138 The Merchants of the Staple, 8fc. 



And very conscious were our ancestors of the importance and 

 value of the wool-trade. It is amusing to read in old pamphlets 

 their exaggerated expressions respecting it. Wool is described as 

 the flower, the strength, the revenue, the blood of England. 

 One of their writers sees an interpretation of the Argonautic 

 expedition by Jason and his companions in search of the Golden 

 Fleece, in an allegorical description, very natural to the imagi- 

 native mind of the Greek, of the riches to be derived from trading 

 in wool. 1 In England from a very early period wool was next of 

 all other things to ready money, — the main resource of Kings in 

 all their difficulties, — the great stake upon all national emergencies. 

 "With subsidies of wool granted during the 13th and 14th centuries 

 to meet the expenses of foreign wars, even a cursory reader of 

 English History must be familiar; to one indeed granted in 1340, 

 consisting amongst other things of "the ninth lamb and the 

 ninth fleece " for the two years then next to come, we owe the 

 compilation of the " Nonarum Inquisit tones" a record not only 

 interesting but also often useful to the antiquary. On lesser 

 occasions however than those caused by the costs of foreign wars, 

 supplies were obtained from a similar source. When Henry II. 

 became as annalists have it, the benefactor of the citizens of 

 London and enabled them to build their bridge, he made them a 

 present of a tax on wool, (a tax, by the way, which they had the 

 privilege of paying themselves) and this gave rise to the tradition, 

 that old London Bridge was built on wool-packs. When again 

 Coeur de Lion got into trouble, and was detained for a time as a 

 prisoner by the Emperor Henry YL, the means of paying the 

 ransom for the King's release from captivity, was in part derived 

 from wool, one year's growth being borrowed (such was the term 

 employed), from the Abbeys of the Cistercians and other religious 

 orders. At all events the accounts of Gervase de Aldremanberry, 

 Chamberlain of London, towards the close of the 12th century, in 



1 The motto appended to the insignia of the order of the "Golden Fleece" 

 instituted in 1420 by Philip, Duke of Burgundy, " Pretium non vile laborum" 

 gives colour to the supposition that this order was established at the first as a 

 recognition of the vast wealth, of which the wool grown in that country waa 

 the procuring cause. 



