The Council ordered the Justices of the Peace for the counties of Wilts, Somerset, Dorset, Devon, Gloucester, Worcester, Oxford, Kent and Suffolk, to summon clothiers and “deale effectually with them for the employment of such weavers, spinners and other persons, as are now out of work.... We may not indure that the cloathiers ... should att their pleasure, and without giving knowledge thereof unto this Boarde, dismisse their workefolkes, who being many in number and most of them of the poorer sort are in such cases likely by their clamour to disturb the quiet and government of those partes wherein they live.” (_C.R._, 9th Feb., 1621-2.) Locke reported to Carleton, Feb. 16th, 1622: “In the cloathing counties there have bin lately some poore people (such chieflie as gott their living by working to Clothiers) that have gathered themselves together by Fourty or Fifty in a company and gone to the houses of those they thought fittest to relieve them for meate and money which hath bin given more of feare than charitie. And they have taken meate openly in the markett without paying for it. The Lords have written letters to ten Counties where cloathing is most used, that the Clothier shall not put off his workemen without acquainting the Councill, signifying that order is taken for the buying off their cloathes, and that the wooll grower shall afford them his wooll better cheape but yet the cloathiers still complaine that they can not sell their cloath in Blackwell Hall....”[238] Footnote 238: _S.P.D._, cxxvii., 102, Feb. 16, 1622. The Justices of Assize for Gloucester reported March 13, 1622, that they have interviewed the Clothiers who have been forced to put down looms through the want of sale for their cloth. The Clothiers maintain that this is due to the regulations and practices of the Company of Merchant Adventurers. They say that they, the Clothiers, have been working at a loss since the deadness of trade about a year ago, “their stocks and credits are out in cloth lying upon their hands unsold, and that albeit they have bought their woolles at very moderate prices, being such as do very much impoverish the grower, yet they cannot sell the cloth made thereof but to their intolerable losses, and are enforced to pawne theire clothes to keepe theire people in work, which they are not able to indure ... that there are at the least 1500 loomes within the County of Gloucester and in ... the Citie and that xxs. in money and sixteene working persons and upwards doe but weekly mainteyne one loome, which doe require 1500li. in money, by the weeke to mainteyne in that trade 24000 working people besides all others that are releeved thereby, and so the wages of a labouring person is little above xiid. the week being much too little.”[239] Footnote 239: _S.P.D._, cxxviii, 49, March 13, 1622.