356 



the historian, " if the merchandize of England were not carried 

 to it."* 



According to Madox's History of the Exchequer, the Irish ex- 

 ported their surplus woollens to England in the reign of Henry the 

 Third, fifty years after the arrival of Strongbow, In the reign of 

 Edward the Second, " the Lombard society of the Frescobaldi car- 

 ried on a trade with Ireland for her peltry chiefly and a woollen stuft" 

 called sayes, which was wider than that manufactured elsewhere. "-f" 

 Irish woollens were exported to Italy before 1357, as appears from 

 the notice in the Dittamondi of Fazio Delli Uberti, a Florentine poet 

 of that period, and who, it would seem, had visited Ireland : 



" Similemente passamo en Irlanda 

 La qual fra noi, e degna difama 

 Par le nobUe sale che ci manda." 



The subject, however, goes beyond our tropics, but the reader, who 

 may wish to pursue it, will find much information on the point in 

 the Earl of Charlemont's paper in the first volume of the Transac- 

 tions of the Royal Irish Academy, and in the Newry Magazine, 

 vol. ii. p. 92. 



The Irish horses called hobbies, from which the cavalry derived 

 their name of Hobillers, would also appear to have been exported. 

 " Paulus Jovius affirms, that of this kind of horses, he saw twelve of a 



* " Hibemiensium regem Murchardum et successores ejus, quorum nomina fama non 

 extulit, ita devotos habuit noster Henricus (primus,) ut nihil nisi quod eum palparet scriberent, 

 nihil nisi quod juberet agerent ; quamvis feratur Murchardum, nescio qua de causa, paucis 

 diebus inflatius in Anglos egisse, sed mox pro interdicto navigio et mercimonio navigantium 

 lumorem pectoris sedasse. Quanti enim valeret Hibernia, si non adnavigarent merces ex 

 Anglia." — Reg. Angl. lib. 5. 



t Antholog. Hibem. vol. i. p. 20. 



