PART II.-CHAPTER XII.

        Eminentcloathiers of this county.

[In this chapter there is a long “Digression of Cloathiers of other Counties,” full of curious matter, which is here necessarily omitted. - J. B.]

.. .  Sutton of Salisbury, was an eminent cloathier:  what is become of his family I know not.

[John] Hall, I doe believe, was a merchant of the staple, at Salisbury, where he had many houses.  His dwelling house, now a taverne (1669), was on the Ditch, where in the glasse windowes are many scutchions of his armes yet remaining, and severall merchant markes.  Quaere, if there are not also wooll-sacks in the pannells of glass? [Of this house and family the reader will find many interesting particulars in a volume by my friend the Rev. Edward Duke, of Lake House, near Amesbury.  Its title will explain the work, viz.  “Prolusiones Historicæ; or, Essays Illustrative of the Halle of John Halle, citizen and merchant of Salisbury in the reigns of Henry vi. and Edward iv.; with Notes illustrative and explanatory.  By the Rev. Edward Duke, M.A., F.S.A., and L.S. in two vols. 8vo. 1837.” (Only one volume has been published.) — J. B.]
        ___________________________________

The ancestor of Sir William Webb of Odstock, near Salisbury, was a merchant of the staple in Salisbury.  As Grevill and Wenman bought all the Coteswold wooll, so did Hall and Webb the wooll of Salisbury plaines; but these families are Roman Catholiques.

The ancestor of Mr. Long, of Rood Ashton, was a very great cloathier.  He built great part of that handsome church, as appeares by the inscription there, between 1480 and 1500.

[William] Stump was a wealthy cloathier at Malmesbury, tempore Henrici viii.  His father was the parish clarke of North Nibley, in Gloucestershire, and was a weaver, and at last grew up to be a cloathier.  This cloathier at Malmesbury, at the dissolution of the abbeys, bought a great deale of the abbey lands thereabout.  When King Henry 8th hunted in Bradon Forest, he gave his majesty and the court a great entertainment at his house (the abbey).  The King told him he was afraid he had undone himself; he replied that his own servants should only want their supper for it. [See this anecdote also in Fuller’s Worthies, Wiltshire. — J. B.] Leland sayes that when he was there the dortures and other great roomes were filled with weavers’ loomes. [The following is the passage referred to (Leland’s Itinerary, vol. ii. p. 27.) “The hole logginges of th’ abbay be now longging to one Stumpe, an exceeding rich clothiar, that boute them of the king.  This Stumpe was the chef causer and contributor to have th’ abbay chirch made a paroch chirch.  At this present tyme every corner of the vaste houses of office that belongid to th’ abbay be full of lumbes to weeve cloth yn, and this Stumpe entendith to make a strete or 2 for cloathiers in the back vacant ground of the abbay that is withyn the town waulles.  There be made now every yere in the town a 3,000 clothes.”  See “Memorials of the Family of Stumpe”, by Mr. J. G. Nichols, in “Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica”, vol. vii. — J. B.]
        ___________________________________