358 Dr. Parry's Essay on the Nature, Produce, Origin, 



is indiscriminately applied to neat cattle and sheep. Neither can any thing farther 

 be learned from the expression of Julius Caesar, that the inhabitants were " pellibus 

 " vestiti,"* clothed in skins; because the word " pellis" includes the skins not only 

 of various quadrupeds, but even of man. It is certain, however, that the word 

 " pecus," when used without a distinctive adjective, if it does not, as in the motto 

 of this Treatise, mean sheep alone, is most usually designed to comprehend them ; 

 notwithstanding which, if the Britons at that time had sheep, as is most probable, 

 we do not know that they either fabricated their fleeces into clothing, or sent them 

 for that purpose to any other part of Europe. 



Pennant asserts, I have not examined on what authority, that " from the Gauls 

 *' of the continent the Britons received the first cloth ; the dress called the Bracha, 

 " a coarse woollen manufacture." t 



The same priority of export as to wool itself, is by Polydore Virgil given to the 

 French ; for which reason Engliih wool in his time, in Italy, was called French 

 wool, as if grown in France.;]; 



At a later period of the Roman empire, than those to which I have before 

 alluded, Eumenius, the panegyrist of Constantine the Great, celebrates the' 

 natural advantages of Britain in terms of the most extravagant commendation. 

 Among various other privileges, he assigns it that of containing " an innumerable 

 " multitude of tame animals, distended with milk, and loaded with fleeces." " Pe- 

 " corum mitium iimumerabilis multitudo lacte distenta, et onusta velleribus." ^ 



On this panegyric it is observed by the eloquent Gibbon, that " the orator Eume- 

 " nius wished to exalt the glory of the hero Constanlius with the importance of the 

 " conquest. Notwithstanding our laudable partiality for our native country, it is 

 " difhcult to conceive that in the beginning of the 4th century, England deserved 

 *' all these commendations. A century and a half before, it hardly paid its own 

 " establishment." || 



It is noticed by Camden.f! that the Romans had an established cloth manufac- 

 tory at Winchester. That author, however, himself lays no stress on the supposed 



• De Bello Gallico, lib. v. § xiv. 



t Peiimrjt's London, page 2. I know not any proof that the " Brachae Britonis pauperis" 

 (Martial) were made ot woollen cloth, 

 t Anglica: Historise lib. i. page 13. § Panegyr. Vet. vii. 9. 



U Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, I. 432. f Biitannia Gibson, page 113. 



