Cloth Seal, Clothier's Seal, Leeds, Robert Oastler
Robert Oastler, Leeds, Clothier's Seal, Seal, Image & Found by Dazzbarwise.
Seal is 33mm and it was found at North cave, East Yorks.
Inside an annulus of fussed pellets is ROBERT O(A)STLER *** and written across the centre is flowing script is Leeds
On the reverse three straight lines with two angular numbers between has been scratched - 500 and 36 1/2 ?
This is often found on cloth seals.
From Dictionary of National Biography volume 41.djvu/299, "OASTLER, RICHARD (1789–1861), ‘the factory king,’ the youngest of the eight children of Robert Oastler of Leeds, was born in St. Peter's Square in that town on 20 Dec. 1789. His mother, a daughter of Joseph Scurr of Leeds, died in 1828. His father, originally a linen merchant at Thirsk, settled at Leeds, and became steward of the Fixby estates, Huddersfield, the property of the Thornhills of Riddlesworth, Norfolk. Disinherited by his father for his methodism, the elder Oastler was one of the earliest adherents of John Wesley, who frequently stayed at his house on his visits to Yorkshire. On Wesley's last visit he is said to have taken Richard Oastler, then a child, in his arms and blessed him."
From Stewart A. Weaver, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, "Robert Oastler (1748–1820)had lived in Kirby Wiske until the age of sixteen, when his youthful embrace of Methodism led to an estrangement from his father. Disinherited, Robert went to the nearby market town of Thirsk, where he was raised by an uncle who shared his evangelical fervour. A chance acquaintance with John Wesley in 1766 ‘ripened into a more than common friendship’ (Driver, 5), and by the time Richard was born in 1789, his father was a well-known leader of the local Methodist community."
From Cooper Harding (for Thirsk Museum), "We are familiar with the linen industry, of course, but in the period concerned linen weaving was still a cottage industry - the memory of which is preserved in fields or other spaces (there is one in Thirsk on the banks of the Cod Beck) carrying the name Tenter Garth. The Quarter Sessions records deal with offences ranging from allowing retting flax to foul water courses, cheating fair measure by over-stretching the fabric to theft of bolts of cloth. Robert Oastler's linen business would, I presume, be that of buying-in the finished cloth and trading on - that of a wholesaler, not at this period a manufacturer. I have looked to see what records we have - the only mention of him I can find here is the inscription on a grave-stone in the churchyard of St. Mary's - "Here lies the body of Robert, son of Robert and Sarah Oastler d. 17 April 1781 aged 11 mths" There is also a memorial to John Oastler died 1779 aged 67 and another to glorious-sounding Sampson Oastler "who dyed ye 30 Jul 1767 aged 90" The early census records offer a John Oastler in 1821, but none in the earlier 1811 record. The Universal British Directory 1793-1798 notes "The firm of the banking-house in this town is Suggit, Oastler and Meek". Our museum has a piece of locally-woven linen, but that is the only relic that I know of."
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