A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE 



twenty-eight years, according to the St. Albans chronicler " ; his statement may 

 have been accurate locally. The price of wool by the fleece may have 

 averaged about 8^^. This was the rate at Stevenage in 1308** and at 

 Standon in 1347.^ In gross the price was lower. Fourteen and a half fleeces 

 were sold for Sj. at Stevenage,'" and at Pre in 1342-3 six were sold for 

 2s. zd., at the weight of eighty-seven to 15 stone." Possibly these were 

 poor skins. At Langley in the bad year 13 16 sixty-eight fetched td. each." 



This wool was worked up for the most part in the villages, where the 

 lord's fulhng-mill finished the homespun, and in the 13th century the 

 burgesses of St. Albans — Henry de la Porte and his companions — seem to 

 have been clothmakers rather than wool dealers. Their market was presum- 

 ably among the townsfolk and the richer people of the shire. They may well 

 have gone the round of the manor-houses at shearing time, combining the 

 functions of the dealer and manufacturer. From such a condition the St. 

 Albans man could easily decrease his handwork and devote himself to wool 

 dealing, as the London buyers were willing to take more. The markets along 

 the great road would naturally be the meeting-place of the Londoner and the 

 local man. In 1286, at Royston Market, one Robert Jukes was selling 

 ninety fleeces to a merchant, when Walter Ulgate came up and told the 

 merchant that it was marsh-grown wool and not worth his buying, so that 

 the sale was broken off, to Robert's loss of 30^^." Early in the 14th century 

 this increase seems to have begun. In a list of the time of Edward III, 

 dealing with the trades of Watford, two ' sellers of cloth ' °* are mentioned and 

 six wool merchants." In 1326 William Persone of Watford and J. Baret ot 

 Baldock were shipping wool from Sandwich to Antwerp for Brabant. °° 

 These merchants dealt directly with the landholders ; but probably many of 

 the latter bought up supplies from the small freeholders and villeins and 

 dabbled in the trade. 



In 1 341 at Hemel Hempstead fifty-one persons, including many 

 women, had a stock of 17 stone 3 lb." At Berkhampstead there was the 

 same amount. At Bushey thirty-eight capitalists, of whom the Countess of 

 Kent was one of the biggest, had nearly 20 stone. At Great Gaddesden the 

 two men who held 1 1\ lb. were probably lords of manors. The eleven 

 men and women mentioned at St. Albans were apparently dealers rather 

 than producers. The total for St. Albans is 1 5 stone, and at Childerwick 

 •j\ stone.'' 



The monk of St. Albans writes in 1349 : 'A pestilence came which 

 almost halved all flesh.' The prior and sub-prior died with forty-seven 

 monks, besides those who died in the cells of the abbey." Another St. 

 Albans chronicler writes less accurately that hardly one-tenth of the people 

 was left alive ; more than forty monks died."" 



The Plague reached London by the beginning of November 1348, 

 Norwich by the New Year.^ The first cases in Herts, may well have 



*^ Walsingham, Hist. Angl. (Rolls Ser.), i, 14. ^ Mins. Accts. bdle. 870, no. 20. 



S5 Ibid. bdle. 869, no. 8. 9«Ibid. bdle. 870, no. 20. " Ibid. bdle. 867 no. 22. 



s= Ibid. bdle. 866, no. 21. 93 Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), bdle. 62, no. 765, m. 5. 



'■^ Distinguished from the ten tailors. " Lay Subs. R. Herts, bdle. 242, no. 1 7. 



9^ Cal. Ckie, 1323-7, p. 594. ^ Lay Snb». R. Herts, bdle. 242, no. 68. »8 \\;^^ 



99 Walsingham, Gat. Abbat. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 369. ^ Chron. Angl. (Rolls Ser.), 27. 



1 W. J. Ashley, Econ. Hut. pt. ii. 



192 



