Читать книгу The Industrial History of England - Henry de Beltgens Gibbins - Страница 52

—Having now seen the importance of wool as a factor in English industry and political history, we must proceed to study more closely the facts of the woollen trade, and the manufacture of woollen cloth. The chief growers of wool were the Cistercian monks, who owned huge flocks of sheep. The wool grown near Leominster, in Herefordshire, was the finest of all, and, generally speaking, that grown in Wiltshire, Essex, Sussex, Hampshire, Oxfordshire, Cambridge and Warwickshire, was the best. The poorest came from the North of England, and from {51} the Southern downs. There were a number of different breeds of sheep, for care was taken to improve the breed, and it would seem that forty-four different brands of English wool, ranging in value from £13 to £2, 10s. the sack (of 364 lbs.), were recognized both in the home and foreign markets, as mentioned in a Parliamentary petition of 1454. The average price of wool from 1260–1400 was 2s. 1⁠¾d. per clove of 7 lbs.—i.e. a little over threepence a pound, sometimes fourpence. In the middle of this period (1350) the average annual export, according to Misselden, in the Circle of Commerce, was about 11,648,000 lbs., representing a value of some £180,683 yearly.