National Statute for the Regulation of the Leather Industry

In 1563, when Elizabeth I (1558-1603) was on the throne, her Secretary of State William Cecil steered an Act for the regulation of leather production and use through the English parliament. The preamble to this Act noted that ‘every sorte of People of necessite must use and have Leather for dyvers and sundrye Purposes’. This was undoubtedly true. Before the development, and then the mass production and use of plastics and synthetics in the second half of the twentieth century, leather was ubiquitous. It was used to make saddles and harnesses, purses and bags, bottles and books, scabbards and holsters, pumps and hoses, buckets and bellows, rollers and washers, and valves and sleeves.

Elizabeth’s chief minister was Sir William Cecil, later Lord Burghley (1520/21-98). He was one of the first men to conceive of the economy in a national sense, and he was one of the first to believe that the state had a duty to encourage and police economic activity. He also recognised that leather was not just a widely used basic necessity, but that it, and the raw materials needed to make it, was strategic material necessary for national standing and defence. Under his direction, then, the Parliament passed a series of Acts which regulated the English leather industry.

The Leather Act of 1563 was a rationalisation and consolidation of previous legislation. It placed restrictions on the methods that tanners might use to produce leather, and it forbade tanners, curriers and cordwainers from working at each other’s trade. It sought to curb price rises, by restricting the sale of all raw hides to tanners only, and of tanned leather to leatherworkers only. For greater visibility and transparency, it ordained that all sales of tanned leather be confined to an ‘open Fayre or Market, in the places therfore commonly accustomed’ – that is, existing markets – and that no leather was to be sold until it had been inspected, sealed and registered by searchers and sealers appointed by local authorities.

Without a significant civil service or bureaucracy, at a national or local level, the state relied on other structures to enforce the provisions of this and subsequent leather acts. In 1563 and 1604, for example, the mayors, bailiffs and head officers of English and Welsh towns, as well as the lords of fairs and markets, were ordered to appoint at least two men who were ‘honest and skilfull men within their severall Offices or Liberties’ to inspect leather and leather goods, with the power to confiscate unsatisfactory material, and who were expected to have a seal or mark to affix to leather that they had approved for sale. Where else, but from the higher echelons of the guilds and companies, would these searchers and sealers most likely be found? The mayor of London was in doubt where he should look. In 1563, he immediately commanded the companies of Cordwainers’, Curriers’, Girdlers’, Leathersellers and Saddlers’ to choose suitable men from among their ranks to be appointed as searchers and sealers.

The Curriers’ Company jealously guarded this significant responsibility. In the second half of the seventeenth century, however, national government began to operate a more light-touch system of regulation and the importance of the role played by the searchers and sealers declined. However, the various leather acts remained on the statute book, largely unaltered, until they were swept away in 1829.