258 Textili's and Textile Materials Trades 



surplus grew in the succeeding centuries,' until by 1550, the woolen 

 manufacturing had so developed as to use up all the domestic supply 

 and even necessitate imports of wool.- Worcestershire drew upon 

 Herefordshire and Shropshire for this supply.^ In the latter part of 

 the eighteenth century the Worcestershire manufactures declined and 

 this county began to supply Oxfordshire'* manufacturers. Surrey 

 must have stood high in the wool output, for the borough arms of 

 Guilford represented a wool sack and in 1574 every alehousekeeper 

 was obliged by town orcUnance to hang up a signboard with a wool- 

 sack : these facts testify that wool-stapling was once a most important 

 trade of this county.' Sussex produced a poor cjuality of wooF as 

 evidenced by prices of wool from the various counties in 1337, 1343, 

 and 1454^ but Avere improved in the eighteenth century^ and con- 

 tributed to the consumption of the Wilts district what was not needed 

 at its local center of manufacture Chichester. 



There was a general tendency for the wool of the central southern 

 counties, Wilts, Hants and Dorset, whose downs were prolific with 

 sheep, to move westward (a) into Somerset, where it was mixed with 

 Lincoln and Spanish long-staple wool and made into medley. cloths,^ 

 and (b) into Devon, where it was mixed with Irish wool imported by 

 way of Biddeford and Minehead, and made into serges, druggets and 

 stuffs. Like this Irish wool the Welsh wool tended to move eastward. 

 The Somerset clothiers bought the wools of Pembroke and Carmarthen 

 and carried them home over the Severn; Milford was the chief export- 

 ing point, became very dependent upon it, and suffered "great dis- 

 tress" when the port officer tried to prohibit the exportation.' ° Breck- 

 noch also was a considerable market for Welsh wool. 



1 Early Chan. Proc. (P. R. O.) bdle 66, No. 462; Cal. Pat. 1476-85, p. 519; V. 

 C. H., Wore. 11,282 n. The export went, apparently, by way of London and was 

 sold to London exporters. I-'or instance, in 1476, a case is recorded of one Thomas 

 White, husbandman, who brought an action of debt against one Thomas Synnam, 

 "a man of power and might dwelHng in a foreign shire in London," for twelve sacks 

 of Cotswold he had ordered and kept for six j'ears. 



2 V. C. H., Wore. II, 282-3. 



3 Ibid., 289. 



*\. C. H., Oxford, II, 251. 

 *V. C. H., Surrey, 11,345. 

 «V. C. H., Sussex, II, 255-6. 



" Close, 11 Edw. Ill, m. il; Cunningham, Growth, 628; Suss. Arch. Coll. X, 77. 

 ^ Young, Agrie. of Suss. 359. 

 » Poeoeke, II, 37. 

 '» Cal. S. P. Dom. 1619-23, p. 290; V. C. H., Somer. II, 411. 



