BLANKET. 579 



only a yard and three quarters. The boys, c garciones,' a yard 

 and a half. 



Besides the kinds of cloth which have been enumerated 

 above, we find kersey, tirretin, murrey, burell, rosete, keynet, 

 reynes, and taursmaurs. A fabric called c festocuntum," and 

 quoted at Maiden Bradley in the year 1326, seems to be the 

 modern fustian. The word is not found in Ducange. 



The cloth when bought was not immediately fit for use, but 

 had to undergo another process called c tonsura,' which seems 

 to have consisted in shearing the long nap off. The process 

 appears to have required considerable skill, as the payment 

 made in the roll of the Determination Feast is at the rate of 

 lod. the piece. 



The price of woollen cloths does not exhibit the same fluctu- 

 ations as that of other articles. There is, if the evidence 

 which I have been able to collect is sufficient in quantity and 

 homogeneous enough in quality for such a purpose, a slight 

 rise in the better stuffs, and a more marked increase in the 

 inferior kinds, after the Plague; but the difference between 

 the two periods, when contrasted with that which may be 

 found in the record of other commodities, is trivial. I account 

 for this incongruity by the fact that so serious a depression 

 took place in the price of the raw material. The reader will 

 remember that during a considerable part of the last fifty years 

 of the fourteenth century wool was greatly depressed in price. 

 (Supra, p. 384.) Now, if we recall to mind how dear the 

 material generally was, it is not surprising that, on the whole, 

 high prices should have generally prevailed ; and that when the 

 money value of wool fell, as it did considerably, the diminished 

 cost of the material was almost sufficient to compensate the 

 increased cost of manufacture. 



The robe was necessarily lined, sometimes with a costly 

 material as silk, at other times with russet (vol. ii. p. 541. iii.), 

 taffata (ibid, ii.), or buckram (ibid. iv.). A very coarse kind of 

 woollen stuff was used to stiffen the collars of the robes, under 

 the name of wadmal. 



P p 3 



