Making and Marketing Woollen Cloth in Late-Medieval London

This paper discusses the interaction in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries of the five cloth- making trades - burellers, weavers, fullers, shearmen, and dyers - with the drapers who sold the cloth. The drapers initially sold imported cloth, and the burellers made and sold cheap Candlewick cloth. With the replacement of imported by local cloth, weavers, fullers and shearmen made cloth, much of it of high quality, which they sold to drapers. Drapers also purchased provincial cloth. In the fifteenth century, drapers turned almost exclusively to provincial cloth, some of which they exported themselves and some of which they sold to other merchants, particularly aliens. Much provincial cloth was dyed and finished in London prior to sale, so that many shearmen, dyers and fullers prospered, while the weavers declined; those continuing to weave mostly moved to the suburbs. Drapers expanded their overseas trade, selling finished cloth to southern Europe, and cloth to Antwerp, becoming the second largest company of cloth exporters after the Mercers.