568 ON THE PRICE OF TEXTILE FABRICS. 



siderable London citizens ; among others, the two Chicheles, 

 brothers of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who founded All 

 Souls and S. Bernard's Colleges in Oxford, with the school 

 and hospital of Higham Ferrers, from which place the family 

 sprung. Records of the prices of woollen stuffs are given for 

 thirteen years between 1400 and 1423 inclusive, during which 

 period my information was more copious (vol. iv. p. 583) than 

 it was for the earlier period, but might still be conveniently 

 enlarged. 



The Grocers buy large quantities of ray, medley, green, 

 tawney, blue, sanguine, and murray for livery gowns, ray 

 being the commonest material. A note under two of the 

 years informs us that the ray cloth was bought at Salisbury. 

 I infer from the fact that ray is bought in such large quan- 

 tities, that this cloth formed the body of the livery gown, 

 and the other kinds of cloth were used as trimmings or 

 facings to the ordinary stuff. One of the entries states that 

 the piece as before contained twenty-four yards. From the 

 same year it is clear that there were two qualities of ray, 

 possibly differing only in the breadth of the cloth, one of 

 which is at 45 s. the piece, the other at 98^. In 1421 it is 

 said that some of the pieces of green were twenty-two yards 

 in length. Under the year 1420 the pieces of ray and the 

 pieces of blue must either have been of different quality or 

 of different dimensions. Again, in 1414 the piece of blue is 

 said to contain over thirty yards. 



Besides the cloth which the Company purchased for the 

 livery, they bought it for their beadle in 1401, dressing him in 

 green, and allowing him three and a-half yards ; and they 

 gave clothing to their minstrels in 1421, probably about the 

 same quantity to each. The ' mystreviler ' of the same year 

 is the French cloth from Normandy, which is mentioned so 

 frequently and with such varieties of spelling in the accounts 

 of the fifteenth century (vol. iv. p. 566). The Grocers' accounts 

 do not contain purchases of fur for the official robes of the 

 guild, and on the whole the price at which the Corporation 



