This chapter focuses on four famous clothier families, whose members amassed huge fortunes and left lasting legacies to their communities. Thomas Paycocke of Coggeshall in Essex, who came from a family of butchers and cloth-makers, created a magnificent house which is now a National Trust property. The Springs were three generations of clothiers, all called Thomas, whose wealth made Lavenham in Suffolk one of the richest towns in England in 1524, and who were major contributors to the rebuilding of Lavenham parish church. Father and son John Winchcombe I and II of Newbury occupied a substantial house within the town, were large-scale producers of kerseys, and were commemorated a generation later in Thomas Deloney's poem ‘Jack of Newbury’. William Stumpe set up looms in the buildings of the former abbey in Malmesbury, and gave the abbey church to become the town's parish church.

THOMAS PAYCOCKE OF COGGESHALL

With the pride and ostentation of a peacock, Thomas Paycocke's ornate timber-framed house at Coggeshall still catches the eye, five centuries after its construction (Plate VIII). The metaphor is apt as the family name Paycocke was variously spelt Peaycocke, Pecock, and Peacock, and this may be the species of bird carved on the exterior of his house. Indeed his merchant's mark, which also decorates the house, although described variously as a trefoil of pearls or berries, a two-stemmed clover, or an ermine tail, might, with a stretch of the imagination, be a stylised representation of peacock feathers (Plate 14). Paycocke's house has attracted generations of admirers, including Noel Buxton, who restored the property to its original timbered appearance and presented it to the National Trust in 1920.