The English Woollen Industry, c.1200-c.1560

This is the first book on the early woollens’ industry. Based on original research, it explains how the eventual combination of rural clothiers making superior cloth and Merchant Adventurers selling it at Antwerp led to English dominance of the European cloth trade by the mid-sixteenth century.

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This is the first book to describe the early English woollens’ industry and its dominance of the trade in quality cloth across Europe by the mid-sixteenth century, as English trade was transformed from dependence on wool to value-added woollen cloth. It compares English and continental draperies, weighs the advantages of urban and rural production, and examines both quality and coarse cloths. Rural clothiers who made broadcloth to a consistent high quality at relatively low cost, Merchant Adventurers who enjoyed a trade monopoly with the Low Countries, and Antwerp’s artisans who finished cloth to customers’ needs all eventually combined to make English woollens unbeatable on the continent.