WALTER MORRELL AND THE NEW DRAPERIES PROJECT, c. 1603–1631

Abstract

This article explores the lengthy and convoluted history of a Jacobean project to set the idle poor to work making ‘new draperies’. Although the projector, Walter Morrell, convinced the Cecils, King James, and the privy council of the social and fiscal benefits of his scheme, he failed to persuade the Hertfordshire gentry. This case study in the formulation of crown economic policy, and in ‘Stuart paternalism’, draws upon Morrell's own detailed, unpublished treatise, as well as conventional political sources, and shows how the combination of ‘commonwealth’ rhetoric and progressive economic thinking could sway crown policy-making. It also demonstrates once again the limits of conciliar authority in early Stuart England. In the face of sustained provincial non-compliance, the privy council had neither the machinery nor the stomach to force the Hertfordshire elite to implement government policy and give meaningful support to a government-backed projector. And despite their inability to deal with growing rural unemployment, the Hertfordshire magistrates were unwilling to experiment with rural industry as a solution.