506 PARLIAMENTARY COLBERTISM 
protect local weavers against middlemen? who purchased for 
the large employers, or with a view to export’ In the 
sixteenth century, however, the wholesale purchasers seem to 
have obtained an undisputed position in the wool trade, and 
the domestic manufacturers could not purchase direct from 
attempts the grower. Henry VIII. endeavoured to force the dealing 
ore made in this commodity back on to the old lines by his Weavers’ 
he large Act®; but under Edward VI. it seemed preferable to recognise 
akers from the new order of affairs. The domestic weavers, and the 
sngrossing . 
t. spinners they employed, were forced to have recourse to 
middlemen in order to obtain wool, either for carding or 
combing, in the quantities that they could afford to buy. 
Hence the general prohibition against regrators was relaxed 
in favour of the poorer workers, in the neighbourhood of 
Norwich, and also round Halifax®. The recriminations 
against the wool merchants, by the weavers, continued 
shrough the sixteenth and seventeenth® centuries, but no 
satisfactory method of giving the domestic spinners and 
weavers a preference could be devised. The domestic weaver, 
who could not buy a large stock of material, evidently found 
it difficult to procure wool or yarn as he required it, and this 
must have hampered him in the pursuit of his calling; the 
wealthy undertaker was much less likely to suffer from this 
difficulty. It may be conjectured that one reason why the 
domestic system survived so long as it did in Yorkshire was 
because the little grass farmers round Leeds, who worked as 
weavers, were able to rely to some extent on local supplies. 
2nd to The Tudor and Stuart regulation of the wool trade 
insist that : . 
they should appears to have been intended to protect the domestic weaver 
4 Lu from capitalist competition; but the government also busied 
wages,  itgelf to secure satisfactory conditions for the weavers who 
were working for wages. This class was not explicitly pro- 
vided for in the statute of 1563; but authority was given 
for settling the rates of pay per piece in 15977, and in a 
A.D. 1689 
~1776. 
1 Lohmann, op. cit. 66. 27 Edw. IIL. ii. ¢. 8; 31 Edw. III. c. 2; 14 RB. IL. c. 4. 
1 4 Henry VII ec. 11. 8 37 Henry VIL. c. 15. 
| Edw. VIL c. 6. 5 2 and 3 P. and M. c. 13. 
See above, p. 298. 
Regulations on this and kindred matters were drafted in 1593 (S. P. D. EL 
yexXLIV. 126—130). but the measure became law as 39 El. ¢. 12.