The Exeter Cloth Dispatch Book, 1763-1765

This book reproduces a newly discovered manuscript detailing the exports of Claude Passavant, a Swiss migr merchant. Passavant's dispatch book comprises the most extensive surviving collection of Devon cloth with 2,475 surviving cloth samples. Thirteen chapters discuss the local and wider contexts of eighteenth-century cloth making. This study explores the quality, range, and vibrancy of cloth that lead to Exeter becoming an internationally renowned centre for the manufacture and trade of woollen cloth.

TODD GRAY MBE is Research Fellow at the University of Exeter and the author or editor of a number of volumes on Exeter and Devon including William Birchynshaw's Map of Exeter, 1743 and The Chronicle of Exeter, 1205-1722.