CHAPTER XXI. 



ON THE PRICE OF TEXTILE FABRICS. CLOTH, ETC. 



THE collections which I have been able to make for the 

 present period have been supplemented by two others which 

 belong to an earlier epoch, when evidence was scarce and 

 broken. The first is a continuous record for fourteen years 

 (1322-1335) of purchases made by the prior and monks of 

 Christ Church, Canterbury, for the use of the officials in their 

 employ. The account is inscribed in the ledger book of the 

 monastery, a collection of notes and letters of interest to the 

 inmates and rulers of this great monastic corporation. Some 

 of these letters, written during the dangerous times which 

 were finally marked by the deposition of Edward II, are of 

 great historical importance, but have not, as far as I know, 

 been printed, probably not examined by students of history. 



The corporation buys four different kinds of cloth, for the 

 clerks, for the gentlemen, for the upper servants (as I inter- 

 pret 'de mestier'), and for the lower servants or garciones. 

 The purchases for the clerks are generally of the highest 

 quality, and it seems, as the seneschal of the monastery is 

 included in the first class, that the clerks are the officials 

 employed in the exchequer or estates office of this wealthy 

 corporation, some of whose bailiffs in the different manors 

 were the heads of old county families in Kent, as for example 

 the Knatchbulls, or Knecheboles, as they call themselves in 

 the fifteenth century. The seat indeed of this family was 

 one of the possessions of the priory, of which the hereditary 

 steward contrived to get possession at the Dissolution. 



