ABSTRACT
To those who, eager for scientific precision, seek a sound statistical basis for their economics, the following investiga tions into documents concerning the cloth industry may be of interest.2 Historians have hitherto found a useful ally in the medieval aulnager. For his elaborate accounts of taxes paid on cloth produced for sale seem at first sight to reveal much as to the extent, locality, and organization of what was to become, by the end of the Middle Ages, England’s leading manufacture and export. Yet ultimately many of his statements prove to be as barren of information as were the conventional medieval “ proofs of age.”
