John Read, Sergemaker, Rest in Peace
The probate inventory of John Read. Courtesy of the Wiltshire & Swindon History Centre, Chippenham, P3/R/292.
It feels almost like an intrusion, a disrespectful trampling on a family’s grief, when social historians like us start to examine every intimate detail of someone’s possessions at the moment of their death. Yet probate inventories entice us to do just that, and for decades I’ve been enthusing students to read them and share my fascination. And I don’t suppose that John Read, sergemaker, 326 years on, would mind much if I blogged about him – he might be flattered, as I would be, if someone did the equivalent to me in 2351.
Louise found this one and shared it with me, and she will use it in her history of Langley Burrell. It is particularly informative, and repays study, almost line by line.
John Read junior died without leaving a will in February 1699. The inventory’s heading tells us that he was a sergemaker and that he lived in ‘Chippenham Langley’, by which was meant presumably the portion of Langley Burrell adjacent to, and intermingling with Chippenham, which has since Victorian times been incorporated into the town. The date itself is noteworthy, set down as 1698, because until 1753 the new year began in March, so from a modern perspective February 1698 is actually 1699.
The first oddity to strike the reader familiar with this material is that, unlike most probate inventories, there are no lists of household goods – furniture, bedding, pots and pans – which usually make up the bulk of such documents. Only his clothes (his wearing apparel) is taken notice of. Why should this be? The probable explanation is that he died when he was quite young and was living with his parents (not such a modern phenomenon, after all), so did not own any such things himself. Hence he is termed ‘junior’, and the bond of administration which accompanies the inventory implies this. John Read, his father and closest relative, signed the bond, along with Elizabeth (his mother probably) and Ann (his sister perhaps, who was illiterate and signed with a cross). They renounced control of his estate to a third party, Thomas Hayward of Tetbury, who was described as the deceased’s chiefest creditor. Thomas was also a sergemaker, so it is likely that he and John junior were in business together. If so, Thomas was probably the senior partner, as the inventory does not include the will that John toiled on – that must have belonged to Thomas.
Nearly half, by value, of John’s estate consisted of the goods he had left at Bristol, itemised in the first line, so this was his outlet for the serge he was manufacturing. (His next most valuable asset, further down the list, was his mode of transport, his mare and harness.) The other cloth that belonged to him was still undergoing the final processes, fulling, drying, tentering (stretching on racks) and finishing at nearby fulling mills, in Calne and Christian Malford. Serge is a heavy-duty cloth achieved by weaving in a diagonal pattern, and in north Wiltshire at this period the warp was often made of worsted, wool that had been combed rather than carded or brushed. That some or all of John Read’s serge was made with worsted is suggested by the ‘pair of old combes’ near the foot of the inventory. Locally cloth made in this way was known as ‘drugget’. But the warp could also be made of linen, and then the resulting cloth was known as linsey-woolsey; and John was making this as well, as the inventory tells us. There were ‘three linnen chaines that was on the loomes’ (‘chain’ is the local dialect word for warp).
Most of the other categories into which the appraisers of the inventory (who clearly knew the cloth trade themselves) divided his goods were wool (before spinning) or yarn (after spinning). Prior to spinning the wool had to be oiled and dried, then brushed or ‘drawn’ with wire brushes known as cards (‘scribbled’ was the technical term) to untangle and straighten the fibres. The ‘dryed’ and ‘drawed’ wool is listed in the inventory; some was short and either coarse or fine (depending on how much carding had taken place), and some had already been dyed blue – ‘dyed in the wool’ (a phrase we still use), rather than after being woven into cloth, which would have been termed ‘dyed in the piece’. These processes left behind a certain amount of fluff, here described as ‘pinings’ (pinions), but also known as flock, and used for stuffing mattresses and cushions. There was also inferior or ‘list’ wool, not good enough for weaving, which would in due course be spun and used for binding the selvedge or edge of the finished cloth.
After processing, the wool was spun into yarn, and John Read’s appraisers found that he possessed quantities of brown yarn and coarse white yarn, ready to be woven into serge. After spinning the yarn had to be spooled, usually by winding it around two bars set a fixed a distance apart, and perhaps these are the ‘pair of ringes’ referred to in the inventory. It also had to be strengthened with size or paste, which maybe what the one old paile was used for. And of course, at various stages the wool, yarn and cloth had to be weighed, so that a beam and scales were necessary.
Was John Read a workaholic, who owned nothing not relevant to his chosen trade? Or when he died prematurely was he just making his way in the world, supported by his parents and a business partner, too poor to own any luxuries of his own? Clearly he hadn’t been able to break free and set up on his own. If he had, things might have turned out differently. ‘When I was a bachelor I lived all alone,’ begins a famous folk song, the Foggy Foggy Dew, ‘and worked at the weaver’s trade, and the only thing I ever, ever did wrong, was to woo a fair young maid.’ Of that side of his life, if it existed, we know nothing. All we can say is that everything listed item by item in his inventory can be accounted for in terms of his trade.
John Chandler