Lollard Survival and the Textile Industry in the South-east of England

Abstract

There is nothing new in the observation that cloth workers are frequently to be found in heterodox movements. The participation of weavers and other textile artisans in popular heresy on the continent has been amply demonstrated, extending from the popular response to Gregory VII’s denunciation of simony and married clergy, and the first stirrings of the heresy of the Free Spirit in the Rhineland, to Flagellants, Taborites, Storchites, and the militant Anabaptism of the sixteenth century. In England, Professor Dickens has noted the local Lollard tradition existing in the textile villages of south-west Kent where Edward III had settled John Kemp and his Flemish artisans in 1331, Cranbrook, Tenterden, and Benenden becoming notable centres of dyed broadcloth manufacture. In explaining the connection between textiles and the survival of Lollardy, Professor Dickens has stressed the mobility of the textile worker, while centres of rural industry had a relatively independent status in the medieval scene, which may well have led to relatively in dependent thinking. Regular mobility is best typified by the middleman who usually operated on a fairly local level, regional self-sufficiency in wool supply not really being broken down until the mid-sixteenth century.