terminologie (2 vols., Bruges, 1951),
i. 100–12.
28
J. Munro, ‘Medieval woollens, textiles, textile technology, and industrial organisation c.800–1500’, in The
Cambridge History of Western Textiles, ed. D. Jenkins (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 181–227, at pp. 204–5.
© The Author(s) 2020. Historical Research, vol. 93, no. 260 (May 2020)The fortunes of urban fullers in fourteenth-century England 231
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
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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
29
Oldland, The English Woollen Industry, pp. 150–70.
30
Willelmus de Selby, walker, Adam de Wilstrop, walker, Johannes de Diste, walker, Ricardus de Fangfoss,
walker (Register of Freemen of the City of York : vol. 1, 1272–1558, ed. F. Collins (Publications of the Surtees Society,
xcvi, Durham, 1897), i. 29, 33, 40, 44).
31
W. G. Benham, The Oath Book or Red Parchment Book of Colchester (Colchester, 1907), p. 54, Britnell, Growth
and Decline, p. 72. W. G. Benham, The Court Rolls of the Borough of Colchester (3 vols., Colchester, 1921–41), i. 59,
153, 157.
32
Letter-Book D, in Calendar of Letter-Books Preserved among the Archives of the Corporation of the City of London at
the Guildhall: Letter-Books A–K, ed. R. R. Sharpe (London, 1905), pp. 58–179.
33
Letter-Book G, pp. 175–6, Calendar of Plea and Memoranda Rolls Preserved among the Archives of the Corporation of
the City of London at the Guildhall (hereafter C.P.M.R.), ed. A. H. Thomas (4 vols., 1926–43), ii. 34, 36. John Stoket,
Geoffrey Wockynge, Richard Hay, William Doder and numerous others were described as fullers. However, it is
only in their wills that it was added that they were ‘citizen and fuller of London’. See the wills of John Olescoumbe
and William Doder, London Metropolitan Archives (hereafter L.M.A.), MS. 9171, fos. 140v, 201r.
34
Keene, Survey of Medieval Winchester, i. 305.
35
Munimenta Gildhalae Londoniensis: Liber Albus, Liber custumarum, et Liber Horn, ed. H. T. Riley (3 vols., 1859–
62), i. 127–9.
36
Letter-Book D, pp. 239–40.
37
E. Ekwall, Two Early London Subsidy Rolls: with an Introduction, Commentaries and Indices of Taxpayers (Lund,
1951), pp. 168–75; Letter-Book D, pp. 58–179.
Historical Research, vol. 93, no. 260 (May 2020) © The Author(s) 2020.232 The fortunes of urban fullers in fourteenth-century England
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
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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
38
J. Oldland, ‘Dyeing English woollens from the thirteenth through the sixteenth centuries’, Textile History,
forthcoming; G. Williams, Medieval London: from Commune to Capital (London, 1963), p. 176.
39
Letter-Book G, p. 14.
40
Memorials of London and London Life in the XIIIth, XIVth, and XVth Centuries, ed. H. T. Riley (London, 1868),
p. 309. Letter-Book G, pp. 159–60.
41
Only two fullers were admitted into the franchise in the 1340s: Johannes de Diste (from Brabant) and Adam
de Wilstrop (Collins, Register of Freemen of the City of York, pp. 40, 44).
42
Essex Record Office (hereafter E.R.O.), D/B 5 CR 10, mm. 3, 5. Calendared in Benham, Court Rolls II,
p. 68.
43
E.R.O., D/B 5 CR 12, m. 12d. On conversion of grain mills to fulling mills in Colchester, see Britnell,
Growth and Decline, p. 76.
44
Dunn, ‘After the Black Death’, p. 156; E. Rutledge, ‘Economic life’, in Medieval Norwich, ed. C. Rawcliffe and
R. Wilson (London, 2004), p. 169.
45
Norfolk Record Office (hereafter N.R.O.),Y/C 4/73, m. 14d; Y/C 4/77, m. 13; Y/C 4/79, m. 19d.
© The Author(s) 2020. Historical Research, vol. 93, no. 260 (May 2020)The fortunes of urban fullers in fourteenth-century England 233
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
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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
46
N.R.O., NCR 5b/10, m. 1d.
47
J.-L. Roch, Un autre monde du travail: la draperie en Normandie au Moyen-âge (Rouen and Havre, 2013), pp. 127–8.
48
See the following cases brought to the court of common pleas concerning withdrawal from service under
the Statute of Labourers: The National Archives of the U.K., CP 40/426, m. 409d; T.N.A., CP 40/466, m. 207;
T.N.A., CP 40/411, m. 134.
49
M. Pajic, ‘The migration of Flemish weavers to England in the fourteenth century: their economic influence
and transfer of skills 1331–1381’ (unpublished joint University of Strasbourg and Ghent University, Ph.D. thesis,
2016), pp. 82–145.
50
Collins, Register of Freemen of the City of York, p. 48.
51
B. Lambert and M. Pajic, ‘Immigration and the common profit: native clothworkers, flemish exiles, and royal
policy in fourteenth-century London’, Journal of British Studies, lv (2016), 633–57.
52
See also the case for withdrawal of service brought by one of the prominent fullers of London, William
Wyremonstre against John Katherel, fuller, in T.N.A., CP 40/448, m. 63.
53
Recueil de documents relatifs à l’histoire de l’industrie drapière en Flandre, ed. H. Pirenne and G. Espinas (3 vols.,
1906), i. 378, 384; for the context, see J. Dumolyn, ‘“I thought of it at work, in Ostend”: urban artisan labour and
guild ideology in the later medieval Low Countries’, International Review of Social History, lxii (2017), 389–419, at
pp. 400–1.
54
H. Swanson, ‘The illusion of economic structure: craft guilds in late medieval English towns’, Past & Present,
cxxii (1988), 28–48, at p. 30; A. Kissane, Civic Community in Late Medieval Lincoln: Urban Society and Economy in the
Age of the Black Death 1289–1409 (Martlesham, 2017), pp. 163–6.
55
Swanson, Medieval Urban Artisans, p. 111.
Historical Research, vol. 93, no. 260 (May 2020) © The Author(s) 2020.234 The fortunes of urban fullers in fourteenth-century 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
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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
56
Chorley, ‘English cloth exports’, pp. 2–4.
57
Toulmin-Smith, English Guilds (London, 1840), pp. 179–81.
58
Leet Jurisdiction in the City of Norwich during the XIIIth and XIVth Century: with a Short Notice of its Later History
and Decline, from Rolls in the Possession of the Corporation, ed. W. Hudson (Norwich, 1892), p. 43.
59
E. Carus-Wilson, Medieval Merchant Venturers: Collected Studies (London, 1954), p. 205.
60
Miller, ‘Fortunes of the English textile industry’, p. 70.
61
Keene, Survey of Medieval Winchester, i. 305. Carus-Wilson, Medieval Merchant Venturers, p. 226.
62
Miller, ‘Fortunes of the English textile industry’, p. 70; Carus-Wilson, Medieval Merchant Venturers, pp. 204–5.
63
Miller, ‘Fortunes of the English textile industry’, p. 70.
64
Toulmin-Smith, English Guilds, pp. 179–81; Miller, ‘Fortunes of the English textile industry’, p. 79.
65
The Little Red Book of Bristol, ed. F. Bickley (2 vols., London, 1900), ii. 6–11.
66
York Memorandum Book, ed. M. Sellers (Sureties Society, cxx-cxxv, 2 vols., 1912–14), i. 71–2. See also Swanson,
Medieval Artisans, p. 130.
© The Author(s) 2020. Historical Research, vol. 93, no. 260 (May 2020)The fortunes of urban fullers in fourteenth-century England 235
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
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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
67
Letter-Book G, pp. 136, 159–60.
68
Letter-Book H, p. 37.
69
Keene, Survey of Medieval Winchester, i. 307.
70
The Little Red Book of Bristol, ii. 11.
71
Swanson, ‘The illusion of economic structure’, p. 38; G. Rosser, ‘Solidarités et changement social. Les
fraternités urbaines anglaises à la fin du Moyen Age’, Annales, histoire sciences sociales, v (1993), 1127–43.
72
Toulmin-Smith, English Guilds, pp. 179–81.
73
C. Barron, London in the Later Middle Ages: Government and People 1200–1500 (Oxford, 2005), p. 209.
74
Kowaleski, Local Markets, pp. 93, 190.
75
Britnell, Growth and Decline, p. 139
76
J. A. Galloway, ‘Colchester and its region, 1310–1560: wealth, industry and rural-urban mobility in a medieval
society’ (unpublished University of Edinburgh, Ph.D. thesis, 1986), p. 137.
Historical Research, vol. 93, no. 260 (May 2020) © The Author(s) 2020.236 The fortunes of urban fullers in fourteenth-century England
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
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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
77
Benham, Court Rolls, ii. 78, 80, 169.
78
Britnell, Growth and Decline, p. 77.
79
Benham, Court Rolls, ii. 80
80
N.R.O.; Y/C 4/82, m. 17r; Y/C 4/85, m. 1r; Y/C 4/86, m. 8r.
81
J. Dumolyn, ‘Guild politics and political guilds in fourteenth-century Flanders’, in The Voices of the People in
Late Medieval Europe: Communication and Popular Politics, ed. J. Dumolyn and others (Turnhout, 2014), pp. 15–48.
82
J. Dumolyn and J. Haemers, ‘Patterns of urban rebellion in medieval Flanders’, Journal of Medieval History,
xxxi (2005), 369–93.
83
Dumolyn and Haemers, ‘Patterns of urban rebellion’, p. 376; M. Boone and H. Brand, ‘Vollersoproeren en
collectieve actie in Gent en Leiden in de 14e en 15e eeuw’, Tijdschrift voor Sociale Geschiedenis, xix (1993), 168–93.
84
Dumolyn, ‘“I thought of it at work, in Ostend”’, p. 395. Dumolyn’s article contains an excellent overview of
historiography on the political influence of medieval craft guilds in various urban areas in Europe.
85
S. Reynolds, An Introduction to the History of English Medieval Towns (Oxford, 1977), pp. 115, 121.
86
B. R. McRee, ‘Religious gilds and civil order: the case of Norwich in the late middle ages’, Speculum, lxvii
(1992), 69–97, at p. 71.
© The Author(s) 2020. Historical Research, vol. 93, no. 260 (May 2020)The fortunes of urban fullers in fourteenth-century England 237
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
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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
87
M. Kowaleski, ‘The commercial dominance of a medieval provincial oligarchy: Exeter in the late fourteenth
century’, in The Medieval Town, ed. R. Holt and G. Rosser (London, 1994), pp. 184–215, at p. 185.
88
McRee, ‘Religious Gilds and Civil Order’, pp. 71–4. Exceptions included Lynn where the Holy Trinity
Merchant guild played quite an important role.
89
G. Rosser, ‘Big brotherhood; guilds in urban politics in late medieval England’, in Guilds and Association in
Europe, 900–1900, ed. I. Gadd and P. Willis (London, 2006), pp. 27–42, at p. 37.
90
E. Veale, ‘The “Great Twelve” mistery and fraternity in thirteenth-century London’, Historical Research, lxiv
(1991), 237–63.
91
Swanson, ‘The illusion of economic structure’, p. 39.
92
Boone, Geld en Macht, pp. 23–120.
93
In England those who held office were usually from prominent crafts and they would act as middlemen, buying
cloth from artisans and then suppling aristocratic and royal households as well as foreign merchants.
94
C.P.M.R., i. 276.
95
Letter-Book G, p. 160.
96
C.P.M.R., i. 276.
Historical Research, vol. 93, no. 260 (May 2020) © The Author(s) 2020.238 The fortunes of urban fullers in fourteenth-century England
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
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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
97
C.P.M.R., ii. 54–6.
98
T.N.A., KB 27/422, m.1 REX; KB 29/22, mm. 10, 10d.
99
Calendar of Patent Rolls 1367–1370, p. 45.
100
Barron, London in the Later Middle Ages, pp. 130–2.
101
Letter-Book F, p. 237.
102
Letter-Book G, p. 3.
103
Letter-Book H, p. 41.
104
P. Nightingale, ‘Capitalists, crafts and constitutional change in late-fourteenth-century London’, Past &
Present, cxxiv (1989), 3–35, at pp. 33–4.
105
Oldland, ‘Clothmaking in London’, p. 72.
© The Author(s) 2020. Historical Research, vol. 93, no. 260 (May 2020)The fortunes of urban fullers in fourteenth-century England 239
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
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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
106
C.P.M.R., iii. 29.
107
Barron, London in the Later Middle Ages, p. 132.
108
Oldland, ‘Clothmaking in London’, p. 73; C.P.M.R., iii. 85–8, 122–4; Letter-Book H, pp. 279–81, 331–4.
109
C.P.M.R., iii. 85–8.
110
Keene, Survey of Medieval Winchester, i. 307, 305, 430–1.
111
Keene, Survey of Medieval Winchester, ii. 1277. William Ingge was the first fuller to become a mayor; he was
re-elected in 1374.
112
Keene, Survey of Medieval Winchester, i. 430–1.
113
Kowaleski, Local Markets, pp. 95–119.
114
Britnell, Growth and Decline, pp. 118–27.
Historical Research, vol. 93, no. 260 (May 2020) © The Author(s) 2020.You can also read
