560 ON THE PRICE OF TEXTILE FABRICS .AND CLOTHING. 



averages which are given at the conclusion of this chapter will, 

 I trust, justify the discretion which I have claimed in dealing 

 with the evidence collected in the third volume. The prices 

 of table linen and shirting will be found to closely correspond 

 in the earlier period, i.e.. from 1401 to 1540, which I have taken 

 throughout as the point before which traditional or customary 

 prices were not sensibly affected. From this point the rise, as 

 usual, is rapid. But like other commodities in which labour 

 is an important factor, and foreign supply could readily check 

 efforts to raise prices, the exaltation does not follow that in 

 the price of food. The rise in the price of table linen does 

 indeed closely follow that in the price of grain. But it is clear 

 that either the purchase of this article in the later years was of 

 a special and more fully wrought fabric, as I have noted above, 

 or the cost was exceptionally enhanced. Sheeting is a little 

 more than doubled in price. But coarse canvas and sacking 

 do not show so great an increase in money value. They are 

 domestic manufactures supplied by English artisans. The 

 Lancashire linen is generally but not always cheap, some 

 quantities of this produce being as high priced as Normandy 

 and Holland cloth. The Bristol linea is generally at a full 

 price, but entries become scarce in the later period. Much of 

 the cloth, however, is not localised. In all likelihood, weaving, 

 especially of linen and hempen cloth, was carried on in every 

 village, as it was two or three generations ago, and as it is said 

 to be still in the south of France. 



The first entry of Holland linen is in 1461. But it is not 

 common till the beginning of the sixteenth century, from which 

 time entries are frequent. It is generally dearer than other 

 kinds of linen, and is sometimes, when designated as fine, very 

 dear. Such prices are those given for linen purchased for the 

 use of nobles and gentlemen, abbots and heads of colleges, as, 

 for example, the linen of 1522, bought at Hunstanton, and that 

 at Stonor in 1533 and J 534> the six y ards bou g ht in Oxford, 

 1542, for the Warden of New College, that in 1546 for the 

 Queen Dowager, Catherine Parr, that in 1551 at Hatfield for 



