1) The sale of the fabric we know as Kendal was associated with merchants known as kendalmen.
1394-5 ‘John of Kendale 1 pack of 12 pieces of strait cloths’, Pontefract, Howden and Selby
1546 Also it is agreyd that all Kendelmen bryngyng any Kendell clothe to this Citie to be sold shall bryng the same to the said Comon Hall payng for every pakk iiijd for howse room. A kendalman was just as much a seller of kendal cloth as he was a man from Kendal. In that context it should be said that ‘kendalman’ occurs early enough as both a by-name and vocabulary item for it not to refer directly to the town: 1379 Walter Kendalman, Rosgill
1471 pelegiagium cujusdam Kendaleman – quodam viro de Kendale debet xviijs, Ripon
1492 Item that Kendale men that bryngeth wollen cloth to this Citie ... that they from hensforth sell in grose in theyre innes and loggyngs and by retaill in the said Thurseday market, and not to go hawkyng and sell in any other place
1523 Henry Hebbeson, Kendall man
1546 aswell the inhabitantes of the said towne as Kendalmen and strangers, Skipton. I suspect that ‘kendalman’ may have still been used as a by-name as late as 1550 when John Browne of Wakefield acknowledged a debt of 20s that he owed vnto John Kendallman. Wills provide evidence of the close links between Kendal and the growing textile towns in Yorkshire. In 1511, Richard Baines of Leeds referred to his fermhold in Kendale
in 1517 Richard Fairbank of Halifax bequeathed 3s. 4d. to his fader at Kendall and asked that masses be said at a chappell in Kendall, as I was borne . In 1558, James Kitson of Wortley noted that money was owed to him by Robert and Rowland Brigges of Kendall and in 1537 Thomas Stansfeld of Sowerby mentioned xs. nowe in the handes of Thomas Wilson of Kendall . Several of these families were evidently closely related. In 1543, Richard Birkhede of Halifax spoke of his costes to and fro to Kendall … four seuerall tymes: in 1538 William Holmes referred to relatives in Sedbergh and made bequests to Henry Birkhed of Halifax and his god childe, doughter to Edmunde Farbanke . The route followed by the merchants and their families was responsible for the place-name Kendalman’s Ford which is on the river Ribble, between Giggleswick and Settle. The river-crossing is shown on early maps and it is usual for local writers to describe it as ‘ancient’, without drawing attention to the significance of the term ‘kendalman’. Note: 1539 Item I bequeathe to John my sonne a Kendill colt, Spofforth.