Medieval English wool trade

[1] The medievalist John Munro notes that "[n]o 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.

[5] 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; and the fact that since the fourteenth century, the presiding officer of the House of Lords has sat on the Woolsack, a chair stuffed with wool.

[7] There is little evidence for long-distance trade, but there seems to have been some, presumably of especially rare wools or cloths:[8] the silence of the sources is punctuated by a famous mention of the slipping standards of English cloaks exported to Francia in a letter from Charlemagne to Offa of Mercia.

[14] The onset of war led the English to protect their home industry and impose hindrances on imports of foreign cloth.

[15] 'By the end of the thirteenth century, the heavily industrialised areas of Europe could not have existed without the export of English wool.

[16] 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.

But in 1264, the strife in England of the Second Barons' War brought Anglo-Flemish trade almost to a halt[citation needed][dubious – discuss] and by 1275, when Edward I of England 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.