But for the moment the strife with the Papacy was set aside in the efforts which were needed for a new struggle with France.  The campaign of 1339 had not only ended in failure, it had dispelled the trust of Edward in an Imperial alliance.  But as this hope faded away a fresh hope dawned on the king from another quarter.  Flanders, still bleeding from the defeat of its burghers by the French knighthood, was his natural ally.  England was the great wool-producing country of the west, but few woollen fabrics were woven in England.  The number of weavers’ gilds shows that the trade was gradually extending, and at the very outset of his reign Edward had taken steps for its encouragement.  He invited Flemish weavers to settle in his country, and took the new immigrants, who chose the eastern counties for the seat of their trade, under his royal protection.  But English manufactures were still in their infancy and nine-tenths of the English wool went to the looms of Bruges or of Ghent.  We may see the rapid growth of this export trade in the fact that the king received in a single year more than L30,000 from duties levied on wool alone.  The woolsack which forms the Chancellor’s seat in the House of Lords is said to witness to the importance which the government attached to this new source of wealth.  A stoppage of this export threw half the population of the great Flemish towns out of work, and the irritation caused in Flanders by the interruption which this trade sustained through the piracies that Philip’s ships were carrying on in the Channel showed how effective the threat of such a stoppage would be in securing their alliance.  Nor was this the only ground for hoping for aid from the Flemish towns.  Their democratic spirit jostled roughly with the feudalism of France.  If their counts clung to the French monarchy, the towns themselves, proud of their immense population, their thriving industry, their vast wealth, drew more and more to independence.  Jacques van Arteveldt, a great brewer of Ghent, wielded the chief influence in their councils, and his aim was to build up a confederacy which might hold France in check along her northern border.

[Sidenote:  The Flemish Alliance]

His plans had as yet brought no help from the Flemish towns, but at the close of 1339 they set aside their neutrality for open aid.  The great plan of Federation which Van Arteveldt had been devising as a check on the aggression of France was carried out in a treaty concluded between Edward, the Duke of Brabant, the cities of Brussels, Antwerp, Louvain, Ghent, Bruges, Ypres, and seven others.  By this remarkable treaty it was provided that war should be begun and ended only by mutual consent, free commerce be encouraged between Flanders and Brabant, and no change made in their commercial arrangements save with the consent of the whole league.  By a subsequent treaty the Flemish towns owned Edward as King of France, and declared war against Philip of Valois.  But their