It is difficult to overestimate the importance of wool for the economy of medieval England. As a raw material it was England’s most important export and it formed the basis for the country’s largest ‘industry’, that of textiles. English land, from Yorkshire to the Cotswolds and Lincolnshire to East Anglia, produced the finest wool in Europe. The flocks of sheep were often very large. In AD 1300, St Peter’s Abbey in Gloucestershire owned over 10,000 sheep and there were probably between 15 and 18 million in the whole country.

Up to the 14th century, wool was exported in great quantities through east coast ports, to the Low Countries where it was made into cloth. The Flemish trade was disrupted during the periods England was at war with France; at the same time England began to develop its own cloth-making industry. The spinning wheel was introduced and the improvement of looms increased productivity. There were many guild crafts involved in the cloth trade besides weavers: fullers washed the cloth, carders brushed it and dyers dyed it. Rural manufacturers sold their wares in cloth halls while in the towns, guilds of clothiers maintained control of the quality of the cloth.