126 



The district of " The Ryelands " was not destined, however, to reap the 

 glory of its sheep. About a century after the date of the " Statutes Merchant" 

 just alluded to, Leominster was in the full zenith of its fame as the chief market 

 for their wool. It is a cutious and interesting question to ascertain why 

 Hereford, or Gloucester, or Worcester, not to mention Ross, should not have 

 gained this honour and profit. On looking into several authorities with 

 reference to this point, and particularly into that well written interesting book, 

 "The History of Leominster," by the Rev. George Fyler Townsend, M.A., it does 

 not seem difficult to account for it. 



Leominster formerly was a place of much greater relative importance 

 than at the present time, chiefly from the possession of a Monastery with rich 

 manorial rights, and partly, perhaps, from its situation on "The Marches." 

 When Henry I. built the Monastery at Reading (1123) amongst other liberal 

 gifts he attached to it, was the Monastery of Lempster, and by the same charter 

 he gave to the Benedictine monks— of Leominster as weU as Reading— 

 "freedom from aU gelt and toll and every other custom, by land or by water, in 

 passing over bridges and seaports throughout England ;" and other privileges 

 equally great which do not concern us now. The monks, who in those days were 

 not only the best agriculturists but the most active merchants also, were not 

 slow to avail themselres of these advantages, and thus the market of 

 Leominster became celebrated as early as the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. 



In 1235 the monks obtained two other separate grants and charters, one 

 from Waleran, Earl of Mellent, and the other from the Citizens of "Worcester, 

 again giving them freedom of "tolls, passenger money, and customary dues" 

 for the towns of Worcester and Droitwich. In the latter deed "skins, raw 

 hides, raw woollen fleeces, and woollen thread" were alone excepted— an 

 exception in so usual a form that it goes far to prove that though Leominster 

 then dealt in this ordinary produce of an agricultural district, there was no 

 special celebrity for them at that time. 



The neighbouring towns at length became jealous of these great commercial 

 privileges, and on the joint remonstrance of Hereford and Worcester (1266) 

 Henry III. changed the market day of Leominster from Saturday to Friday. 



Leominster still flourished more or less under the monks during the 

 next three centuries, until Queen Mary (A.D. 1554) granted to the citizens 

 the Charter which gave them such large and extensive privileges. No mention 

 in it is made of wool, but Leominster is spoken of as "the greatest market 

 town within the county of Hereford," and that trade in wool must then have 

 been commencing which was so soon to give it still greater distinction. 



It is very probable, also, that cloth factories in the towns of the adjoining 

 districts of Herefordshire, and also of Shropshire, may have had something to 

 do with the creation of a great wool market at Leominster. At a later period we 

 know that woollen factories did exist in Leominster itself, as well as in 

 several neighbouring places. 



