By ihe Rev. W. E. Jones. 139 



which are included payments made by merchants for leave to 

 export wool, &c., and also sundry fines arising from the seizure of 

 wool attempted to be exported without leave, and payment of 

 what was customarily due to the Crown, imply that a part of the 

 royal revenue, even at this early period, was ordinarily derived 

 from taxes on wool. The words, therefore, of Sir Edward Coke 

 are no exaggeration : " Wool is the worthiest and richest com- 

 moditie of this kingdoms ; for divide our native commodities 

 exported into tenne parts, and that which comes from the sheepe's 

 back, is nine parts in value of the tenne, and setteth great numbers 

 of people on worke." 



It is by no means easy to say to what period we may trace the 

 commencement of our trade in wool, whether in exporting the 

 material in its raw or manufactured state. Some manufactures 

 no doubt were carried on as earh^ as the ninth century, though no 

 doubt the cloth then made was not only small in quantity but 

 inferior in quality. We find Charlemagne however, writing to 

 Ofia, King of Mercia, with a complaint that certain woollen 

 cloths exported from England, were not of the accustomed size. 

 More than a thousand years ago too, we find an English merchant 

 resident at Marseilles, the same merchant being the father of a 

 Bishop ; and such men were then known in all the great marts of 

 the Continent. An article also of the great Charter, as confirmed 

 in the 9 Henry III., by which the statutable width of broad cloth 

 is fixed at " two yards within the lists," implies that for some 

 years before that date this manufacture was known and practised 

 in England. Stamford indeed is expressly mentioned as a place 

 where a company of cloth-weavers followed this calling. 



The Easterlings of the Still- yard. 



The earliest body of men engaged in the wool trade, of whom 

 we have any authentic account, were the "Merchants," or — as they 

 are commonly termed — the "Easterlings of the Still-yard." ' They 

 were foreigners who came from Flanders, and to the country east 



' Some have thought the word was derived from Stael-hoff, a contraction of 

 Stafd-hoff or Stapel-hof, i.e. a place for keeping merchandize. 



