Somerset & Dorset Notes & Queries recently published a review of John Gaisford’s volume for the Society and have given us permission to republish it. Our thanks to the Editor and author of the review for their permissions.
*Vol. XXXIX September 2024 Part 400
John Gaisford ed., ‘Clothiers and Merchants in Spanish Cloth, 1627-1667: The Ashe family of Somerset, Wiltshire and London and their account books’, Somerset Record Society 101 (2023): 531pp, 16 plates, colour & b&w. £51.69.
The account books were produced as evidence in a Chancery case in 1681 between two widowed sisters. One was the widow of Jonathan Ashe, who had been the executor of the estate of an East India Co merchant, and the case hinged on a chest of jewels and other valuables. Following the case volumes were not returned to the family and became part of that rich and diverse series in The National Archives, known as Masters Exhibits. However, as the editor states, ‘the information provided by this rare set of accounts is even more intriguing than the case of the missing jewels’, for the study of the Spanish cloth trade of a family of Somerset clothiers in the mid 17th century. The accounts record the business in East Somerset and West Wiltshire of James Ashe of Westcombe in Batcombe (d.1654), his eldest son, John of Freshford (d.1673) and John’s son-in-law Paul Methuen (referred throughout by the contemporary spelling of Methwin) of Bradford-on-Avon (d.1667). James’ sons, Edward (d.1656) and Jonathan (d.1665), merchants and agents of the business, were based in London. The enterprise became an extremely successful commercial undertaking.
The product was Spanish cloth, also known as medley, a lightweight, broadcloth of mixed colours that was created by blending dyed wool of different colours before spinning. It was a method which produced subtler and more durable results that became popular among the wealthy, as well as offering a wide range of colours. Between 1631 and 1643, more than 120 different colours appear in the accounts. An indication of the significance of the process is the passing into common usage of the term ‘dyed in the wool’, as an expression of deep seated conviction. The process was invented by Benedict Webb of Kingswood, an outlier of Wiltshire in Gloucestershire, in the last quarter of the 16th century and so named around 1600, because of the use, in part, of Spanish wool. Production in Somerset took off, when James Ashe set up his son John as a clothier in Freshford, where the river Frome joins the Avon and apprenticed has other son Edward to a draper in London. Edward and Jonathan became the agents who sold Spanish cloths produced in the Frome valley to customers in Paris, 1645-1665, when the Ashe trading operation in London ceased.
For the years 1631-1632, James’ accounts record the cloth marks of 70 unnamed weavers, a number, the editor asserts, matched by James and Paul. Thus about 250 looms, and as many as 4000 men, women and children were employed as in the preparation of the wool, including carding, dyeing, spinning, weaving, fulling, through to the finishing. The business was a major employer in the Frome area. James Ashe’s Cloth Sales book is the only record for production in Somerset during the 1630s. It shows that his annual output was frequently under 200 cloths, and exceeded 400 cloths in only two years, 1632 and 1639. But these were very expensive products. The total value of his sales from 1627 to 1643 came to nearly £66,000.
Business was interrupted for the first two years of the English Civil War, in which the family were strong parliamentarians. James died in 1646. John spent much of this period in London. From August 1643 to March 1650, he was chairman of the Goldsmith’s Hall committee for compounding with royalists and delinquents. During this time, his wife Elizabeth, or a trusted agent presumably ran the business. However, Paul Methuen, already a successful clothier, married Grace, the daughter of John and became a steady supplier of cloths to Edward Ashe in London. After the Civil War, two journals compiled by Jonathan record the cloths sent to London from Freshford and Bradford-on-Avon; those purchases from Somerset revived strongly in the late 1640s, with a record year in 1648 of 516 cloths. A decade later the numbers were lower, with only 341 cloths bought in the best year of 1660. Journal B covering 1656-1665 gives the names of ships and their masters and show the company’s bales were transported by at least 60 ships, English, French and Dutch. As well as London and Paris trade, merchants in Bristol, Salisbury and Blandford were customers and accounts reveal the network of local transport and payments received at fairs at Norton St Philip and Binegar. The account books reveal ‘the extraordinary web of local and international enterprise that lay behind the otherwise mundane lists of individual fabrics’.
Of the 13 volumes of accounts, five are published and one is calendared, the remaining six have not been published but have been used in the preparation of the introduction and appendices. Those appendices, including pedigrees, wills and inventories, and an extract of a particularly detailed lease of Iford fulling mill, support to the text as do thumbnail sketches of persons and glossary. The weavers’ marks is a typographical triumph. The volume is lavishly illustrated. The vast amount of material in the account books is presented and analysed extremely effectively which required considerable dedication and application. John Gaisford deserves considerable praise for bringing these records of an important part of the history of the Somerset and Wiltshire woollen cloth industry to the fore in such an exemplary manner.
STEVEN HOBBS
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