ABSTRACT
Alien communities in late medieval England continue to attract scholarly attention. Of late a consensus has arisen that, despite certain examples to the contrary, the native English were hostile to and suspicious of aliens. The alien clothworkers of fourteenth-century London provide an interesting case study of this phenomenon. The alien weavers by no means formed a united bloc, one reason, perhaps, that they suffered so terribly in the Great Revolt. Quite apart from alien weavers the presence of alien merchants in London kept nativist attitudes quite strong throughout the fourteenth century. Londons alien weavers might have annoyed its native weavers but, being fundamentally laborers, the native weavers were not among the more powerful groups in the City. Both the alien weavers and the alien merchants, however, had excessive privileges accorded to them by the king. Indeed, the words aliens and Flemings in all these cases are ambiguous, for they could refer to alien merchants as well as alien weavers.
