WOOLLEN CLOTH. OJJAHTIES. 565 



bursars of New College purchased it four or five centuries ago 

 for the fellows, scholars, servants, and choristers. Fastolfe, 

 according to a manuscript of the age preserved in the British 

 Museum (Addl. MSS. 28,200), 'purchased for more than twenty- 

 two years by his receivers more than a hundred pounds sterling 

 worth of red and white cloth, from the tenants of the town of 

 Castle Combe.' These purchases were no doubt made for the 

 English army in France. In 1499, Fitzjames, Bishop of 

 Rochester and Warden of Merton College, bought 79 yards 

 of Medley cloth at Norton Mandeville, a small village near 

 Chipping Ongar in Essex, from a local manufacturer, for the 

 use of his fellows, besides four yards at double the price of the 

 Medley for himself. 



The cloth for New College is almost always bought by the 

 pannus of twenty-four reputed yards. I have concluded, though 

 with some misgivings, that the entry under the year 1409 in 

 which the pannus is described as of twelve yards, is a clerical 

 error of the bursar who made up the account. But the pannus 

 is occasionally shorter or longer, though it is not always easy 

 to determine whether the word is intended to denote the article 

 or the piece. It is clearly the former, for instance in 1462 (Vol. 

 Ill, p. 498, iii) ; and as plainly the latter in 1467, where the piece 

 contains thirty-six yards. See also 1547, 1553, &c. But in 

 1469 the Cambridge pannus contains twenty-four yards. The 

 legal measurement of the piece has been already referred to 

 above, p. 206. But the Cambridge purchases are generally 

 made by the yard and without reference to the piece, and 

 also without distinct indications as to the purpose for which 

 the purchases were designed. 



The New College purchases are of several qualities. The 

 warden and fellows had the same kind of cloth, that of the 

 chaplains being occasionally distinguished and being dearer. 

 Next there is the quality bought for the servants, or valets, then 

 that for the garciones or boys. The stuff purchased for the 

 servants is generally called pannus stragulatus, sometimes also 

 pannus planus, and is ordinarily bought by the yard. Here, 



