Medieval English wool trade

A painting showing a man in orange clothes playing a pipe and ringing a small bell. He is surrounded by numerous small white sheep, and two trees sit on either side of him. A small village is depicted in the upper left hand corner.
Sheep, shown here in the 1240s or the 1250s, became increasingly important to English agriculture.

The medieval English wool trade was one of the most important factors in the medieval English economy.[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."[2] The trade's liveliest period, 1250–1350, was 'an era when trade in wool had been the backbone and driving force in the English medieval economy'.[3]

The wool trade was a major driver of enclosure (the privatisation of common land) in English agriculture, which in turn had major social consequences, as part of the British Agricultural Revolution.

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.

  1. ^ Miller, Edward (1965). "The Fortunes of the English Textile Industry during the Thirteenth Century". The Economic History Review. 18 (1): 64–82. doi:10.2307/2591874. ISSN 0013-0117.
  2. ^ Munro 2003a, p. 181.
  3. ^ Bell, Brooks & Dryburgh 2007, p. 1.