ABSTRACT
In the early Middle Ages the various processes of cloth-making were all strictly " handcrafts." The mechanising of the first three cloth-making processes during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is a commonplace of history, but the mechanising of the fourth during the thirteenth century, though it gave rise to an industrial revolution not less remarkable, has attracted scarcely any attention. It is with this that the chapter proposes to deal. It is conceivable that the Templars may have introduced the fulling mill into England. At any rate the religious orders were among the first to take advantage of it and to develop its possibilities. In monastic cartularies many early references, not all of which can be precisely dated, are to be found to fulling mills. The fulling mills on lay estates for which most early records survive are, not unnaturally, those of the king himself. One of the first royal mills was that near Marlborough, at Elcot.
