Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/111

Rh measures, and for regulating the dyeing and sale of woollen cloths. The business of dyeing, except in black, it was enacted, should only be carried on in cities and boroughs, in which alone also any dyeing stuffs, except black, were allowed to be sold. It appears that the duties upon woad imported into London in 1195 and 1196 amounted to 96l. 6s. 8d. "If London alone," observes Macpherson, "imported woad to an extent that could bear such a payment (and it will afterwards appear that but a small part of the whole woad imported arrived in London), the woollen manufacture, to which it was apparently mostly confined, must have been somewhat considerable. But there is reason to believe that but few fine woollen goods were made in England, and that the Flemings, who were famous at this time for their superior skill in the woollen manufacture, as is evident from the testimony of several of the English historians of this age, continued for a series of ages to supply most of the western parts of Europe, and even some of the Mediterranean countries, with fine cloths, which the Italians called French cloths, either as reckoning Flanders a part of France (as, indeed, in feudal language it was), or because they received them from the ports of the south coast of that country." Much of the wool used in Flanders, however, appears to have been obtained from England. In the history, indeed, which bears the name of Matthew of Westminster, it is said that all the nations of the world used at this time to be kept warm by the wool of England, which was made into cloth by the Flemish manufacturers. In the patent of incorporation of the guild of weavers in London by Henry II., granted in the thirty-first year of his reign, there is a prohibition against mixing Spanish with English wool in the making of cloth, from which it may be inferred that the wool of England was in this age of superior quality to that obtained from Spain.

From the commencement of his reign, John appears to have affected to favour the interests of the part of the community connected with trade, now daily rising into more importance, and to have courted their support