Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/150

148 the end of the fourteenth century there is reason to believe that an active trade was carried on in the conveyance of Newcastle coal by sea to London and elsewhere. Wool, however, was during the whole of this period, as for a long time afterwards, the great staple of the kingdom. In 1279, in a petition to Edward I., the nobles asserted that the wool produced in England, and mostly exported to Flanders, was nearly equal to half the land in value. English wool appears also to have been in great request in France, in which country, as well as in Flanders, the manufacture of woollen cloth was early established. Little cloth, as we have already had occasion to observe, was made in England, and that little only of the coarsest description, till the wise policy of Edward III., by a grant dated in 1331, invited weavers, dyers, and fullers, from Flanders, to come over and settle in the country, pronising them his protection and favour on condition that they should carry on their trades here, and communicate the knowledge of them to his subjects. The first person who accepted of this invitation was John Kempe, a weaver of woollen cloth: he came over with his goods and chattels, his servants and his apprentices. Many of his countrymen soon followed. A few years later other weavers came over from Brabant and Zealand; and thus was established certainly the first manufacture of fine woollen cloths in England. It was many years, however, as we have seen, before this infant manufacture was able even to supply the domestic demand, far less to maintain any export trade in woollens. The cloths of the Continent, in spite of various legislative attempts to exclude them, long continued to be imported in considerable quantities. The 4774½ pieces of cloth exported in 1354 were evidently, from their price, of the old coarse fabric of the country. Large quantities of the English wool also continued annually to go abroad. With the view of keeping up the price of the article, it was enacted by the statute 14 Rich. II. c. 4, passed in 1390, that no denizen of England should buy wool except of