Spinners and the Law: Regulating Yarn Standards in the English Worsted Industries, 1550–1800

Abstract

The Worsted Acts, passed between 1777 and 1791, established semi-official industrial police forces in nearly a third of the counties of England, charged with detecting and prosecuting fraudulent reeling of worsted yarn by hand spinners. The Acts have been interpreted as the response of late eighteenth-century employers to new and growing problems of labour discipline associated with the putting-out system. But frauds by spinners in reeling yarn were not new. They had characterised the worsted industry since its rapid expansion began at the end of the sixteenth century. Over the subsequent two centuries, employers addressed the problem repeatedly. How they tackled it depended crucially on the way the different regional worsted industries were organised and on dramatic changes in the willingness and capacity of the state to regulate manufacturing. The Worsted Acts emerge as the product of a distinctive eighteenth-century approach to industrial regulation, reactive and particularistic, but bureaucratically innovative.     

The landscape of Metztitlan,Mexico: Power and control in a sixteenth century Spanish administrative painting

ABSTRACT

The concept of landscape has been studied mostly as the view of a space with particular interest in its aesthetics, originating at the turn of the sixteenth century. However, I argue that in fourteenth century northern Europe, the concept was focused on polity rather than aesthetics. This article examines this lesser-known tradition by analysing the painting of Metztitlan, a sixteenth century town in Mexico, and arguing, first, that unlike all the other representations in the Relaciones Geográficas to which it belongs, it is the only landscape, and second, that this painting is associated with an administrative procedure common in Spain to gain control over imperial lands. I review European practices regarding the representation of towns under the Spanish Crown. Then, I present the results of the fieldwork carried out to locate several heights which probably served as vantage points to paint the landscape. Based on this research, I analyse the intentions of the painter to argue that it should be considered within the same tradition as the paintings made in Spain by Flemish painter Anton van de Wyngaerde, as part of the Spanish Empire's Germanic tradition of describing places with the intention of exerting control over them.     

John Bolton's Cinder Oven: An eighteenth century industrial re-use of a mediaeval tower

Abstract

In one of the two mediaeval towers built to defend the River Wensum in Norwich there is a beehive coke oven. Documentary evidence suggests that this 'cinder oven', as it is known locally, was built in c. 1792 by John Bolton to produce coke for his nearby maltings. Although unused for over a century, it is still intact and in relatively good condition. This short paper describes its history and structure.     

The Textile Fabrics of India and Huddersfield Cloth Industry

Abstract

There was a large and rapidly expanding cloth finishing industry in London in the late fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth century. London merchants brought provincial cloth to the City, some of which was finished prior to export, and some was finished for the City's expanding clothing industry. The success of the London Fullers and Shearmen was reflected in their merger to form the Clothworkers' Company in 1528, and their acceptance ten years later as the last and twelfth merchant company in the City. The paper traces both the economic progress of the company and some of its principal members, and the difficulties that the Fullers and Shearmen faced as they decided to merge, and then to become accepted as one of the leading companies in the City.     

Conference Report

Abstract

Wool-combing was the final stage of the worsted textile process to be mechanised. No single individual developed a completely satisfactory powered wool-comb, but at the end of the nineteenth century four types were in regular operation. The Noble comb was most widely used in the Bradford trade, but surprisingly little is known about its inventor, James Noble. There is no doubt that two men of the same name have been confused, and both were wool-combers or mechanics rather than wealthy textile magnates. The lives of these men and their connections with two important textile personalities, George Edward Donisthorpe and Samuel Cunliffe Lister, are explored in this article.     

Observations on Discoveries of Roman Remains in Sedbury,within the Parish of Tidenham,Gloucestershire, and on the Supposed Site of a Roman Military Position there,near the Confluence of the Severn and Wye

The paper traces the development of the double-courtyard design in high-status English residences during the late Middle Ages and early sixteenth century. Dartington Hall, Devon, is used as a case study in order to aid in the contextualization of the development. Excavations here carried out in 1962 by Platt and in the 1990s by the authors help to shed light on the date and development of the south court, which was mostly demolished in the seventeenth century. It has been suggested that Dartington Hall is an early example of the double courtyard, but this study finds that it conforms more closely with single-courtyard residences that developed a second court over the course of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.     

Landschaft,pueblo and altepetl: a consideration of landscape in sixteenth-century Central Mexico

In 1521, the Spanish conquistadors defeated the Nahuas of Central Mexico. Spain was ruled at the time by the House of Habsburg, and its administrators became familiar with the German concept of Landschaft. By 1570, they used this concept to prepare and launch a survey of the indigenous communities which called themselves—and their lands—altepetl. The purpose of this paper is to show to what extent the terms Landschaft and altepetl are equivalent since modern scholars have described both as organized “communities” subject to a customary “law” and possessing a specific piece of “land”. The main obstacle for this comparison is that in the sixteenth century the Spaniards did not have a word equivalent to landscape, and they used words like pueblo, pago and pintura instead, depending on the context. This paper describes the general characteristics of the altepetl in Central Mexico and focuses on its representation by analysing some maps made after the conquest in the area of Cholula, current State of Puebla. The comparison of Landschaft, pueblo and altepetl in historical context is pertinent for cultural geographers since it was during the sixteenth century that the concept of landscape, as we know it today, was taking shape.     

Methods of Russian Heritage Site Dating on the Spitsbergen Archipelago

Abstract

Russian Pomor people used Spitsbergen as a hunting and trapping area for over 300 years, from the early sixteenth century until the mid-nineteenth century. The early dating of Pomor activity is discussed with respect to written sources, dendrochronology, epigraphy, direct dating and geomorphological relationships.     

Some manuscript maps recently acquired by the departement des Cartes et plans of the bibliotheque nationale,Paris

Abstract

This paper examines the significance of a rediscovered medieval map (Public Record Office, MPCC 7) of part of the Fenlands of eastern England, previously dated to the mid‐sixteenth century but now recognized as mid‐fifteenth century. The map portrays realistically two important monastic churches, Sempringham Priory and Spalding Priory, which did not survive the Reformation and for which no other contemporary representations are known to exist. Documentary evidence suggests that the map was made at Spalding Priory to record rights to pasture animals in Pinchbeck Fen, and that it passed to the Duchy of Lancaster at the dissolution of the monasteries.     

Ross & Glendining and the Development of the New Zealand Woollen and Worsted Industries before 1914

Abstract

Cyclical downturns and heavy unemployment from the 1860s onwards encouraged the New Zealand government to foster the development of industry in order to promote economic stability. The woollen and worsted industry was a beneficiary of bonuses and tariffs, and by the turn of the century there were ten mills at work. Although not the first mover, the dominant firm in the industry was that of Ross & Glendining. Initially a major importer of clothing and textiles, this firm integrated backwards into woollen manufacturing to take advantage of growing markets. The success of the firm was partly due to the considerable mercantile wealth of the partners and their access to an extensive distributional network. More important, perhaps, was their enterprise and their willingness to innovate even under the most adverse conditions. This present article exploits a hitherto little used archive in order to provide a unique insight into the ways in which two Scottish entrepreneurs took advantage of that environment to create the basis for what was to become the country's largest manufacturing enterprise.     

Dyeing Winchcombe Kersies and Other Kersey Cloth in Sixteenth-Century Newbury

Abstract

Dyeing wool for the thousands of kersey cloths produced annually at Newbury in Berkshire in the middle decades of the sixteenth century took place before export. Substantial statistical evidence reveals that dyeing took place on a proto-industrial scale in Newbury; Newbury clothiers John Winchcombe II and Thomas Dolman had their own dyehouses, and other Newbury clothiers were also producing dyed kersies. Woad, madder and weld were the most important dyes, and the scale of dyeing is indicated by the purchase of woad by the ton. This article uses the Newbury experience to challenge the common view that English cloth exports during the sixteenth century were exported undyed.     

Rooms and room use in Norwich housing, 1580–1730

Abstract

The search for ‘total history’, combined with improvements in flexible computer techniques, has focused fresh analytical attention upon multiform documentary records relating to everyday living and working conditions. Prominent among such sources, for the early modern period of English history, are probate inventories. Their richly detailed and intricate contents are now under renewed scrutiny for many purposes. This survey looks briefly at the general problems highlighted by one batch of urban inventories; and analyses detailed evidence relating to rooms and their use, in the housing of the city of Norwich, 1580–1730. Investigation of 871 surviving inventories yields information about the number of rooms per house (and their heating), plus a survey of room use, as inferred from location of furnishings. These findings illuminate conditions of urban housing, suggest a developing specialisation in room use, and illustrate the manifold complexities of room nomenclature. The study was undertaken for the Norwich Survey, to collate the documentary with the archaeological record. Although it did not prove possible to match inventories directly with surviving seventeenth-century buildings in Norwich, the general picture confirmed the archaeological evidence—especially in showing considerable reorganisation and subdivision of housing in the later seventeenth century.¹ The research upon which this article is based was carried out for the Norwich Survey, at the University of East Anglia. The computer scheme was devised by Ursula Priestley and Helen Sutermeister, who was still working on the project, with great stoicism, right up until her untimely death in May 1979. Subsequently, the project has been undertaken by Ursula Priestley; and the text drafted and edited jointly with P. J. Corfield—with an introductory note (P.J.C.), comments on the problems inherent in the source data (P.J.C. and U.P.) and analysis of rooms and room use (U.P.). Special thanks are due to Alan Jenyon at the University of East Anglia Computing Centre, for his interest and invaluable help; to Dr. J. F. Pound for advice on sources; to all the staff of the Norwich Survey, for the production of drawings and data; to Philip Judge for his original drawing of housing on Timberhill; and particularly to Alan Carter, the Survey Director, for his unfailing encouragement and good advice. Copyright to Figures 1 and 10 is retained by the Norwich Survey.     

From universal homogeneity to essential heterogeneity: On the visual construction of “the Lappish race”

During the second half of the nineteenth century, a radical change took place in the representation of the Saami. Whereas physical variation earlier was insignificant to cultural representation, from then on it became the very essence of their otherness. In this paper I relate the change in the representation of the Saami to the emergence of a modern discourse in which the concept of ‘race’ became central to the organization of knowledge and social practices as well as to the understanding of cultural difference. Moreover, I try to demonstrate how the “success” of the racial discourse was conditioned by new visual technologies.     

Jerusalem Transformed in Post-Reformation England: The Case of the Cliffords and Beamsley Hospital

Abstract

This article explores the impact of the Tudor religious reforms in the rural upland parish of Kirkby Malhamdale, Craven, in the Yorkshire Dales, from the late medieval period, when it was dominated by the economic power of the monasteries, during the Dissolution and subsequent changes, to 1603. Although early churchwardens' accounts have not survived for the parish, the analysis draws upon a variety of contemporary sources including wills, ecclesiastical documents, manor court rolls and other miscellaneous material, as well as the fabric and structure of the parish church itself. Aspects of worship and ritual in Kirkby Malham, the response to the reforms, and the extent to which conformity in the reformed Church of England was established in the parish by the end of the sixteenth century, are examined.     

A History of the Concept of the Stimulus and the Role it Played in the Neurosciences

The term stimulus, as it was used in science from its earliest appearance in the sixteenth century up to the beginning of the nineteenth century, shows a gradual progress in denotation from the physical object designed to produce nervous and muscular excitation to the generically conceived event or object that initiates sensory or motor activity. To this shift corresponds a shift in the understanding of sensory experience. Johannes Müller's law of specific energy of sensory nerves played a major role in the shift, and Hermann von Helmholtz gave the shift its most thorough philosophical explanation.     

Is Francesco Patrizi’s L’Amorosa Filosofia a heterodox reading of the Symposium?

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on L’Amorosa Filosofia, perhaps the most compelling response to Ficino’s De Amore produced in the sixteenth century, as it is centered on the notion of love as philautia, based upon a naturalistic and psychological interpretation. The learned lady Tarquinia Molza, the most important interlocutor of Francesco Patrizi, affirms that love, from its beginnings in the inner self to its end, when reaching the divine, cannot but be a phenomenon that engages the sense of touch, showing a naturalistic attitude toward the body and an interest in the mediation between matter and spirit. Contrary to popular notions of self-love as selfish and callous, an honest man must necessarily love himself first in order to love others. In The Praise of Folly, Erasmus also tackles the concept, making Folly praise Philautia as a fundamental means for happiness. More relevant to Patrizi’s work, in Mario Equicola’s De Natura de Amore, there is a long digression on the virtues of self-love.     

Debt,distraint, display and dead men’s treasure: material culture in late medieval Aberdeen

ABSTRACT

This paper uses the burgh court records of Aberdeen to explore the material culture of medieval Scottish townspeople. Four main areas are explored: the use of pawning and pledges to facilitate commercial transactions and maintain solvency; the practice of distraint as a means of coercion and debt recovery; the passage of burgesses’ moveable goods to their heirs; and the significance of clothing in public display. Precious metal objects featured prominently among the goods deployed to enable their owners to fulfil their obligations although the poor sometimes had to part with the most basic goods. For some in Aberdeen, the sixteenth century saw a rise in ownership of luxuries, including expensive clothes, although this may not have spread to ordinary people in town and country, and possession itself was, for some, insecure. Nonetheless it is clear that Scotland participated in the growing consumerism evident elsewhere in later medieval and Renaissance Europe.