ABSTRACT
The spinning of wool and the weaving of cloth for home wear was no doubt carried on from the earliest times in Suffolk as in most other parts of England and of Europe. The list of customs taken at the quay in Ipswich at the same date indicates another seat of the manufacture in Suffolk. It speaks of the “cloth of Cogeshale, Maldon, Colchester, Sudbury, and of other clothes that ben bought in the cuntre and comyn into the toun in to merchauntz. One essential point which the events bring into prominence is that the Suffolk cloth industry has become largely dependent on the demand of the foreign market. By the middle of the sixteenth century the cloth industry of Suffolk had attained its full development; before the end of the century it had probably reached the high-water mark of its prosperity.
