Series 5 > British Linen Company, 1745-1775

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THE BRITISH LINEN COMPANY
is as wanted might be got for from £20 or £30 per annum. The rest you can
make out for yourself.1
Something we think too should be asked by way of premium for yourself
for buying and selling yams for these and other looms in the country to be sold
in warps and wafts ready made up to the weavers. You should likewise propose
and if agreed oblige yourself to have such number of good and suftieient reeds
and cairns to be lent out at some triffling sum per web or per week to weavers
when demanded. If, as was said, you shall approve of this, we beg the plan and
petition may be made out and delivered in to the Secretary before the middle
of next month and if the Board approve (which it is to be hoped they may)
they will surely engage with you for at least three years certain.
To James Dunlop, Glasgow
3 January 1758
W e are favoured with yours of the 2nd and extremely glad to have your friend’s
approbation of our goods, and of their superiority to the German. It is our
constant care and we flatter ourselves not without success, to make daily
improvements. We shall observe the directions you communicate to us, that
the linens for that market should be rounder threaded. The Law orders every
piece of Scotch linens to be stamped with the yards and forbids any violation
or alteration of the stampmaster’s mark, but we can mark the German ells on
the outside of each piece and put the thistle out of sight, as we have often done
to oblige customers in England, and we dare say it will answer as well as putting
the ells on the end of the piece. We shall be glad to receive the orders you
propose to give against May and we need not assure you that everything in our
power shall be done to encourage you and your friends.
To Richard Oswald, Glasgow
11 Febmary 1758
We were duly favoured with yours of the 6th current and shall as you direct
make out and send to Mrs Murray of Clardon a contract for four tons flax
yearly. What you wrote in her favours we shall look upon as sufficient security.
As to your friend Mr William Anderson of Wick, we will renew a contract
with him on the same terms as with others. We applied in his favours to the
Board of Trustees and procured him just now £36 in cash, wheels and reels.
1 A copy of Young’s petition to the Board of Trustees which refers to the lack of properly instructed
weavers in the neighbourhood of Coupar Angus is to be found in Lord Milton’s papers: NLS, Saltoun
MSS, Box 329.