Wool
The two great industries of England in the Middle Ages were
agriculture and wool-raising. The wool was the finest grown in
Europe, and attracted hither merchants from the Continent. They
travelled through England--in the Cotswold and Hampshire districts,
for instance--and bought wool largely. But in pretty early days
England began to manufacture cloth of various kinds; and that,
too, became an important article of export. This manufacture was
especially strong in the eastern and western parts of the country.
Weavers from Flanders were encouraged to settle in various parts of
England, by several of the Norman kings, soon after the Conquest.
This was the case in Gloucestershire, for example; but the
manufacture declined in the reigns of King John and King Henry III.
In the reign of King Edward III it was again introduced.
As the country began to recover from the effects of the Black
Death, the cloth trade became a very flourishing industry,
and English wool-merchants became a very wealthy and powerful
body. These have left their mark on the churches of the land
pretty plainly. At the end of the fourteenth century, and in the
fifteenth, some of the finest Decorated and Perpendicular work
was done, and a large number of churches, especially in Suffolk,
Gloucestershire, and Somersetshire, have magnificent towers, which
were built at this period. It is pretty safe to say that where
to-day you find a little village with a big church--very much
larger than the place now needs--with a good deal of work belonging
to the Decorated and early Perpendicular periods, that those
places were once engaged in some branch or other of the wool and
cloth trades.
Many of the fine brasses of which we spoke in a former chapter
cover the graves of merchants "of the staple", as these great wool
and cloth traders were called. Then, too, some of the very finest
timbered houses, with their richly carved fronts, as in Chester and
Shrewsbury, were built at this same time.
We have spoken before of the trade guilds. These, too, after the
Black Death period, increased in power and wealth. Each guild
looked well after the interests of its own craft. It regulated
the number of apprentices which a craftsman might have, the hours
of work, the rate of pay; it made provision for helping its
members in sickness and need; and it saw to burying them decently
when they died. Guilds took a lively interest in their parish
churches, helped sometimes in forming new schools, hospitals,
and alms-houses, and had regular times for meeting together for
business and for feasting. They were good to their members, but
very hard on those who were not of their number.
[Illustration: _Spinning Wheel, Fourteenth Century_]
From the members of these trade guilds in a town the town guild, or
corporation, was formed to rule the town according to its ancient
customs and charters, and to obtain for the town as many new rights
and privileges as possible. There is much in the corporation of a
great city like London, with its many companies, or guilds, which
is connected with city life and work of the Middle Ages.