The Wool Trade in the Fifteenth Century

THE wool trade in the fifteenth century, though already steadily declining, was yet the oldest, the largest, and by tradition the foremost of all branches of English commerce. The basis of its importance was the immense pre-eminence of English wool in the European markets, owing to its superior quality. Other countries, notably Spain, exported wool in large quantities, but it was everywhere admitted to be inferior to that of England, and the great cloth-making towns of Italy and the Netherlands were thus mainly dependent upon English wool for the manufacture of all their finer cloths. Hence the political importance of this commodity, which played a leading part in the diplomacy of the Hundred Years War, and hence, too, the reiterated complaints of cloth-manufacturing towns that an interference in the supply of English wool meant unemployment and misery for their inhabitants. ¹ It was not for nothing that the lord chancellor of England was seated on a woolsack, and that poets such as Gower, ² Lydgate, ³ and the author of the Libelle of Englyshe Pqylcye, ⁴ praised the queen of raw materials (“O belle, o blanche, o bien delie”) in verse more remarkable for economic enthusiasm than for poetic fire :—

Off Brutis Albion his wolle is cheeff richesse

In prys surmounting avery other thyng Sauff Greyn and corn: merchauntis al expresse

Woolle is cheef tresoure in this land growyng :

To Riche & poore this beeste fynt clothyng :

Alle Naciouns afferme up to the fulle

In al the world ther is no bettir wolle. ⁵