Hero
Jack of Newbury
Two hundred looms, said Deloney. Thirty or fifty, say the records.
Stand where it happened
- What's there
- Shopping street with a timbered Tudor house
- Legend from
- Deloney's novel (1597)
- Tone
- Light-hearted
An apprentice, a weaver's widow, and a factory the king himself came to see.
John Winchcombe was a real Newbury clothier of the early 16th century. Thomas Deloney's 1597 book turned him into Jack of Newbury, the apprentice who married his master's widow and rose to great wealth. Deloney wrote that he had 200 looms and that Henry VIII and Queen Katherine visited, which is not supported by evidence. Royal Berkshire History tells the full romance. Wikipedia notes no documentary evidence of a weaving workshop, but the cloth produced suggests perhaps 30 to 50 looms.