The Exeter Cloth Dispatch Book, 1763-1765

This book reproduces a newly discovered manuscript detailing the exports of Claude Passavant, a Swiss emigre 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.