By the 1540s, England’s main wool export had shifted from raw fleece to finished cloth. Estimates suggest cloth exports reached about 130,000 pieces a year, making textiles central to England’s commercial economy. This export success set the stage for struggles over labor, quality control, and access to overseas markets.
In the mid-1500s, some clothiers organized production on a very large scale using dispersed rural workers (spinners, weavers, fullers). Evidence from the 1540s points to industrial-scale kersey output around Winchcombe (in Gloucestershire), with cloth exported through London to Antwerp and beyond. This illustrates how commercial capitalism relied on capital, coordination, and long-distance trade networks as much as on farming.
In 1563, Parliament passed the Statute of Artificers, a major attempt to stabilize labor markets through rules on wages, hiring, and apprenticeship. For the cloth trades, this mattered because production depended on many skilled steps, and authorities feared labor shortages and social disorder. The law shows the state becoming more involved in shaping how manufacturing labor was organized.
During the 1560s, political conflict in the Low Countries disrupted England’s main cloth-export hub at Antwerp. The Company of Merchant Adventurers shifted its trading base (staple) away from Antwerp, including moves to Emden and later Hamburg, trying to preserve privileges and market access. These moves underline how England’s cloth exports depended on stable overseas institutions and diplomacy.
From the 1560s, Protestant refugees from the Low Countries settled in English towns and introduced or expanded lighter, cheaper wool textiles known as the “new draperies.” These fabrics (such as says and bays) helped England adjust to shifting consumer demand in Europe and beyond. The change also spread textile work into new regions and smaller towns, not only traditional broadcloth areas.
By 1611, the Merchant Adventurers’ staple was permanently fixed at Hamburg, after earlier shifts among Dutch and German ports. This mattered because the company coordinated much of the export of English woollen cloth to the Netherlands and Germany. Hamburg’s role reflects a wider reorientation of trade routes during European political and military instability.
In 1614, policy makers backed a plan associated with William Cockayne to prohibit exporting unfinished cloth and push dyeing and finishing work into England. The plan quickly failed: English exporters struggled to replace established finishing services abroad, and Dutch resistance helped trigger a trade collapse. The episode shows both the value of “moving up the value chain” and the risks of abrupt state intervention in a complex export system.
From roughly 1619 to 1622, English cloth exports faced a serious slump, tied to weakened European demand and instability in key markets. Research on the period links these difficulties to wider European disruptions, including the early impact of the Thirty Years’ War on trade and payments. The downturn encouraged debate about how to restructure production and diversify cloth types.
Over the 1600s, a growing share of exported English cloth was dyed and dressed (finished) before export, rather than shipped as “unfinished” cloth for processing abroad. This change increased the value captured within England and supported more specialized urban and regional finishing trades. It also shows how export industries could evolve through gradual capability-building after earlier policy failures.
In 1651, Parliament passed a major Navigation Act limiting much overseas carriage of goods to English ships or ships of the producing country. While not a textile law by itself, it shaped the commercial environment in which English cloth exporters operated by tying trade to national shipping capacity and wartime strategy. This fit a broader mercantilist approach: using law to channel trade benefits toward domestic industry and transport.
In 1689, legislation opened up the export of cloth, removing the Merchant Adventurers’ long-standing monopoly privileges. This change reflected growing political and economic support for freer access to overseas trade. It also marked a shift in how commercial capitalism operated: less centered on a single chartered company and more on wider participation by merchants.
In 1699, the Wool Act aimed to prevent the export of wool from England and Ireland to foreign markets, seeking to keep raw material available for English manufacturing. The policy reflects fears that competing producers could use exported wool to undercut English cloth in international markets. By the late 1600s, the state increasingly used trade controls to defend textile production and employment at home.
In 1707, the Acts of Union created the Kingdom of Great Britain and changed the legal framework for trade between England and Scotland. Britain’s navigation and customs rules had treated Scotland as foreign before union; after union, commercial policy became more unified. This helped set a new end-state for the 1500–1700 era: England’s wool-and-cloth export economy had become part of a larger British state with integrated trade governance.
Rise of wool and cloth manufacture and export in England (1500–1700)