I 



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whence they came degna de Fama, and to entitle them to the 

 epithet nobik, is a fad which, without a proof fo incontroverti- 

 ble as the teftimony of our author, would never have been 

 credited ; efpecially when we refled that England was not then 

 in poffeflion of any fuch commerce, fince we know, to a cer- 

 tainty, that Edward III. during whofe reign, many years before 

 his death, the poem was undoubtedly written, was the firfl: of 

 our kings who effedually encouraged the Englifh to apply them- 

 felves to the woollen manufadure. For, though there is no 

 doubt that wool was wrought in England fo early as in the 

 time of Richard I. and even earlier, yet is it more than proba- 

 ble that fuch manufadure was principally, if not wholly, for 

 home confumption, as raw wool was at that time, and long 

 after, the principal article of Englifh export, and all our hiftorians 

 agree in fixing the date of the woollen manufadure in England, 

 as an objed of importance, to the year 1331, fifth of Edward III. 

 in which year that wife monarch brought over from Flanders 

 John Kemp, and feveral other Flemifh woollen weavers. Yet 

 is it clear, from the above lines, that at this very period Ireland 

 was already in poffeffion of this branch of commerce, and famous 

 for her woollens, which fhe exported to diflant regions, and fent 

 even into Italy, at that time the moft polilhcd of all European 

 countries, and the moft eminent for trade and manufadures *. 



( C 2 ) SdIA 



* The city of Florence, to which probably our Florenthic author more particularly 

 afcribes the confumption of Irifh ferges, was not only eminent for her manufadures, 

 but in an high degree remarkable for her luxury in drefs, as may be feen by confulting 

 the Hiftory of Giovanni Villani, lib. x. cap. 152, where that good old chronicler, 

 in his account of a fumptuary law enacted in the year 1330, circumftantially details 

 the enormous profufion of his countrymen, and more efpecially of his countrywomen, 

 in that article. Villani farther informs us, that this fumptuary ordinance was not only 



applauded, 



