the lytelle londe of Flaundres is
     But a staple to other londes, iwys,
     And alle that groweth in Flaundres, greyn and sede,
     May not a moneth fynde hem mete and brede. 
     What hath thenne Flaundres, be Flemmyngis leffe or lothe
     But a lytelle madere and Flemmyshe cloothe? 
     By drapynge of our wolle in substaunce
     Lyvene here comons, this is here governaunce;
     Wythought whyche they may not leve at ease,
     Thus moste hem sterve, or wyth us most have peasse.[2]

In those days the coat on the Englishman’s back was made out of English wool, indeed, but it had been manufactured in Flanders, and the staplers saw no reason why it should ever be otherwise.  As to the Flemings, the political alliances which commercial necessities constantly entailed between the two countries gave rise among them to a proverb that they bought the fox-skin from the English for a groat and sold them back the tail for a guelder;[3] but it was the sheepskin which they bought, and they were not destined to go on buying it for ever.  The great cloth-making cities of the Netherlands were finally ruined by the growth of the English cloth manufacture, which absorbed the English wool.  However, in spite of the growing prosperity of this trade, which had by the beginning of the sixteenth century ousted that of wool as the chief English export trade, the Company of the Merchants of the Staple was still great and famous throughout the fifteenth century.

Many were the wealthy and respected staplers who were in those days to be found directing the destinies of English towns, mayors of London and provincial ports, contractors and moneylenders to an impecunious king, so rich and so powerful that they became a constitutional menace, almost, it has been said, a fourth estate of the realm, with which His Majesty was wont to treat for grants apart from Parliament.  Many are the staplers’ wills preserved in registries up and down England and bearing witness to their prosperity and public spirit.  Many are the magnificent brasses which preserve their memory in the parish churches of the Cotswolds and other wool-growing districts of England.  At Chipping Campden lies William Grevel with his wife, ’late citizen of London and flower of the wool merchants of all England’, who died in 1401, and his beautiful house still stands in the village street.  At Northleach lies John Fortey, who rebuilt the nave before he died in 1458; his brass shows him with one foot on a sheep and the other on a woolpack, and the brasses of Thomas Fortey, ‘woolman’, and of another unknown merchant, with a woolpack, lie near by.  At Linwood, at Cirencester, at Chipping Norton, at Lechlade, and at All Hallows, Barking, you may see others of the great fraternity.[4] They rest in peace now, but when they lived they were the shrewdest traders of their day.  Of wool, cries the poet Gower,

O leine, dame de noblesce
Tu est des marchantz la duesse,
Pour toy servir tout sont enclin—­