SOURCE: "Thomas Deloney and the Virtous Proletariat," in The Cambridge Journal, Vol. V, No. 1, October, 1951, pp. 34–50.

[In the following excerpt, Mackerness contends that Deloney's novels affirm the rigid stratification of Elizabethan society. He points out that historical records clearly show that sixteenth-century cloth workers were exploited by their masters, yet Deloney portrays them as members of a "virtuous proletariat, " content with their lot in life.]

1

In the voluminous pamphlet literature of the sixteenth century, expressions of professional jealousy are relatively common. It is not surprising, therefore, that the activities of a part-time author like Thomas Deloney should have provoked sarcastic utterances from energetic practitioners such as Greene and Nashe. Neither Greene nor Nashe, however, had any cause to envy the obscure East Anglian ballad-maker, whose literary efforts were (in their opinion) so inferior to their own. In his notes to the Everyman volume which contains two of Deloney's novels, Philip Henderson says that Deloney became 'successor' to William Elderton as chief ballad wrter in 1585. This rather misleadingly suggests that there was an office of ballad writer at this time, which is not correct; and besides, Elderton was living until 1592. More recently Professor Pinto has written that 'Elderton was succeeded by Tom D'Urfey'¹; and this seems a more plausible succession, since in spite of his frequent coarseness D'Urfey did hit on a ballad mode as acceptable to Restoration taste as that of Elderton and Deloney was to the culture of the late sixteenth century. Deloney's editor states that there can be no doubt of his writing ballads prolifically during this period (roughly from 1592 to 1600). And it may be suggested that a profitable approach to his whole output can be made through a brief consideration of the ballads known to be by Deloney, or attributed to him with some degree of certainty.

It should be noted here, however, that a number of works not now extant—including a ballad 'containing a Complaint of Great Want and Scarcity of Corn' and a 'Book for the Silk Weavers', both reputed to be Deloney's, and both described as 'scurrilous'²—might have been of such a nature as to suggest that the view of Deloney advanced here needs some modification. Moreover, in preparing his writings for the press Deloney or his printer may have toned down what were originally more 'pointed' performances.

But the pieces we can still attach to Deloney's name show him to have been representative of a class of ballad-writer quite common in the late sixteenth century. Apart from Elderton and Deloney there were men like William Forrest, Stephen Peele, William Birch and Matthew Parker, whose industry can be seen from the entries made year after year in the Stationers' Register. The poems in Deloney's two collections, The Garland of Good Will and Strange Histories, Of Kings, Princes, Dukes, etc., are fairly general in character, and are not restricted to the use of 'ballad metre', as that term is generally understood. But taken collectively along with the 'miscellaneous ballads' in F. O. Mann's volume, they exhibit certain interesting features.

For one thing, the writer is strongly anti-Catholic. Hyder Rollins reports that during the year 1596–7 'about one hundred ballads were registered for publication, and of these fully half dealt with the Rebellion, or, as a corollary, attacked the Papists'.³ In the next year, too, 'most of the ballads were chronicles of Catholic plots, real or suspected'. So it is not surprising to find that in 1586 Deloney had taken the extreme Protestant view of the Babington conspiracy:

That was written within a day or two after the plot was discovered. But Deloney is equally suspicious of the Catholics when writing of events in the more distant past. Thus in the Strange Histories, when relating the lamentable death of King John, he says that the King proceeded to Swinstead Abbey, near Lincoln:

There did the King oppose his welcome good;
But much deceit lyes under an Abbot's hood.⁵

More subtly, in the Dialogue betweene plaine TRUTH and blind IGNORANCE.⁶ Ignorance is represented as a poor old man (whose speech is an Elizabethan version of some rustic dialogue) who believes that the superstitious worship of the cloister and all the mystery involved in the Catholic ceremonial are good things. When Truth explains that the Catholics do not present God's word openly, but subsist on mere hypocrisy, the old man concludes that Truth is a 'fellow of new learning' and refuses to accept his discountenancing of the Saints, the Pater Noster, telling of beads and so on. Eventually Truth manages to convert Ignorance, who promises to confide in the Gospel and the Passion of Christ, and to have done with these subtle Papists. For Deloney, non-conformity is another name for treason. The position of the King (or Queen) as the Lord's anointed is taken for granted, and any 'rebels' who dare to rise up against him are promptly regarded as wrong-doers.

This position is put rather curiously in a short prose piece appended to the Strange Histories. It is entitled 'A speeche between Ladies, being shepherds on SALISBURY Plaine'. There has been an account of how Wat Tyler and Jack Straw rebelled against Richard II. The ladies are commending the Mayor of London for his courage in the affair, and also the King for making the said Mayor a knight. Someone wants to know what became of Jack Straw in the end. "I will shew you,' says Lady Oxenbridge. 'Jacke Straw with the rest of that rabble, being in the end apprehended (as Rebels never flourish long) was at last brought to be executed at London, where he confest that there intent was, if they could have brought their vile purpose to passe, to have murdered the King and his Nobles…' In the ballad itself, Wat Tyler is rendered especially obnoxious because he abused the pardon which the King had allowed him for offences which Deloney represents as an outburst of mere anarchy; the rebels are supposed to have kidnapped the Lord Chancellor and the Lord High Treasurer, to have looted churches, freed prisoners from the Counter and Newgate, etc. There is not a single hint that there might have been a possible case for the 'rebels' since (as Deloney himself says) the uprising was hardly organized at all, and few of those who took part in it were trained agitators. The point Deloney is anxious to enforce is that the reigning monarch's interests are to be respected uncritically: and that it is the business of the average citizen to remain subject to his rule. Kings provide the centre of interest in several of Deloney's historical ballads, and the attitude towards them is invariably the same: royal 'blood' is reverenced, and sympathy is constantly being asked for on behalf of a 'royal' or 'comly' ruler, a 'prudent' prince, or an 'unhappy' queen. Similarly, noble birth outside the royal families always commands respect, as in the story of patient Grissel and a noble Marquess,⁷ and the degrees below nobility itself are duly mentioned. As for the monarch's foreign enemies, Spain is identified with all that is most objectionable in the Catholic faith, and the Spaniards are shown as men of extreme cruelty; while the English, on the other hand, are naturally open-hearted and chivalrous.⁸

In an interesting and spirited piece on the 'Winning of Cales'⁹ he recounts how the 'proud', 'cunning', 'bragging' Spaniard is overcome by the 'noble' Earl of Essex and his 'brave' British general. But Deloney is not merely commending his own side in one or two particular encounters; he is exemplifying in simple terms some of the ideals which culminated in the doctrine of the sovereign state. In a ballad 'Of the faithfull friendship that lasted between two faithfull friends' in The Garland Deloney borrowed a story which had been told in Elyot's The Governour, though before that it had appeared in the Decamerone. There seems to be no evidence that Deloney was attempting to retail directly any of the political theory contained in Elyot's book. But if his ballads are viewed as a whole, they can be seen to have been so framed as to endorse and to extend into popular terms a doctrine not unlike this from Elyot: 'Wherefore undoubtedly the best and most sure governaunce is by one kynge or prince, whiche ruleth onely for the weale of his people to him subjecte: and that maner of governaunce is beste approved, and hath longest continued, and is most auncient.'¹⁰ All this was a common enough belief in Deloney's time. But his interpretation of it seems worth bearing in mind when we come to consider his novels.

It might perhaps be objected to this, though, that in his ballads Deloney was only doing what dozens of his contemporaries were doing. But in their case we have no novels to go on to as we have with Deloney. When we examine his prose writings we notice that he is here addressing the same kind of audience as he was in the ballads: we also note a similar respect for the established social order. On the purely literary side there is a considerable fidelity to what may be called the 'merry tale' tradition. In the case of Deloney a classification of the kind Saintsbury delighted in is hardly necessary. His novels have this much in common with, say, the novels of Defoe—the same characters or groups of characters appear in successive chapters without much interruption from personce strange to the narrative. The difference lies in the fact that often (though by no means invariably) separate chapters form detachable tales which have an organization and completeness apart from the novel as a whole; and, what is more, subsidiary short stories occur within these tales.

An example of this is the story of Thomas Cole's murder, which forms Chapter XI of Thomas of Reading. The heading of this chapter runs as follows: 'How THOMAS of READING was murdered at his Hosts house of COLEBROOKE, who also had murdered many before him, and how their wickednesse was at length revealed.' The author's business is to illustrate and justify the importance of that how within the space of the chapter: we find that the next one is about something quite different: 'How divers of the Clothiers wives went to the Churching of SUTTONS wife of SALISBURY, and of their merriment.' The intention to promote innocent diversion is explicit in Deloney's novels, as appears from the title-page of The Gentle Craft, which is advertised as a 'Discourse containing many matters of Delight, very pleasant to be read and set forth with pictures and variety of Wit and Mirth'. Warton, in his History of English Poetry¹¹ quotes from Thomas Wilson's Arte of Rhetorique on the utility of merry tales: 'And if time maie so serve, it were good when men be wearied, to make them somewhat mery, and to begin with some pleasaunt tale, to take occasion to jeste wittely … ' Wilson was obviously referring to serious rhetorical pieces. But the ease with which the merry jest can be made to direct interest quickly and effectively partly explains the prevalence of the 'conte' in our earlier literature. Deloney, however, wants to persuade his readers to adopt a 'merry' and contented frame of mind for quite different reasons than those which occupy Dekker's attention in, say, Gods Tokens, or a Rod for Run-Awaies (1625).¹²

In his book on Deloney, Abel Chevalley complains that F. O. Mann's survey of the author and his works is imperfect. 'Il n'a nullement étudié Deloney comme témoin littéraire des destins économiques, ni comme agent social dans le dévéloppement de la littérature. J'envisage, au contraire, l'œuvre de Deloney comme un miroir romanesque pour la vie laborieuse, comme un facteur ouvrier dans la vie du roman. C'est, a mes yeux, un document appréciable, et inapprécie, sur les relations et réactions entre l'histoire de l'art et celle du prolétariat.'¹³ There is no denying that Deloney's nov els do 'mirror' the life around Deloney in the sense that he writes principally of artisans and petty bourgeois rather than of kings and princes; and that he occasionally describes the habits of life among small traders and working folk generally.¹⁴ But in The Gentle Craft, for example, there is very little detailed description of the cobbler's trade: the different processes entailed in actually making shoes are not 'brought to life' as a natural development of the fiction. Instead, Deloney seems to have as his main concern the desire to make it clear how virtuous and well-connected the trade is. 'The Shoemaker's Son', as he tells us on the title-page, 'is a Prince born'. And in the course of The Gentle Craft he shows how a number of worthies have commenced useful and successful careers as humble workers in that occupation. Before any sort of interest in 'conditions of work', Deloney puts a deference to the established stratification of society similar to that noted in the ballads. The king remains a figure to be bowed to, admired, and worked for: 'The poore workemen humbly thanked his Majesty for his bountifull liberality (a gift of 100 angels): and ever since it hath been a custome among the Weavers every year presently after Bartholemewtide, in a remembrance of the King's favour, to meet together and make a merry feast.'¹⁵ Below the level of royalty, the well-born aristocracy can be counted upon to intercede on behalf of the underdog; thus, for instance, in The Gentle Craft Sir John Rainsford, the 'gallant knight', buries a priest alive because the latter has refused to inter the deceased father of five small children. Deloney uses the prince-in-disguise device several times to work a satisfactory conclusion. As for the average members of the lower classes, they invariably know their place, and their activities serve to provide a kind of build-up to the personages in the social classes above them.

In the case of Jack of Newbury (John Winchcomb) we are given the story of a self-made man who has progressed from kitchen-boy to clothier by care and diligence, and by reliance on initiative rather than self-importance and bluff. 'Thus was Jackes good government and discretion noted of the best and substantiallest men of the Towne so that it wrought his great commendations, and his Dame thought her selfe not a little blest to have such a servant, that was so obedient unto her, and so carefull for her profite …'¹⁶ The wooing of the Dame by a Tanner, a Parson and a Tailor provides one or two short subsidiary tales of the kind previously noted. But in spite of the advantages which the other men have over Jack, the widow prefers the humble clothier. He, however, has to tame her shrewishness by exercising good sense, and partially submitting to her will: but 'they lived long together, in most godly, loving and kind sort, till in the end she dyed, leaving her husband wondrous wealthy'.¹⁷ This piece of good fortune enables Jack to open out as a fairsized businessman. And it is when the father of a girl he is wooing comes to examine his premises that we are given some idea of the extent to which Jack's concern runs:

Within one roome being large and long,
There stood two hundred Loomes full strong …¹⁸

It is worth noticing that when Jack begins to speak to the old man about the question of taking his daughter's hand in marriage, he is preoccupied with the financial transaction involved, and wants to strike a good bargain. The father, however, is not in a position to grant much of a dowry, so Jack agrees to be content with the woman's modesty, rather than bother too much about her father's mere twenty nobles and a weaning calf. And the wedding, which is a big affair, endures ten days, 'to the great reliefe of the poore that dwelt all about'.

This event is followed by the incident in which Jack of Newbury's establishment supplies the King's army with uniforms in which to march to Scotland against the invading King James. For this, and for his own part in the Battle of Flodden Field, the Queen wants to create Jack a Knight; and giving him her hand to kiss, she elicits this reply from him: 'Most gracious Queene … Gentleman I am none, nor the sonne of a Gentleman, but a poore Clothier, whose lands are his Loomes, having no other Rentes but what I get from the backes of little sheepe: nor can I claime any cognisance but a wooden shuttle. Neverthelesse, most gratious Queene, these my poore servants and my selfe, my life and goods are ready at your Majesties command, not onely to spend our blouds, but also to lose our lives in defence of our King and Country."⁹ In other words, Jack assumes that he has no right to accept the preferment which will take him into a position where he might be tempted to forsake his own social class: no matter how great his genius as an industrial organizer, that can never be a substitute for gentle birth. In a similar manner, when his company goes a little later on to meet the King, Jack characterizes himself as the prince of Ants whose hill is being disturbed by butterflies and caterpillars. Here one wonders whether Deloney had some acquaintance with a parallel passage in Elyot's Governour,²⁰ or whether he could have taken the passage from a pamphlet or sermon nearer his own time. In this story the ants represent the common people, and the butterfly—the chief of the drones—Cardinal Wolsey himself. Deloney makes a good thing out of this incident, the upshot of which is to point out that in reality a mere clothier can be as important to the king as an archbishop. The Cardinal, indeed, tries to belittle 'these Artificers'; but neither the King nor the Queen will hear anything said to Jack of Newbury's disadvantage. 'I would I had moe such subjects (said the King) and many of so good a mind.'

Deloney's intention throughout Jack of Newbury thus seems to be to demonstrate the extent to which the type of citizen-artificer to which John Winchcomb belonged was able by his lawful exertions to profit the common weal, and thereby to contribute to that ordering of society which constituted the 'estates of the realm'. In the fifth chapter of the book we are given a catalogue of the pictures which Jack has in his parlour at home: they are for the most part representations of individuals who have risen above their station by adherence to principles which Jack himself exemplifies. And Jack discourses on them to his dependents in this manner: 'Seeing then my good servants, that these men have been advanced to high estate and Princely dignities, by wisedome, learning and diligence, I would wish you to imitate the like vertues, that you might attaine the like honours: for which of you doth know what good fortune God hath in store for you? there is none of you so poorely borne, but that men of baser birth have come to great honours. The idle hand shall ever goe in a ragged garment, and the sloathful live in reproach: but such as doe lead a vertuous life, and governe themselves discreetly, shall of the best be esteemed, and spend their lives in credit.'²¹ The ideal of ordinary social life implied here is an industrious and contented proletariat trusting in the value of work to obtain favour from the Almighty. Or, as Deloney puts it in the King's answer to Jack of Newbury's petition, 'As the Clergy for the soule, the Souldier for defence of his countrey, the Lawyer to execute Justice, the Husbandman to feede the belly: so is the skilfull Clothier no lesse necessary for the cloathing of the backe, whom we may reckon among the chiefe Yeomen of our Land … ' This is nothing more than an extended version of the old statement describing the functions alloted to the various members of the body politic—'I pray for all, I fight for all … ' etc. Deloney does not make a very careful distinction between a 'clothier' and a 'cloth-worker', though the preface to Jack of Newbury is addressed to 'All famous Cloth Workers in England'. An interesting aspect of his novels is that they contain little differentiation between members of the producing classes; from the motivation of the characters, and from the language they use in speaking to one another, we have great difficulty in finding out whether a master-craftsman or an apprentice is the centre of interest at any one time. The 'poor' are referred to a good deal, and Jack of Newbury's beneficence towards them is often mentioned. But the presentation of working people is generally managed from a distance, as it were. When Deloney does speak of them they are nearly always discovered happy at their work—and often singing merrily. In the ballad of patient Grissel and the noble Marquess, we are shown Grissel at her spinning wheel, where:

She sang ful sweet, with pleasant voyce melodiously.

And it is perhaps significant that when the old man from Aylesbury comes to see Jack's establishment at Newbury the description of the work in progress is given not in prose but in verse:

Two hundred men the truth is so
Wrought in these Loomes all in a row.
By every one a pretty boy,
Sate making quils with mickle joy;
And in another place hard by
An hundred women merrily
Were carding hard with joyfull cheere….

Of this verse Professor G. M. Trevelyan, in English Social History²² has written: 'Possibly the cheerfulness, certainly the numbers, of the hands in the factory are exaggerated by the retrospective ardour of the poet.' And that observation invites a little closer attention to Deloney's position as a possible mirror of sixteenth-century social conditions.

2

It would be a mistake to conclude that because Deloney writes about shoemakers and weavers he necessarily presents a fair or reliable account of the Elizabethan artisan. He certainly does not 'plug' the workers' interests in the way many modern 'proletarian' novelists have done. For convenience it will perhaps be best to consider here the weaving industry itself, since it is the subject of Deloney's best-known novel. In his book, English Industries of the Middle Ages,²³ L. F. Salzman quotes a 'Concise Poem on … Shepton Mallet' by Richard Watts, which appeared in The Young Man's Looking Glass (1641) and sets out the various stages of cloth making:

First the Parter, that doth cull
The finer from the courser sort of wool.
The Dyer then in order next doth stand,
With sweating brow and a laborious hand….

In this poem Watts enumerates fourteen different kinds of worker engaged in the cloth mills of Shepton Mallet, and throughout he manages to communicate the toilsome nature of their work:

The Weaver next doth warp and weave the chain,
Whilst Puss his cat stands mewing for a skaine;
But he, laborious with his hands and heeles,
Forgets his Cat and cries, Come boy with queles….

Watts conveys here some idea of the extent to which one part of the process would press on to another; and he gives an entirely different notion of it from that which might be gained from the pages of Deloney's works.

Salzman says that this passage from Richard Watts can be regarded as 'equally applicable to earlier times'. The point (as far as Deloney is concerned) is, how much earlier? In his Industrial Organization in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries²⁴ George Unwin, speaking of an extract from the State Papers relating to the organization of the Clothworkers' Company in the time of James I, calls the evidence gathered there 'an account which, though it belongs to the succeeding reign, can doubtless be applied with little modification to the time of Elizabeth'. It would not be wise to take a topographical poem written in the reign of Charles I as representing Elizabethan or Jacobean life and practice. But once certain allowances are made, the principle behind Unwin's 'application' is no doubt sound. For an important industry like cloth-making would be among the first to be influenced by advances in technology, when they came; and yet there is nothing to show that the rate of development or change in English weaving between 1550 and 1650 was very much quicker than it had been in the hundred years previous to that. Deloney's hero, John Winchcomb (the real Jack of Newbury) died, according to Fuller, in the year 1520: and Deloney was not born until about 1540. But the cloth industry as he knew it would be substantially the same as it was in Winchcomb's time as far as the disposition of labour was concerned. The 'system' under which Jack of Newbury prospered was probably still intact in the wool-producing localities of Somerset, Wiltshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire right through Deloney's lifetime and on until the late seventeenth century.

As R. H. Tawney remarks, in his preface to Wilson's Discourse on Usury,²⁵ 'The apex of the industry consisted of a class of capitalist merchants or rich clothiers like the famous clothiers of Bath and Wells described by Leland, Spring of Lavenham in Suffolk … Winchcomb of Newbury, and Byrom of Manchester, who found work for 500 to 1,500 employees … ' Under this system, as Unwin explains in his article on 'Commerce and Coinage'²⁶, 'the workers received a pittance of fourpence or sixpence a day, or worked in their homes at a low piece-work rate. As in either case they were liable to have their wages assessed by the magistrates, and had neither the skill nor the bargaining power of other craftsmen, they were reduced to nearly the same level of dependence as the agricultural worker'. There is an element of ambiguity in the phrase 'pittance of fourpence or sixpence' a day, because fourpence or sixpence in Shakespeare's time was a much bigger sum than it is today: but Unwin obviously means that this was a miserably low wage. And the extent to which the labouring classes depended on the capitalist employers is suggested more adequately in Unwin's Industrial Organization²⁷ when, speaking of the negotiations which took place between the Clothworkers' Company and the Merchant Taylors in 1566 he writes: the point upon which the incident (the clothworkers' offer) leaves no room for doubt is the separability and dependence of the handicraft element… ' Here again we must remember not to apply standards prevailing in London to life in the provinces; and not to confuse the interests of an independent provincial master clothier with those of a member of the Clothworkers' Company.

At the same time we have to remember that the effect of measurers like the Statute of Artificers was, among other things, to enforce a uniform rate of wages throughout whole industries, although, as Unwin says, 'it is to be noticed that there were more rates levelled down than there were levelled up'.²⁸ But in the 'Act Touching Weavers' (1556) we are informed that the wealthier clothiers 'do many ways oppress (the handicraft workers) some by setting up and keeping in their houses divers looms, and keeping and maintaining journeymen and persons unskilful, to the decay of a great number of artificers which were brought up in the said science of weaving, their families and house holds'.²⁹ In order to protect the small man and the independent handloom weaver the Act attempted to restrict weaving to those who had served an apprenticeship in this craft. It is easy to see in it something of a 'state regulation of industry', and behind that the benevolent spirit of an enlightened Queen. But the Act only signalizes a further separation of masters and employees, and the masters' exploitation of this, with consequent degradation for the workers. All accounts of the woollen industry at this time agree that employees dependent on masters in a superior social position were extremely poor. We have, unfortunately, no statistics at our disposal as detailed, say, as those available to Marx when in writing of 'The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation' he was able to quote that: 'In the year 1795, the average weekly wages paid in Northamptonshire amounted to 7s. 6d.; the annual total expenditure of a family of six persons was £36 12s. 5d.; their total income from wages was £29 18s; the deficit made good by the parish was £6 14s. 5d. In the same county, in the year 1814, the weekly wages were 12s. 2d…. '³⁰ In the absence of information such as this to apply to the sixteenth-century weavers, contemporary evidence such as that contained in Dekker's Plague Pamphlets must serve. In The Meeting of Gallants at an Ordinarie (1604), it is interesting to note how Dekker classes the silk weavers among those workers who through economic necessity would have to remain in the plague-ridden town.³¹

But returning to the case of John Winchcomb, it seems not unfair to conclude that his conspicuous business success (though after all, he was only one of many) depended very largely on the kind of exploitation which the history books reveal. Once again we have to take the precaution of not applying to the period we want to illustrate data which really refer to a later time. But an extract from the State Papers of James I in 1615³² seems so pertinent in this connection that it ought to be mentioned, if not discussed. A writer on 'Reasons to prove the convenience of buying and selling of wool' speaks of the 'breeders' or growers of wool (sheep farmers), and then goes on: 'Theis woolls are usually converted by fower sorts of people.' He then describes the four kinds of cloth factor; and Jack of Newbury probably belonged to the first of these. 'I. The riche clothier that buyeth his whole years provision beforehand, and layes it up in storre, and in the winter tyme hath it spunne by his owne spinsters and woven by his owne weavers and fulled by his owne tuckers, and all at the lowest rate for wages. Theis clothiers,' the account continues, 'could well spare the wolle buyers that they might likewise have woolle at their owne prizes and the rather because many of them be Brogging clothiers and sell againe very much if not moste of the woolle they buye.'³³

How far this description fits Winchcomb exactly it is difficult to say because it is impossible to collect much relevant 'internal evidence' concerning the business conducted by him. There is a tradition that a certain British military commander on the Continent sent over a request for some of 'Winchcomb's kerseys' during a campaign in France: and Fuller stated that he had 'been informed that Jack of Newberry was the first that introduced (broadcloth) into this country'.³⁴ Deloney's account of the petition which the clothiers presented to the King in an attempt to improve conditions of trade with foreign countries is historically accurate, although Deloney has 'worked up' Jack of Newbury's leading part in it considerably. From histories of the county of Berkshire we can learn of the manner in which Winchcomb's wealth was disposed of after the declaration of his will; and Winchcomb provided for the establishment of his family by putting up a considerable amount of property. If the accounts of his dealing with the King and Cardinal Wolsey are to be believed, Winchcomb was a 'plain speaking' man! But few traditions relating to his personal character or to his reputation as a business man have survived. He was not, however, the only clothier of his time in the Newbury and Reading area who employed a large number of hands. A good account of William Stumpe of Malmesbury, for instance (who found work for two hundred men) appears in G. D. Ramsay's Wiltshire Woollen and Worsted Industries³⁵ where he is spoken of as a man of great probity, deep religious conviction, with an organizing ability amounting, in Ramsay's words, to 'genius'.

Other Wiltshire clothiers had, according to Ramsay, a shadier record. There was Matthew Kynge, for instance, also of Malmesbury. 'It is probably not unjust to conclude', writes Ramsay, 'that it was a turbulent and unscrupulous character that brought Matthew Kyng into the law courts with a most unusual frequency'. And we are told how Kyng acquired some twenty-three pounds' worth of yarn from a Northampton merchant by sharp practice; and how he was sued for having appropriated the trade mark of a Gloucestershire clothier in 1560. But in spite of all this, Ramsay explains that Kyng was a man of substance and a Member of Parliament. Another figure mentioned by Ramsay is John Hedges, who was fined extensively and pursued as far as the Star Chamber by one of his workers who had a grievance against him. In Newbury itself, another well-known cloth factor was Thomas Dolman, whose father is stated by Walter Money³⁶ to have had some interest in Winchcomb's concern.

A figure like Winchcomb could not have made a considerable fortune merely by acting as Deloney makes him do. Before the days of organized stock and share investment, capital did not just multiply itself merely because its owner was virtuous, systematic and careful. The suggestion that Winchcomb was a cruelly oppressive taskmaster may perhaps be rejected. But when we read Deloney's account of him, we have to remember that though the woollen industry was not then changing as rapidly as it was to do after about the middle of the seventeenth century, Deloney's description of it makes it appear much more static than it actually was. From the records on which G. D. Ramsay draws we can obtain some idea of the litigation, obstruction and competition which these clothiers had to face—competition in which the success or failure of immediate ends (comprehensible in terms of goods or stock) were involved. As for the 'poore people' with whom Deloney is sometimes said to have been so much concerned, their life in the cloth trade seems to have been one of continual insecurity and contention. The easy-going, abundant living which is the lot of the virtuous proletariat in Deloney's novels is a pleasant abstraction from known reality. And Deloney hoped his readers would confide in his presentation of it.

Although, for instance, he often depicts scenes in which poor people talk together, there is never any serious suggestion that poverty might be a possible source of social malaise. And there is no consistent social criticism of the kind Deloney might be disposed to offer if his mind were not made up beforehand. Thus in Jack of Newbury, after the King and Queen have witnessed an allegorical show organized for their benefit by Jack himself and performed by some children especially dressed up for the occasion, they naturally want to know who these children are. Jack replies: 'It shall please your Highnesse to understand, that these are the children of poore people, that doe get their living by picking wooll, having scant a good meale once in a week.'³⁷ Deloney shows no sign of recognizing any irregularity about this manifestation of indigence; it is just something which registers the lowness of their estate and the meanness and simplicity of their work. 'Certainly', the Queen is made to say, 'I perceive God gives as faire children to the poore as to the riche, and fairer many times; and though their dyet and keeping be but simple the blessing of God doth cherish them. Therefore (said the Queene) I will request to have two of them to wait in my chamber.' To add to this, however, the King chooses a dozen more for himself, electing four to be pages at Court, and the rest to be sent to the Universities with the living of gentlemen. Then Deloney continues: 'The King, Queene and Nobles being ready to depart, after great thankes and gifts given to Jack of Newbury, his Majesty would have made him a Knight, but he meekly refused it saying, I beseech your Grace let me live a poor Clothier among my people, in whose maintenance I take more felicity, than in all the vain titles of gentility: for these are the labouring ants whom I seeke to defend and these be the bees which I keepe: who labour in this life, not for our selves, but for the glory of God, and to do service to our dread Sovereign.' The King fails to persuade Jack to alter his mind about the matter. 'Seeing then', the King concludes, 'that a man's mind is a Kingdom to himself, I wil leave thee to the riches of thy own content, and so farewell.'

No words could be freer from any kind of ironic content than Jack of Newbury's at this point; and no attitude could be clearer than Deloney's. Society, according to his view, is made up of classes standing in fixed relationship one to another: and the virtuous man is he who is contented with what he has, and is willing to work so as to help keep the estates of the realm intact—and at the same time justify himself in the eyes of his Maker. People can now and again rise from one station into another; but when they do so it only serves to illustrate the solidity of the existing order. Wisdom consists in resistance to change, and suspicion of 'improvement'. While Deloney on the one hand is anxious to glorify the smaller trades and make out a case for the dignity of work; on the other he is teaching a doctrine of acquiescence and passivity so as to avoid the fear of social disturbance….

Notes

¹ See Politics and Letters, Winter, 1947.

² See Deloney: Works, ed. Mann (Oxford, 1912), Appendix II, p. 495.

³ 'William Elderton, Elizabethan Actor and Ballad-Writer' in Studies in Philology, vol. XVII (1920), p. 210.

⁴ Mann, p. 461.

⁵ Mann, p. 399.

⁶ Mann, p. 351.

⁷ Mann, p. 347.

⁸ See, for example, Mann, p. 376.

⁹ Mann, p. 367, etc.,

¹⁰ Sir Thomas Elyot: The Boke Named the Governour (Everyman ed., 1908, p. 8).

¹¹ Thomas Warton: History of English Poetry, ed. W. C. Hazlitt (1871), vol. IV, p. 245, note.

¹² See Dekker's Plague Pamphlets, ed. F. P. Wilson (1925), p. 152.

¹³ Abel Chevalley: Thomas Deloney. Paris (1926), p. 19.

¹⁴ Mann, p. 110.

¹⁵Jack of Newbury, chapter III. Mann, p. 32.

¹⁶ Mann, p. 4.

¹⁷ Mann, p. 19.

¹⁸ Mann, p. 20.

¹⁹ Mann, p. 24.

²⁰ Elyot, ed. cit., p. 9.

²¹ Mann, p. 42.

²²English Social History, Third edition, 1946, p. 137.

²³ London, 1913, p. 142.

²⁴Industrial Organization (1904), p. 112.

²⁵ Thomas Wilson: A Discourse on Usury, ed. R. H. Tawney (1925), p. 45.

²⁶ In Shakespeare's England (1916), vol. I, p. 330.

²⁷ Unwin: Industrial Organization, p. 116.

²⁸ Unwin: op. cit., p. 120.

²⁹ See J. A. Froude: History of England, vol. II, p. 58; also Webb: History of Trade Unionism, p. 4.

³⁰ Marx: Capital, tr. E. and C. Paul (Everyman Library, 1930), vol. II, p. 746.

³¹ Dekker: Plague Pamphlets, ed. E. P. Wilson, p. 127.

³² Quoted in Unwin, op. cit., pp. 234 and 235.

³³ Quoted by Unwin, p. 235.

³⁴ Fuller: Worthies of England, ed. P. A. Nuttall, 3 vols. 1840. Vol. I, p. 112.

³⁵ Oxford, 1943. Chapter III.

³⁶ Walter Money: A Popular History of Newbury (1905), p. 30.

³⁷ Mann, p. 37.