Weeping over the wars and strife in England during the year 1265 and the woes of the people, our Matthew of Westminster sums up, among our losses, the fall in our trade of woollen stuffs, with which we used to supply the world. O Anglia olim gloriosa . . . licet maris angustata littoribus . . . tibi tamen per orbem benedixerunt omnium latera nationum de tuis ovium velleribus calefacta.[1]
The weaving in this country of woollen cloth, as a staple branch of trade, is older than some are willing to believe. Of the monks at Bath abbey we are told by a late writer, "the shuttle and the loom employed their attention, (about the middle of the fourteenth century,) and under their active auspices the weaving of woollen cloth (which made its appearance in England about the year 1330, and received the sanction of an Act of Parliament in 1337) was introduced, established, and brought to such perfection at Bath as rendered this city one of the most considerable in the west of England for this manufacture."[2] Worcester cloth, which was of a fine quality, was so good, that by a chapter of the Benedictine Order, held A.D. 1422, at Westminster Abbey, it was forbidden to be worn by the monks, and declared smart enough for military men.[3] Norwich, too, wove stuffs that were in demand for costly household furniture, for, A.D. 1394, Sir John Cobham bequeathed to his friends "a bed of Norwich stuff embroidered with butterflies."[4] In one of the chapels at Durham Priory there were four blue cushions of Norwich work.[5] Worsted, a town in Norfolk, by a new method of its own for the carding of the wool with combs of iron well heated, and then twisting the thread harder than usual in the spinning, enabled our weavers to produce a woollen stuff of a fine peculiar quality, to which the name itself of worsted was immediately given. Unto such a high repute did the new web grow that liturgical raiment and domestic furniture of the choicest sorts were made out of it; Exeter cathedral, among its chasubles, had several "de nigro worsted" in cloth of gold. Elizabeth de Bohun, A.D. 1356, bequeathed to her daughter the Countess of Arundel "a bed of red worsted embroidered;"[6] and Joane Lady Bergavenny leaves to John of Ormond "a bed of cloth of gold with lebardes, with those cushions and tapettes of my best red worsted,"[7] &c. Of the sixteen standards of worsted entailed with the bear and a chain which
