During Matthew’s lifetime, England owed its economic well being to the woolen cloth industry and Essex was one of great wool and cloth counties with Bocking and Braintree among the more important secondary markets.  Essex’s first known fulling mill (1303) was in Bocking and was used during the whole of cloth industry period.  Wool was plentiful and was exported to the great continental cloth-making centers in Flanders (a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France, and the Netherlands).  In 1400, the average annual export of English wool was 11,648,000 pounds.  After the English clothing industry began to grow, wool exports were banned and to assist the new industry, Parliament prohibited the wearing of foreign woolen cloth.

Cloth making was a cottage industry with most of the work done in the homes of those who worked the wool.  The wool was combed (a process that removes short and noiled fibers leaving long fibers which are aligned parallel to one another), then spun into yarn, the yarn wove into cloth followed by the fulling (cleansing to eliminate oils, dirt, and other impurities, and making it thicker;  and shearing (cutting the fabric).   These segments of work were done by different workers.

Matthew became one of England’s  early  entrepreneurs when he became a Clothier.  He bought the raw wool, distributed it to the combing workers, collected and distributed the combed product to the spinners, and finally issued the spun yarn to the weavers.  The fulling process required capital equipment so the last two stages (and drying when required) were usually carried out on a central or factory basis (a fulling mill).

Bocking’s chief industry was producing lighter worsteds and “new draperies” out of wool and other raw materials.  Bocking and Coggeshall Clothiers won a market share with a special sort of “bays” known as “Bockings” and Parliament recognized the fame of the cloth by noting “Many people do counterfeit Cocksall, Bocking, and Braintree cloths, commonly called Handywarps,” and described how to detect the counterfeit product.  By 1577, Bocking had three fulling mills and a population of approximately 1,500.

Fortunately for the Whipples, business was good for the first 15 years of the seventeenth century.  The highest cloth export year was 1614.  Beginning in 1618, the year of Matthew’s death, traditional continental markets softened and by 1622 when Matthew, Jr. and John were running the business, exports had dropped by half.  The depression of 1620-24 resulted in high unemployment.  Exports declined further during the 1629-31 period and in 1636 and 1637, London, Norwich, Sandwich, and many other cities were decimated by the plague.  Economic recovery, already painfully slow and uneven, was suspended for months at a time.

London received a report that approximately 7,000 people in the Bocking area were employed in the “Manufacture of Bayes;” that in the previous seven years they made four-hundred pieces a week which over time fell to three-hundred, then one-hundred a week, and within the past “five or six weeks, not above forty a week.”

The report said about 2,000 pieces – 700 in Bocking – remain unsold, no more are being made, and unemployment was at an unacceptable level.   “That town abounds with poor, whereof many are very unruly; and having no employment, will make the place very hazardous for men of better rank to live among them.”

A 1629 petition to the Privy Council signed by 200 weavers from Bocking and Braintree cited the lack of work and detailed their dire financial straits and demanded immediate aid and assistance.  The petitioners said the need was so great that the Justices of the Privy Council should “forbear all other affairs of the county” and to expect riots unless immediate action was undertaken.

The Privy Council blamed the war (part of the Thirty Years’ War) for the depression and promised the Ministers and Churchwardens of Bocking and Braintree it would stimulate the economy.  But the depression grew worse and the number of unemployed in the area was estimated at ten to eleven thousand and hunger riots began in the spring.  It was a long time before economic conditions improved.

Since the national economy was dependent on cloth export, the country’s woes were blamed on Clothiers and their public standing reached an all time low in the decades of the 20s and 30s.  A member of Parliament complained to the House of Commons that Clothiers “give not the poor competent wages – three pence a day and no more to divers.”

A famous ballad chanted about the time Charles I was crowned (1625) recited in rude rhymes the grievances of the cloth workers.  It was called The Clothiers Delight. Its opening verses:

Of all sorts of calling that in England be,
There is none that liveth so gallant as we;
Our trading maintains us as brave as a Knight,
We live at our pleasure, and take our delight;
We heapeth up riches and treasures great store,
Which we get by griping and grinding the poor.

Chorus

And this is a way for to fill up our purse.
Although we do get it with many a curse.

Through the whole kingdom, in country and town,
There is no danger of our trade going down,
So long as the Comber can work with his comb,
And also the Weaver with his lomb;
The Tucker and Spinner that spins all the year,
We will make them to earn their wages full dear.
Repeat chorus

In former ages we us’d to give,
So that our work-folks like farmers did live;
But the times are altered, we will make them know
All we can to bring them all under our bow;
We will make to work hard for sixpence a day,
Though a shilling they deserve if they had their just pay.
Repeat Chorus

The final 19 years of their life in England were extremely trying economically and undoubtedly caused the brothers to wonder if its clothier business would survive and must have played a role in  their decision to move with their families to New England.

TO BE CONTINUED.