570 ON THE PRICE OF TEXTILE FABRICS, ETC. 



manufacture; the produce, it appears, was taken to the great 

 fairs of the eastern side of England, to Stourbridge, to St. Ives, 

 to St. Neots, and similar places. 



Nor, apparently, was the extreme west of England destitute 

 in the Middle Ages of that cloth manufacture for which it 

 became afterwards so famous. The reader will find purchases 

 made at Westbury, at Sherborne, and at Salisbury. In the 

 earliest times, too, Irish woollen stuffs were manufactured, not 

 only for the home but for the English market, being purchased 

 at so distant a place as Southampton. 



Besides using the supply from these domestic sources, the 

 wealthier classes purchased foreign stuffs. The Earl of 

 Gloucester buys linen of Liege, this being about three times 

 the price of Aylesham cloth. Of course, too, the silk fabrics, 

 of which a few specimens are found, are of foreign origin, and 

 . many kinds of cloth ; though some of these articles are of 

 difficult interpretation, as Tirretin and Tripoli, Camelet, Taurs- 

 maurs, Persetum, Ponnetum, Radiata, or Raye, Tartaryn, and 

 Taffata. 



The fact that linen and woollen manufactures were fixed in 

 these localities will account for the comparative cheapness with 

 which the produce of Norfolk was purchased by bailiffs resident 

 in or near that county. The largest part of the information 

 supplied for the earlier part of my enquiry is derived from the 

 eastern counties, and consequently the rate at which canvas for 

 home purposes is procured by the bailiffs of Norfolk, Suffolk, 

 and Cambridgeshire, is lower than that at which it is obtained 

 in Oxfordshire, Sussex, or Surrey. I should have little doubt, 

 were there any large amount of information available for this 

 part of England there is some from Hunts during the later 

 portion of the enquiry, that the devastation of the Plague, 

 which was felt so severely in Norfolk, broke up this differential 

 advantage of the eastern market, and tended, as much as any 

 other cause, to disperse the manufacture over other parts of 

 England of equal natural capacity for fostering and extending 

 textile industry. It appears, indeed, that the prosperity of 



