The dressing of skins and preparation of leather must have been one of the most widely diffused industries in medieval times, even if it is a little exaggeration to claim that it was a by-product of most villages.[605] Two different processes were employed, ox, cow, and calf hides being tanned by immersion in a decoction of oak bark, while the skins of deer, sheep, and horses were tawed with alum and oil, and the two trades were from early times kept quite separate, tanners and tawyers being forbidden to work skins appropriated to each other's trade. A certain concentration of the industry must have been brought about in 1184, when orders were issued that no tanner or tawyer should practise his trade within the bounds of a forest except in a borough or market town,[606] the object being to prevent the poaching of deer for the sake of their skins. Market towns had the further advantage of being well supplied with the raw material, as butchers were compelled to bring the hides of their beasts into market with the meat, and the tanners had the sole right of purchase, no regrater or middle-man being allowed to intervene, while on the other hand the tanners were not allowed to buy the hides outside the open market.[607] Towards the end of the sixteenth century it was said[608] that 'in most villages of the realm there is some one dresser or worker of leather, and ... in most of the market towns three, four, or five, and many great towns 10 or 20, and in London and the suburbs ... to the number of 200 or very near.' Casting back, we find at Oxford in 1380 there were twelve tanners, twenty skinners, twelve cordwainers, or shoemakers, and four saddlers,[609] while in 1300 there were at Colchester forty householders employed in the various branches of the leather trade.[610]

Originally, no doubt, the leather dresser worked up his own leather, and as late as 1323 it would seem that at Shrewsbury cordwainers were allowed to tan leather,[611] but in 1351 the tanners and shoemakers were definitely forbidden to intermeddle with each other's craft, and a series of regulations, parliamentary and municipal, served to separate the tanners, the curriers, who dressed and suppled the rough tanned hides, the tawyers, and the various branches of leather-workers.

The stock in trade of the tanner was simple. The inventories of the goods of half a dozen tanners at Colchester in 1300 are identical in kind though varying in value;[612] each consists of hides, oak bark, and a number of vats and tubs. In the case of the tannery at Meaux Abbey[613] (the larger monastic houses usually maintained their own tanneries) in 1396 rather more details are given. There were in store cow and calf leather, 'sole peces, sclepe, clowthedys, and wambes' to the value of £14, 10s. 4d., 15 tubs and various tools, such as 3 'schapyng-knyfes' and 4 knives for the tan; 400 tan turves (blocks of bark from which the tan had been extracted), and 'the tan from all the oaks barked this year.' The raw hides had first to be soaked, then treated with lime to remove the hair, and then washed again before being placed in the tan vat. Consequently leather-dressers settled 'where they may have water in brooks and rivers to dress their leather; without great store of running water they cannot dress the same.'[614] In 1461 William Frankwell, when making a grant of a meadow at Lewes, reserved the right to use the ditch on the south side of the meadow for his hides,[615] and complaints of the fouling of town water supplies by leather workers were not unusual.[616] The process of tanning was, and for the best leather still is, extremely slow; the hides were supposed to lie in the 'wooses' (ooze, or liquor) for a whole year, and stringent regulations were issued to prevent the hastening of the process, to the detriment of the leather. The bark from which the tan was obtained, and which was so important a feature of the process that 'barker' was an alternative name for tanner, had to be only of oak, the use of ash bark being forbidden; nor might lime or hot liquor be used, the imbedding of the vats in hot beds of old tan being prohibited.

Hides, both raw and tanned, ranked with cloth as a leading article of trade, both home and foreign;[617] and, like cloth, tanned leather was early subject to examination by searchers, appointed either by the craft gild or by the town authorities. As a rule the searcher's seal was affixed in the market, or at the particular 'seld' or hall where alone leather might be sold, but at Bristol in 1415 the searchers were empowered to examine the hides at the curriers' houses before they were curried.[618] The curriers, whose business it was to dress the 'red' hides with tallow,[619] rendering them smooth and supple, were not allowed to dress badly tanned hides.[620] Several grades of tanning were recognised, the most lengthy and thorough workmanship being required for leather intended for the soles of boots and rather less for the uppers. When forty-seven hides belonging to Nicholas Burle, of London, were seized in 1378 as not well tanned, he admitted that they were not fit for shoeleather, but urged that he intended to sell them to saddlers, girdlers, and makers of leather bottles: a mixed jury of these various trades, however, condemned the hides as unfit for any purpose, and they were forfeited.[621]

Although there was thus an efficient control exercised over tanned leather, the tawed soft leathers used by glovers, pointmakers, pursemakers, saddlers, girdlers, coffermakers, budgetmakers, stationers, etc., seem for the most part to have escaped supervision, with the result that at the end of the sixteenth century the markets were flooded with counterfeit leathers.[622]

'The leather dressed with oil is made more supple, soft and spongey, and is wrought with a rough cotton, as bayes and fresadoes are, the cotton being raised in the fulling mill where cloth is fulled, and serveth for the more beauty and pleasure to the wearer.

'The leather dressed with alum and oker is more tough and "thight," serving better for the use of the poor artificer, husbandman, and labourer, and a more easy price by half, and is wrought smooth or with cotton which is raised by hand with a card or other like tool, and as the alum giveth strength and toughness, the oker giveth it colour, like as the oil doth give colour to Buff and Shamoys.

'And this diversity of dressing, with oil or alum, is to be discerned both by smell and by a dust which ariseth from the alum leather....

'All Shamoys leather is made of goat skins brought for the most part out of Barbury, from the "Est countries," Scotland, Ireland, and other foreign parts, unwrought, and is transported again being wrought. And there is much thereof made from skins from Wales and other parts within the realm.... Being dressed with oil it beareth the name Shamoys, but being dressed with alum and oker, it beareth not the name or price of Shamoys, but of Goat skins.'

'Shamoys[623] is made of goat, buck, doe, hind, sore, sorrell, and sheepskins. The true way of dressing is in "trayne oyle," the counterfeit is with alum and is worth about half.... Shamoys dressed in train oil can be dressed again three or four times, and seem as good as new, but dressed in alum it will hardly dress twice and will soon be spied. And when Shamoys dressed in alum cometh to the rain or any water they will be hard like tanned leather, and Shamoys in oil make the cheapest and most lasting apparel, which the "low countrie man and the highe Almayn" doth use.'

Frauds in the preparation and sale of leather were of frequent occurrence, and in 1372 the mayor and aldermen of London ordained penalties for the sale of dyed sheep and calf leather scraped and prepared so as to look like roe leather. At the same time the leather dyers were forbidden to dye such counterfeit leathers, and also to use the brasil or other dye provided or selected by one customer for the goods of another.[624] With the same object of preventing frauds the tawyers who worked for furriers were not allowed to cut the heads off the skins which they dressed, and were also liable to imprisonment if they worked old furs up into leather.[625] Further penalties for false and deceitful work, especially in the making of leather 'points and lanyers,' or laces and thongs, were enacted in 1398.[626] With the growth of capitalism during the reign of Elizabeth the control exercised by the Leathersellers' Company became almost nominal, some half a dozen wealthy members of the company getting the whole trade into their own hands. By buying up the leather all over the country, they forced up prices; having, moreover, a practical monopoly of tawed leathers they were able to make the glovers and other leather workers take the dressed skins in packets of a dozen, which contained three or four small 'linings' or worthless skins.[627] They also undertook the dressing of the skins, and cut out the good workmen by scamping their work and employing men who had only served half their seven years' apprenticeship.[628] They also caused dogskins, 'fishe skynnes of zeale,' calf, and other skins to be so dressed as to resemble 'right Civill [i.e. Seville] and Spannish skynnes,' worth twice as much. These skins were dressed 'with the powder of date stones and of gaule and with French shomake that is nothinge like the Spannish shomake, to give them a pretie sweete savor but nothinge like to the civile skynnes, and the powder of theise is of veary smale price and the powder of right Spannish shomake grounded in a mill is wourth xxx^s the c^lb weight, which shomake is a kynd of brush, shrubb, or heath in Spayne and groweth low by the ground and is swete like Gale[629] in Cambridgshire and is cutt twise a yeare and soe dried and grounded into powder by milles and dresseth all the Civile and Spannish skynnes brought hither.'[630] To remedy these frauds there was a general demand that tawed leather should be searched and sealed in the same way as tanned, and in 1593 Edmund Darcy turned this to his own advantage by obtaining a royal grant of the right to carry out such searching and sealing. This was opposed by the leather-sellers, on the grounds that it would interfere with the sale and purchase in country districts if buyer and seller had to wait till the searcher could attend, and that the proposed fees for sealing were exorbitant, amounting to from a ninth to nearly a half of the value of the skins. They also said that if a seal were put on, it would almost always be pared away, washed out, or 'extincte by dying' before the leather reached the consumer.[631] Upon examination the suggested fees were found to be too large, and a table of the different kinds of leather and their values was drawn up, and fees fixed accordingly:[632]—

A number of trades, such as glovers, saddlers, pursemakers, girdlers, and bottlemakers, used leather, but the most important class were the shoemakers. They in turn were divided into a number of branches, at the head of which stood the cordwainers, who derived their name from having originally been workers of Cordovan leather, but were in actual practice makers of the better class of shoes.[637] At the other end were the cobblers, or menders of old shoes. Elaborate regulations were made in London in 1409 to prevent these two classes trespassing on one another's preserves.[638] The cobbler might clout an old sole with new leather or patch the uppers, but if the boot required an entirely new sole, or if a new shoe were burnt or broken and required a fresh piece put in, then the work must be given to the cordwainer. A distinction was also drawn at a much earlier date, in 1271,[639] between two classes of cordwainers, the allutarii and the basanarii, the latter being those who used 'basan' or 'bazan,' an inferior leather made from sheepskin. Neither was to use the other's craft, though the allutarius might make the uppers (quissellos) of his shoes of bazan: to prevent any confusion the two classes were to occupy separate positions in the fairs and markets. In 1320 we find eighty pairs of shoes seized from twenty different persons, thirty-one pairs being taken from Roger Brown of Norwich, and forfeited for being made of bazan and cordwain mixed.[640] Fifty years later, in 1375, a heavy fine was ordained for any one selling shoes of bazan as being cordwain,[641] and a similar ordinance was in force at Bristol in 1408.[642] By the London rules of 1271, no cordwainer was to keep more than eight journeymen (servientes), and at Bristol in 1364 the shoemakers were restricted to a single 'covenant-hynd,' who was to be paid 18d. a week and allowed eight pairs of shoes yearly.[643] In the case of Bristol, however, no limit is stated for the number of journeymen, who were paid by piecework, the rates being, in 1364, 3d. a dozen for sewing, and 3d. for yarking; 3d. for making a pair of boots entirely, that is to say, 1d. for cutting and 2d. for sewing and yarking; 2d. for cutting a dozen pairs of shoes, namely 1d. for the overleathers and 1d. for the soles, and a further 1d. for lasting the dozen shoes. The rates of pay were still the same in 1408, though there are additional entries of 12d. for sewing, yarking, and finishing a dozen boots and shoes called 'quarter-schone,' and 7d. for sewing and yarking, with an extra 1½d. for finishing a dozen shoes called 'course ware.'[644]

The sale of the finished articles was also an object of regulations: in London in 1271, shoes might only be hawked in the district between Corveiserstrete and Soperes Lane, and there only in the morning on ordinary days, though on the eves of feast they might be sold in the afternoon.[645] Leather laces also might not be sold at the 'eve chepings.'[646] Possibly it was considered that bad leather might be more easily passed off in a bad light, but the idea may simply have been to prevent the competition of the pedlars and hawkers with the shopkeepers. At Northampton, in 1452, the two classes of tradesmen were separated, those who had shops not being allowed to sell also in the market.[647] Northampton had not at this date begun to acquire the fame which it earned during the seventeenth century as the centre of the English boot trade, but regulations for the 'corvysers crafte' there had been drawn up in 1402,[648] and much earlier, in 1266, we find Henry III. ordering the bailiffs of Northampton to provide a hundred and fifty pairs of shoes, half at 5d. and half at 4d. the pair.[649] These were for distribution to the poor; and similar orders in other years were usually executed in either London or Winchester: no particular importance can be attached to this single order being given to Northampton, as presumably any large town could have carried out the order. So far as any town can be placed at the head of the shoemaking industry, the distinction must be given to Oxford where the cordwainers' gild was in existence early in the twelfth century, it being reconstituted in 1131,[650] and its monopoly confirmed by Henry II.[651]