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A HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE of wool, Doleman by name, so rich and so little inclined to thrift, that he laid out the enormous sum of ten thousand pounds on building a vast and strong house near his native place. Fearful of the lashes he ex- pected to receive from the envy of his neigh- bours, he inscribed more than one apposite sentence, both in Greek and Latin, above his superb stone porch, as spells against those ill-wishers whose peculiar malice he dreaded.' l Thomas Dolman, great-grandson of the Thomas Dolman who first held the manor of Shaw, was a clerk of the Privy Council, M.P. for Reading, attained to the honour of knighthood in the time of Charles II., and fought for the king in the second battle of Newbury. The manufacturers of the Tudor period were very prosperous. The foreign trade was good, and wool had increased in value, and the Inclosure Acts of 1517-8 show that a very large amount of arable land in Berkshire was laid down as pasture for sheep, in order to produce the rich fleeces for her traders and clothworkers. An enduring relic of New- bury's palmy days of the clothing industry is the existence of the Guild or Fraternity of Weavers founded in the reign of Henry VIII. and incorporated by Royal Charter in the forty- fourth year of Queen Elizabeth (1601), under the style of ' the Fellowship of the Weavers at Newbury.' As a reward for their royal welcome to King Henry VIII. he gave them permission to take four bucks out of his park at Donnington for their annual feast. By their charter no one was allowed to exercise the trade of weaving within the town unless they were made free of the company. Their annual feast days were celebrated with much festivity, especially in the seventeenth century. Basker- ville, in describing a journey from Abingdon to Newbury in the early years of the Common- wealth period, wrote of the town : ' They are a very sociable people, and to increase trade do keep great feasts, each several Company, they and their wives feasting to- gether, especially the Clothiers and Hatters.' The corporate insignia of the guild will be described in the topographical section, but the pall or hearse-cloth deserves mention here, as it is a specimen of the hand-weaving of the clothiers of Newbury at the time of William and Mary, and the shield of arms is a pro- duction of the old silk factory at Greenham Mills. Another relic of the ancient industry is the 1 Continuation of Henry's Hist, of Great Britain, by J. P. Andrews (ed. 1796), p. 424. Old Cloth Hall, which has recently been restored, and tells of the palmiest days of the town's mercantile importance. The same progress which has been noticed in the clothing industry, of Newbury is evi- dent in Reading, where there were several famous clothiers. One of the earliest records, now in existence, of the trade in the borough is in the year 1435, when Nicholas Mount- fort, a fuller, and John Heryng, a weaver, are admitted members of the guild. In 1469 two men were elected as wardens of the art of ' fullers' crafte.' In the previous year John Longe, ' fullere,' was admitted into the fraternity of the ' Gilde Aule Merchaunt.' In 1454 mention is made of one John Lynd, ' fuller and forenere, ' and in 1448 Thomas Clerk, weaver, was elected warden. The names of William Brussele and Edward Lynacre have a Flemish sound ; these men were mayors of Reading in 1444 and 1445, and may have emigrated here from the Low Countries, and helped to improve the art of manufacturing cloth. In the Records a large number of names of early craftsmen and traders is given, but the majority are English names, or are so anglicized that it is difficult to detect a foreign source. In the fifteenth century it may be con- cluded that the industry was firmly established in Reading, and possibly earlier, but of this we have no evidence. In the charter of Henry VII. granted in 1485, the king gave authority to the mayor and burgesses for ' the working and making of cloth, and exa- mining the utensils employed in the same.' Struggling clothiers were occasionally assisted by the bounty of Sir Thomas White, son of a Reading clothier who was Lord Mayor of London in 1553, and by the munificence of John Kendrick, which will be hereafter noticed more fully. In the year 1486-7 (2 Henry VII.) the mayor and burgesses took upon themselves the oversight and correction of all workmen in cloth-making within the borough, and several entries in the corpora- tion books show that the industry had greatly increased. The Inclosure Acts of 1517-18 brought an increased supply of wool to the Reading clothiers, and labour was plentiful owing to the eviction of tenants and villagers who flocked to the towns. 2 Merchants and manu- facturers became rich and prosperous. A list of the five gilds or companies which existed in the time of Queen Mary is pre- served among the Corporation archives, and amongst these the Clothiers and Cloth- Industrid History of England, p. 98. 390