A. D. 1438. 655 



As belonging to the fame fubjed, I will here add, that in March 1441 

 the municipal magiflrates of Barcelona wrote to their agent in Bruges 

 to purchafe four hundred quintals of the finell Englifh wool to be (hip- 

 ped at Sonthampton or London, to endeavour to get it weighed by the 

 London weight, which was above five per cent heavier than that he had 

 formerly bought by, and to buy it ten per cent lower than the lafl: parcel 

 (but how could he do that and get the fineft wool?) and moreover to 

 ftipulate, in order to guard againll deception, that the wool fhould be 

 at the rifle of the feller till landed in Barcelona. \Capmany, V. ii. Col. 

 dipt. p. 241.] The Englifli wool was fometimes fent back to its native 

 countiy in the form of manufadured cloth ; as appears from a record, 

 flill preferved in the archives of Barcelona, which informs us that 250 

 facks of fine Englifh wool, weighing eight arobas (about two hundred- 

 weight) each, imported|by a Barcelona galley returned from England, 

 were diflributed about this time to different manufadhirers, in order to 

 be made into cloth to be fent to England. {Capmany, V. i, Com. p. 144.] 



We thus fee that the Englifh had not yet attained the art of making 

 x.\\Qjiriefi woollen cloths, that Ypres was not the only place which excell- 

 ed England in the manufadure, (fee above, p. 651) and that the fineft 

 cloths of Catalonia were in demand in England, long after Englifh cloths 

 had become a confiderable article of exportation. On the other hand, 

 we find (from Capmany, V. i, Com. p. 242) that fome of the Englifh 

 fabrics, and thofe of Florence, were afterwards thought worthy of imi- 

 tation by the manufaflurers of Barcelona, as fome of thofe of Rheims, 

 Flanders, and even Ireland, were before this time. We ihall foon fee 

 the fubjeds of Aragon, whofe principal errand to England was the pur- 

 chafe of wool, treated with peculiar favour in this country. 



We have already feen that Caftile, the principal kingdom in Spain, 

 obtained a large flock of fine-wooled flieep from England, in the I'eign, 

 and apparently by the ad, of that very king, Edward III, who has gen- 

 erally obtained the praife of being the great preferver of the wool, and 

 founder of the woollen manufactures, of England. In procefs of time, 

 the exportation of wool having never been prohibited by the govern- 

 ment of Spain, that country, by unremitting attention to the royal 

 flock, has acquired the reputation and the eflabliflied market for the 

 fineft wool in Europe : and the Spaniards now receive their own wool 

 from England, made into cloth. What a wonderful change in the ftate 

 of the cominercial intercourfe between the two countries in the fifteenth 

 and eighteenth centuries ! 



1439, February — The crops of corn, efpecially wheat and rye, hav-- 

 ing been very deficient in England, while they were more abundant in 

 the Danifh dominions and the Eaft country, Robert Chapman a merch- 

 ant of York, being furnifhed with a letter from King Henry to the king 

 of Denmark, failed to that country for a cargo of grain. Sir Stephen 

 Browne, mayor of London, alfo imported feveral cargoes of rye from. 



