![Pipeandbelldavid](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Pipeandbelldavid.png)
The medieval English wool trade was one of the most important factors in the
medieval English
Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English p ...
economy. The
medievalist
The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , ''asteriskos'', "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star.
Computer scientists and mathematicians often vo ...
John Munro notes that "
form of manufacturing had a greater impact upon the economy and society of medieval Britain than did those industries producing cloths from various kinds of wool." The trade's liveliest period, 1250–1350, was 'an era when trade in wool had been ''the'' backbone and driving force in the English medieval economy'.
The wool trade was a major driver of
enclosure
Enclosure or Inclosure is a term, used in English landownership, that refers to the appropriation of "waste" or " common land" enclosing it and by doing so depriving commoners of their rights of access and privilege. Agreements to enclose land ...
(the privatisation of
common land
Common land is land owned by a person or collectively by a number of persons, over which other persons have certain common rights, such as to allow their livestock to graze upon it, to collect Wood fuel, wood, or to cut turf for fuel.
A person ...
) in
English agriculture, which in turn had major social consequences, as part of the
British Agricultural Revolution
The British Agricultural Revolution, or Second Agricultural Revolution, was an unprecedented increase in agricultural production in Britain arising from increases in labour and land productivity between the mid-17th and late 19th centuries. Agric ...
.
Among the lasting monuments to the success of the trade are the
'wool churches' of East Anglia and the Cotswolds; the London
Worshipful Company of Clothworkers
The Worshipful Company of Clothworkers was incorporated by Royal Charter in 1528, formed by the amalgamation of its two predecessor companies, the Fullers (incorporated 1480) and the Shearmen (incorporated 1508). It succeeded to the position of t ...
; and the fact that since the fourteenth century, the presiding officer of the House of Lords has sat on the
Woolsack
The Woolsack is the seat of the Lord Speaker in the House of Lords, the Upper House of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Before 2006, it was the seat of the Lord Chancellor.
History
In the 14th century King Edward III (1327–1377) said th ...
, a chair stuffed with wool.
Early Middle Ages
![Utrechts-Psalter CANTICUM-2 shephard blowing horn](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Utrechts-Psalter_CANTICUM-2_shephard_blowing_horn.jpg)
During the early Anglo-Saxon period (c. 450–650), archaeological evidence for subsistence-level wool production using
warp-weighted loom
The warp-weighted loom is a simple and ancient form of loom in which the warp yarns hang freely from a bar supported by upright poles which can be placed at a convenient slant against a wall. Bundles of warp threads are tied to hanging weights ...
s is extensive. Tools and technologies of spinning and weaving were similar to those of the Roman period; it is likely that fine, white wool continued to be produced from sheep introduced from the Mediterranean region alongside coarser local wools. Dyes included woad for blue and less frequently
madder
''Rubia'' is the type genus of the Rubiaceae family of flowering plants, which also contains coffee. It contains around 80 species of perennial scrambling or climbing herbs and subshrubs native to the Old World. The genus and its best-known spe ...
and lichens for reds and purples. Some high-status woollen cloth is found, including gold brocade. New textile types appeared around the tenth century, prominently including diamond twills whose use continued into the thirteenth century.> There is little evidence for long-distance trade, but there seems to have been some, presumably of especially rare wools or cloths: the silence of the sources is punctuated by a famous mention of the slipping standards of English cloaks exported to
Francia
Francia, also called the Kingdom of the Franks ( la, Regnum Francorum), Frankish Kingdom, Frankland or Frankish Empire ( la, Imperium Francorum), was the largest post-Roman barbarian kingdom in Western Europe. It was ruled by the Franks dur ...
in a letter from
Charlemagne
Charlemagne ( , ) or Charles the Great ( la, Carolus Magnus; german: Karl der Große; 2 April 747 – 28 January 814), a member of the Carolingian dynasty, was King of the Franks from 768, King of the Lombards from 774, and the first Holy ...
to
Offa of Mercia
Offa (died 29 July 796 AD) was List of monarchs of Mercia, King of Mercia, a kingdom of History of Anglo-Saxon England, Anglo-Saxon England, from 757 until his death. The son of Thingfrith and a descendant of Eowa of Mercia, Eowa, Offa came to ...
. By the eleventh century, however, sheep were numerous in England, and at least some export of their wool by low German merchants was taking place;
Peter Sawyer argued that wool was already a major source of wealth and an important export commodity in England at this time.
Later Middle Ages
![Les_Très_Riches_Heures_du_duc_de_Berry_juillet_sheep_shearing](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/Les_Tr%C3%A8s_Riches_Heures_du_duc_de_Berry_juillet_sheep_shearing.jpg)
Subsistence-level production of wool continued, but was overshadowed by the rise of wool as a commodity, which in turn encouraged demand for other raw materials such as dyestuffs; the rise of manufacturing; the financial sector; urbanisation; and (since wool and related raw materials had a high value-to-weight ratio and were easily transported) regional, international, and even intercontinental trade.
English wools, particularly from the Welsh Marches, the South West and Lincolnshire, were the most prized in medieval Europe. It was exported to the emergent urban centres of cloth production of the Low Countries, France, and Italy, where production was promoted by the adoption of the pedal-driven horizontal loom and
spinning wheel
A spinning wheel is a device for spinning thread or yarn from fibres. It was fundamental to the cotton textile industry prior to the Industrial Revolution. It laid the foundations for later machinery such as the spinning jenny and spinning f ...
, along with mechanised
fulling
Fulling, also known as felting, tucking or walking ( Scots: ''waukin'', hence often spelled waulking in Scottish English), is a step in woollen clothmaking which involves the cleansing of woven or knitted cloth (particularly wool) to elimin ...
and
napping.
In 1280 about 25,000 sacks of wool were exported from England; trade in raw wool peaked around 40,000–45,000 sacks per year, falling to 33,000 in 1355 and 9,706 in 1476 as exports changed to finished cloth. As exports of raw wool fell, exports of cloths rose, from 10,000 cloths per year in 1349–50 to 60,000 in 1446–47, and c. 140,000 in 1539–40. 'By the end of the thirteenth century, the heavily industrialised areas of Europe could not have existed without the export of English wool.'
England's wool-trade was volatile, however, affected by diverse factors such as war, taxation policy, export/import duties or even bans, disease and famine, and the degree of competition among European merchants for English wool. For example, since Continental industry relied on English wool, and export embargoes could 'bring whole areas to the brink of starvation and economic ruin', the wool trade was a powerful political tool. Likewise,
taxes
A tax is a compulsory financial charge or some other type of levy imposed on a taxpayer (an individual or legal entity) by a governmental organization in order to fund government spending and various public expenditures (regional, local, or ...
on the wool trade financed
Edward I
Edward I (17/18 June 1239 – 7 July 1307), also known as Edward Longshanks and the Hammer of the Scots, was King of England and Lord of Ireland from 1272 to 1307. Concurrently, he ruled the duchies of Aquitaine and Gascony as a vassal o ...
's wars and enabled England to conduct the
Hundred Years' War
The Hundred Years' War (; 1337–1453) was a series of armed conflicts between the kingdoms of Kingdom of England, England and Kingdom of France, France during the Late Middle Ages. It originated from disputed claims to the French Crown, ...
with better resources than France. These instabilities led to a boom-bust cycle in prices and exports.
In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the English wool trade was primarily with Flanders (where wool was made into cloth, primarily for sale via the
Champagne fairs into the Mediterranean basin), and was dominated by Flemish merchants. But in 1264, the strife in England of the
Second Barons' War
The Second Barons' War (1264–1267) was a civil war in England between the forces of a number of barons led by Simon de Montfort against the royalist forces of King Henry III, led initially by the king himself and later by his son, the fut ...
brought Anglo-Flemish trade almost to a halt and by 1275, when
Edward I of England
Edward I (17/18 June 1239 – 7 July 1307), also known as Edward Longshanks and the Hammer of the Scots, was King of England and Lord of Ireland from 1272 to 1307. Concurrently, he ruled the duchies of Aquitaine and Gascony as a vassa ...
negotiated an agreement with the domestic merchant community (and secured a permanent duty on wool), Italian merchants had begun to gain dominance in the trade. Extending their activities to finance, the
Riccardi Riccardi is an Italian surname. Notable people with the surname include:
* Alessio Riccardi (born 2001), Italian footballer
* Andrea Riccardi (born 1950), Italian church leader
* Arturo Riccardi (1878–1966), Italian Navy admiral
* Davide Ricca ...
, a group of bankers from
Lucca
Lucca ( , ) is a city and ''comune'' in Tuscany, Central Italy, on the Serchio River, in a fertile plain near the Ligurian Sea. The city has a population of about 89,000, while its province has a population of 383,957.
Lucca is known as one o ...
in Italy, became particularly prominent in English taxation and finance.
[Emilia Jamroziak, 'Rievaulx Abbey as a Wool Producer in the Late Thirteenth Century: Cistercians, Sheep, and Debts', ''Northern History'', 40 (2003), 197–218 (pp. 200–1).] Among the most famous merchants participating in the English wool trade were
Jean Boinebroke of Douai Jehan Boinebroke (died 1286 in Douai) was a French merchant from Douai.
He is described in ''The Cambridge History of Western Textiles'' as 'undoubtedly the most famous merchant-draper "Capitalism, capitalist" to be found in medieval western Europ ...
(d. 1286) on the Continental side, and
William de la Pole
William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Engl ...
(d. 1366) on the English.
Guild
A guild ( ) is an association of artisans and merchants who oversee the practice of their craft/trade in a particular area. The earliest types of guild formed as organizations of tradesmen belonging to a professional association. They sometimes ...
organisations seem to have emerged in the textile industry earlier in England than elsewhere in Europe, being attested already in the 1130s in London, Winchester, Lincoln, Oxford, Nottingham, and Huntingdon.
Early Modern period
By the sixteenth century, the quality of English wools was in decline, perhaps partly due to a switch in focus to meat production for domestic urban markets, and European supremacy in the production of fine-wool passed to the Iberian peninsula and its
merino
The Merino is a breed or group of breeds of domestic sheep, characterised by very fine soft wool. It was established in Spain near the end of the Middle Ages, and was for several centuries kept as a strict Spanish monopoly; exports of the bree ...
sheep.
Key statistics
The table charts English woolsack and broadcloth exports, in five-year means, 1281–1545.
Key studies
Key studies of the topic include:
*
Eileen Power
Eileen Edna Le Poer Power (9 January 18898 August 1940) was a British economic historian and medievalist.
Early life and education
Eileen Power was the eldest daughter of a stockbroker and was born at Altrincham, Cheshire (now part of Great ...
, ''The Wool Trade in English Medieval History: Being the Ford Lectures
939' (London: Oxford University Press,
941
* T. H. Lloyd, ''The English Wool Trade in the Middle Ages'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977)
See also
*
Wool town
*
Wool church
A wool church is an English church financed primarily by donations from rich merchants and farmers who had benefitted from the medieval wool trade, hoping to ensure a place in heaven due to their largesse.
Wool churches are common in the Cotswold ...
References
Bibliography
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{{DEFAULTSORT:medieval English wool trade
Economy of medieval England
History of agriculture in England
Medieval agriculture
Wool trade