A similar agreement is recorded in 1661-2 between the Bailiffs and Burgesses of Aldeburgh and “Edmund Buxton of Stowmarket, for his coming to set up his trade of spinning wool in the town and to employ the poor therein, paying him £50—for 5 years and £12—for expense of removing, with a house rent free and the freedom of the town.”[213] Footnote 213: _Hist. MSS. Com. Var. Coll._, Vol. IV., p. 311. The finest thread was produced on the distaff, but this was a slow process, and for commoner work spinning wheels were in habitual use— “There are, to speed their labor, who prefer “Wheels double spol’d, which yield to either hand “A sev’ral line; and many, yet adhere “To th’ ancient distaff, at the bosom fix’d, “Casting the whirling spindle as they walk.”[214] Footnote 214: Dyer John., _The Fleece_, 1757. The demands made on spinning by this ever expanding trade were supplied from three sources: (1) the wives of farmers and other well to do people, (b) the wives of husbandmen and (c) women who depended wholly on spinning for their living, and who are therefore called here spinsters. The first care of the farmers’ wives was to provide woollen stuffs for the use of their families, but a certain proportion of their yarn found its way to the market. The clothiers at Salisbury who made the better grades of cloth were said to “buy their yarn of the finer kinds that come to the market at from 17d the lb. to 2s. 4d, made all of the finer sortes of our owne Welshire wool, and is spun by farmers’ wives and other of the better sorte of people within their owne houses, of whose names wee keep due Register and do write down with what cardes they promise us their several bundles of yarne are carded, and do find such people just in what they tell us, or can otherwise controule them when wee see the proofe of our cloth in the mill, ... and also some very few farmers’ wives who maie peradventure spinne sometimes a little of those sortes in their own houses and sell the same in the markett and is verie current without mixture of false wooll grease, etc.”[215] Footnote 215: _S.P.D._, cclxvii., 17, May 2, 1634. Certificate from Anthony Wither, Commissioner of reformation of clothing. Probably a larger supply of yarn came from the families of husbandmen where wife and children devoted themselves to spinning through the long winter evenings. Children became proficient in the art at an early age, and could often spin a good thread when seven or eight years old. This subsidiary employment was not sufficient to supply the demand for yarn, and in the clothing counties numbers of women were withdrawn from agricultural occupations to depend wholly upon their earnings as spinsters.