01397 Kenneth Kilby, The Cooper and His Trade (London: John Baker Publishers, 1971).

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The Stuart Period

Following in the wake of discoveries, world trade expanded rapidly in the Stuart period, and consequently
this period saw a very noticeable growth in the realm of coopering. Wine was being imported in considerable
quantities, and in fact, prior to 1626, the tonnage of a ship was based on the carrying capacity of ships engaged in
the Bordeaux Wine Trade. The unit was a tun of wine in two butts, equalling 252 gallons, and occupying 60 cu. ft.
After 1626 it was estimated empirically as 207 old,. equalling 176 new, and only in modern times has it become
possible to calculate exact tonnage.
Some coopers did a certain amount of business importing wines, to which the Vintners Company objected.
In the legal feud which followed the coopers met with success in 1641 and again in 1667 (no doubt helped
considerably by the bribed Mayor, BOLTON), and in 1698 and 1697 they petitioned the government against raising
the import duties on wines from Spain and Portugal, duties which had already reduced the sale of their wines by
half. The coopers would appear to have had a double interest here, for wine casks were at this time being made in
this country with Memel oak from the Baltic, and shipped to Spain and Portugal, but at the turn of the century,
presumably to exploit the cheaper Portuguese labour and to rationalize the trading, English coopers went to
Portugal and taught the Portuguese how to make casks. In a letter of 1704, Thomas WOODMAN, a wine-
importer, wrote from Portugal, 'Ye English cupers are a drunken lot, but ye natives now know how to make casks
... ye heat is so great that breathing is difficult . . . the cupers are here and at work.' Some 200 years later a
Portuguese cooperage was turning out 25,000 casks a year by machinery. The Methuen Treaty of 1708 reduced the
duty on port wine so that it became a very popular drink. It was said that the English vessels would 'barter a
nigger for a pipe'.
The New England settlers soon found that they could add to their incomes appreciably by felling the
American White Oaks and converting them into barrel staves in the forests surrounding their coastal

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settlements. Many learnt from the coopers who had emigrated how to make casks, and during the long winter
evenings, pipes, barrels, tubs, pails and churns were produced in large numbers. They supplied the casks for West
Indian rum, being shipped to Bristol in the notorious 'Triangular trade', although thousands of cask staves were
made in Bristol and sent across the Atlantic. From Virginia and the more Southern states planters were constantly
writing to their agents in England asking them to procure skilled coopers, and many went as indentured servants,
being free to work at their trade after a few years of bound coopering for a planter. However, white craftsmen in
the South soon found themselves working in competition with slaves, and most who could save a small amount of
capital became landowners and planters themselves.
A tremendous variety of commodities was now being shipped by cask: water, beer and ale, wines, rum and
other spirits, oils, fish of all kinds, sugar, syrup, apples, cider, tobacco, green ginger, shoes, crockery, nails, cork,
gunpowder, lead, paint, grease, seeds, pearl-barley, meats, butter, vinegar, putty, money and a thousand other types
of goods, and as the amount of trade increased so coopers were able to specialize more and more, and the branches
of the trade, as outlined in Chapter 2, became more clearly defined.
Today packages are made to contain specific quantities or weights by mathematical calculation. The
rather quaint sizes of casks owe their origins to far more diverse and interacting intentions. The availability of
timber, coopering ability, tradition, local pride, petty arbitrary decisions and downright cussedness all played their
part in determining cask sizes, but despite this they came to be accepted as official units of measurement. Kings
and governments tried to standardize units. In 1428 we had the 'hogges hede' fixed at 68 old wine gallons, that is
522 gallons. Richard III fixed wine barrels at 812 gallons. Henry VI stipulated 80-gallon barrels for eels, which
Edward IV changed to 42 gallons to include salmon and spruce. George III made it 88 wine gallons. Henry VIII
fixed ale barrels at 32 gallons, country ale at 84, and beer at 86; vinegar was to be in 84-gallon barrels. Oil, spirits,
tar and pork were fixed at 136 gallons. Charles II decreed that barrels of plates, crockery, must hold 300 pounds.
George III fixed apple barrels at 24 gallons, and gunpowder casks at 100 pounds. Casks and coopers were laws
unto themselves, and irrespective of how irrational these sizes became during the course of time, they remained an
inviolable 'mistery' to confuse the layman.

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[page 136]

A common sight in London during the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was the water-
carrier, and even in the eighteenth century Londoners bought pailfuls of water at their doors for a penny, from
watermen carrying churns and calling, 'Fresh and fair, New River water!' (fig. 71).
Early Tudor and Stuart fire-fighting equipment consisted of a cask fitted on a cart and drawn by a horse or
by men (fig. 72).
John Amos COMENIUS, a Czechoslovakian, writing in 1659 a >Nomenclature of the Chief Things, and
Man=s Employment in the World=, >Orbis Sensualium Pictus=, said of the cooper (fig. 78),

The Cooper (1) having an apron (2) tied about him, maketh hoops (8) of hazel rods upon a cutting block
(4) with a spokeshave (5) and lags (6) of timber. Of lags he maketh hogsheads (7) and pipes (8) with two
heads, and tubs (9) soes (10) flaskets (11) buckets (12) with one bottom, then he bindeth them with hoops
(18) which he tyeth fast with small twigs (14) by means of a cramp-iron (15) and he fitteth them on with a
mallet (16) and a driver (17).

It was evidently the hoops which caught his interest.

In some parts of the country, notably Bristol, the trade of coopering was shared by two tradesmen, the
cooper and the hooper. The cooper made the cask and heads while the hooper made the hoops, fitted the heads
into position and drove the hoops home. Piecework wages were shared equally. The Hoopers Company of Bristol
dates from 1504, and among their forty-five rules was one which stated that every hoop brought into Bristol had to
be examined to ensure that it was sound, and was then stamped C.B., Civitus Bristoliensis.
The cutting of hazel branches and the making of fences, baskets, fish-traps and hoops have been specialist
woodland trades, preceding that of the cooper. Hoop-making in Sussex, the Midlands and Furness grew with the
growth of coopering, and an export trade with Jamaica developed about this time in sugar-barrel hoops, ending
early this century. Hazel branches were cut and split with an adze, trimmed with a draw knife, as in the
illustration, where it is called a spoke-shave, and coiled on a >horse= or a frame of upright pegs, after having
been soaked to make them pliable. Coopers would make them to size by notching the overlapping ends and
binding or nailing them. Hoop-makers also made standard-size hoops for dry work, in huge quantities, nailing
them together within an ash measuring hoop, similar to the truss hoop used for bending staves (see Part 1, Chapter
5). One man would make between 400 and 500 hoops a day. Trade diminished with the decline

[page 137 - picture]

[page 138]

in coopering in the nineteenth century, and with cheap rolled steel hoops coming on to the market, so that although
in 1949 it was still being carried on, today it is practically extinct.
Describing coopering in another way, Christof WAZEL of Regensburg, Germany, wrote in 1698, 'The
cross preserves that which would otherwise fall to pieces. The band (hoop), the precious word by God imparted for
the quiet life of devotion, is that which must enclose the noble fluid of the soul securely in the heart. If it lacks, the
power will flow away and man remain an empty cask.' Large casks would often have

[page 139]

a cross-piece of wood fitted on to the head after the cask had been tightened, to give additional support. In
LUIKEN=s engraving of the cooper (fig. 74) he is using an iron driver and hitting it with a mallet, in order to
tighten the hoop on the cask. An iron driver of that type is at pl. 79, And a hoop driver, used mostly for dry work
until the nineteenth century, is at fig. 75. The wooden stock driver (see Chapter 5) was already in use at this time.
In the eighteenth-century illustrations of coopering by FORGEROUX, a French wine cooper is pictured using a
mallet on a tapered block of wood, while in thirteenth-century Italy two mallets were used, one being held on to the
hoop and being struck by the other.
During the seventeenth century the companies of London suffered considerable interference in their affairs
by the Stuart Kings, who saw in the companies an easy means of extorting money. The Stuart Kings nominated

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their own candidates for all key posts. One can imagine the quandary of the coopers, when in 1678 both the King
and the Lord Mayor wrote letters supporting different candidates applying for the post of clerk. Sackings and
resignations were frequent, and the feud came to a head when James II suspended the charters of the companies in
1685. William and Mary, upon their accession, restored the City of London to its ancient rights and privileges, but
by then the medieval system of trading was beginning to give way to ideas of laissez-faire, and the technical nature
of the companies with regard to their trades began to take secondary importance to the social and charitable side,
and in line with the ethics of the day membership, involving freedom of the City, became more and more the
prerogative of the wealthy.
The Coopers Company raised ,350 in 1643 towards ,50,000 raised by the companies for the
Parliamentarians, and in 1664 raised ,600 towards a loan to the King; they also subscribed, rather reluctantly,

[page 140]

towards building a frigate. The Company had contributed ,140 towards a plantation in Ireland, later called the
Irish Society, and established in order to colonize the country. This was in 1609, but by 1612 they asked leave to
discontinue payments, and forfeited all rights. To make these huge payments the Company sold its plate and
spoons.
In 1632 the Company was assessed at ,7 towards the City's fine of ,1,000 for the murder of Dr LAMBE.
The younger warden paid this himself, >for love of the Company, and in return for not being chosen younger
warden again=. Presumably he wanted to escape the onerous and costly duties associated with the work of a
London Company Official.
The Great Fire devoured the Company's Hall in 1666, together with a lot of houses owned by the coopers
for which they collected rents. Most of the treasures, books and registers were taken to the house of the Upper
Warden and saved. In 1668 the coopers began the construction of another hall, and instituted compulsory
subscriptions; ,1,078 17s. 5d. in 1668, ,2,029 12s. in 1669, ,1,082 2s. in 1670, and ,998 15s. in 1671, when the
Hall was completed at a cost of ,5,189 6s. 5d., a tremendous sum of money for those times. Whether the
expunging of five liverymen in 1672 because of poverty resulted from this sacrifice is not known; however, the
Coopers still put on a brave and proud face, for in 1663 they had collected ,154 10s. towards a barge which they
used for the Lord Mayor's celebrations and in 1687 were employing a bargemaster, a mate and fourteen watermen.
During the plague in 1665, Francis HALL, a pluralist with the living at the local church of St Michaels,
Bassishaw, left London for the safety of the country, and his other living at Market Deeping. On his return in 1670
he demanded back-payment of tithes, which the coopers regarded as monstrous, and there was >bad blood=
between the Church and the Company until 1675 when the coopers agreed to let the gallery of their hall to the
incumbent for Sunday meetings at a rent of ,20 per annum.
The sealing of casks brought in considerable revenue for the London Company during the sixteenth
century. Around the middle of the century it was yielding ,187 per annum, of which the Company received ,50.
Informers were still being paid in 1620, and soap casks were publicly burnt in 1685, while as late as 1693
a merchant was prosecuted for >ingrossing= with casks. A regulation which would realize a considerable sum of
money today came into force in 1667, whereby apprentices appearing for registration were fined 6d. if they had
extra long hair. It has

[page 141]

been said that the apprentice during these times was in no better situation than the fourteenth-century serf. Many
trades could be learnt well within the seven years of bound apprenticeship, and for most of this time he constituted
cheap labour. If he ran away he was cried and forcibly brought back, often ill if not brutally treated as an indoor
servant, with a poor diet and obliged to sleep in the workshop. This, no doubt, applied to many a young cooper=s
apprentice. In the summer they were prominent in their blue cloaks with breeches and stockings of white
broadcloth, and in winter, long blue gowns. They wore flat caps, for which they were often derided, but worked in
tall square hats which had shelves fitted to the insides, so that, for coopers at least, the saying, 'Keep it under your
hat' must have meant something.
An apprenticeship bond made out in Edinburgh in 1708 stated that a prentice and servant, failing him by
decease (of the master) to be bound to his relict if he shall have any, she keeping sufficient journeymen for his
instruction in the airt and trade of coupercraft ... six years binds himself faithfully, dutifully and honestly to attend
to he said master's service night and day, holyday and workday, in all things lawful and honest and shall not absent

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himself under penalty of two days service for each day's absence, and that he communicates to his master anything
that he sees or hears to the prejudice of his master=s goods or good name, under penalty of 2d. for every 1d. loss ...
He must abstain from cairding, dyceing, drinking, swearing, nightwaking and debauchering and other idle exercise
that may divert him from his master=s service, and if he commit the filthie crimes of fornication or adulterie at
any time before the expiry of the said six years for three years thereafter as if he were in new bond again ... to be
given clothing due to his rank, be taught and instructed by able and qualified master who shall dine and entertain
him at bed and board decently and honestly ... binded by ,40.
In the Minute Book of the Aberdeen Coopers of 1682 is a paragraph: 'Apprentices for meat and fee to
work one year after the five (no fewer); failure to do so ... to lose the benefit of his prentisship and be classed as an
extranean'. So the length of apprenticeship was already being reduced. It was further ordained in Aberdeen that at
the end of an apprenticeship there would be a test of workmanship, called an essay. The cooper had to make, 'ane
salmond salt for holding four barrels of salmond, or ane three boll salt for brewing; one firlot and peck, ane
salmond barrel conforming to bind and measure of Aberdeen, the goadges made for that effect to be given to hem
be the deacon and masters'. The masters were to examine the work done without speaking to each other, and
declare their voices to the clerk. [...]

[page 144]

Coopers were described by HOLME in 1688 thus, '... in his waistcoat and cap, breeches and hose russet,
with an adze lifted up in his right hand and a driver in his left, trussing up a barrel with fire out of the top of it'.
The reference to his tools and work would equally well fit a cooper of the twentieth century.

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