Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

other the probate courts. 80
The textile trade provided alternative employment for poor
families, enabling them ‘to live or live better’. 81
Fewer references to weavers occur in
quarrying parishes where other non-agricultural work was available.
At Easter 1696 various local people were indicted ‘for a riot and breaking and
entering a barge of Edward Burch and taking out ten cart loads of wool, value £700, and
making an assault upon the said Edward Birch’ (sic). 82
Sadly, we can not ascertain
whether the wool was due to leave Bidford or had arrived from elsewhere. 83
In Periods B and C Tables 5.2 and 5.4 suggest an increase in the textile sector.
Most Champion Country settlements were home to at least one family of weavers, even
tiny Weston-on-Avon, where we find Sarah Silvester apparently continuing her
husband’s weaving and farming businesses after his death. Local weavers had
connections with the textile trade in Kidderminster and Gloucester and possibly further
afield. 84
Some local weavers may have formed part of the extensive Vale of Evesham
stocking trade, but others wove different products, both woollen and linen, including
jersey-cloth. As in the previous period many workers in the textile trade were poor and
80 Glos RO, (additional) probate of William Knight, Pebworth, clothworker, 1663/4, £5-1-4, including a hot
press (worth £2), and racks and other materials (10s) and three pairs of fleeces (10s).
81 Ramsay, The English Woollen Industry, p. 49.
82 Johnson, Warwick County Records, 9, pp. 124-5, quoting quarter sessions. N. B. Sheep are mentioned in
this zone’s inventories, but perhaps not to the same extent as in Zone D.
83 Buchanan, ‘Studies in seventeenth century Worcestershire industries, 1600-1650’, 18, p. 34, shows that
long-stapled Cotswold wool was suitable for worsted and was sold in Gloucestershire, Kent, Hampshire
and Devon. The Worcester clothiers imported shorter-stapled wool from Ryeland sheep in the Marches.
This could be used for felting and other woollen cloths. The type of sheep kept throughout the study area is
not known.
84 WoRO, marriage licence of Samuel Silvester, Weston, weaver, to Sarah Newman, Stratford, 1725. Glos
RO, probate of Samuel Silvester, Weston, 1744, describes him as a yeoman, but GlosRO, probate of Sarah
Silvester, Weston, widow, 1748, £150, included weaving tools. Job Newman, weaver of Kidderminster,
(her brother?), was to be guardian to her children. He was illiterate and made the calculations for her
inventory with some difficulty ‘under protestation’. GlosRO, probate of John Wells, Welford, weaver,
1712, was witnessed by Jacob Randell, Upton St Leonards, (near Gloucester), ‘jocquer’. This latter term
may be a specific occupation in the textile trade. Another Welford weaver, Thomas Nicholls, married a
woman from Ashton by Oundle, Northamptonshire. (WaRO, Welford marriage register, 1780.)
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