John Pease (bu. 1612) "the Clothier" of Great Baddow, Essex
My mother was a Pease; therefore I am half-Pease; this is my ancestor.If you look up "clothier" on Wikipedia it says:
"Clothier may refer to one of the following professions:Other hops around the internet left me with the impression that John Pease the clothier was basically a tailor. I left it at that, until one day I was browsing a book called "Medieval People" by Eileen Power, who wrote an entire chapter about a clothier in Essex.
- Tailor - the most common usage
- Cloth Merchant
- A cloth manufacturer
If you follow the link for "Cloth Merchant" on Wikipedia, you'll see this:
“…An alternative name is clothier, but that tends to refer more to some one who organized the production and sale of cloth, whereas a cloth merchant would be more concerned with distribution, including overseas trade.”A website concerned with the entire English Woolen industry says this about clothiers:
"A clothier could be:Reproduced on various family trees all over the internet is information that John Pease the clothier was married to Margaret Hyckes, daughter of Richard. There is a will extract online for Richard Hyckes of Great Baddow which mentions a daughter Margaret and a son Francis.
- One man and his family, who together performed most of the steps of cloth making
- A person who employed up to 30 weavers
- Something in between"
There was also a Richard Hyckes, with a son Francis, who were both involved with tapestry weaving, within a compatible time frame. However, there's not really enough information to form a relationship between these tapestry weavers and the Margaret Hyckes who was the wife of John Pease the clothier. It doesn't seem likely that tapestry-weaver Richard was the father of Margaret, since he was in another part of the country, and he has his own will. But I think there's some sort of connection there somewhere.
So, where am I going with all this? First of all, I don't believe John Pease the clother was a one-man operation. I think his career was similar to a modern career, and one that is likely familiar to some of his descendants: I think he was a kind of project manager.
His workday may have consisted of orchestrating the production of cloth, from start to finish: wool to spinners, then possibly to dyers, then to weavers and fullers and then the finished product went on to the drapers and cloth merchants. He was tasked with coordinating, scheduling, and communication along the way with all the stakeholders.
Maybe we could spin up a story thread about the royal tapestry weaver Richard Hyckes (blah, blah, blah) and John Pease the clothier, who meets cousin Margaret, and they live happily ever after.
Hopefully somebody can weave in the loose ends more fully than I can.
The clothier of Essex described in Medieval People was "Thomas Paycock of Coggeshall, an Essex Clothier in the Days of Henry VII", in Chapter VII. The book was first published in 1924 but is now freely available from several sources. John Pease died in 1615, about 100 years after Henry VII died.
Comments
Post a Comment