The social framework

Abstract

AS already remarked, the English woollen industry was a byproduct of the human struggle for existence in a climate often indifferent and sometimes downright unfriendly. Those who consumed its output would hardly have been able to exist without it. But it deserves to be considered from the point of view of its producers as well as its consumers. From their standpoint, the industry justified itself on a different ground by providing or helping to provide a living for many thousands of men, women and even children in every generation during the quarter-millennium covered by this survey. These were the people, mostly humble and forgotten, who followed one or another of the various crafts whose application fructified in the completion of a piece of woollen cloth to serve the need for garments to be worn by all sorts and conditions in England, and beyond this, to meet the demand from nearby continental lands for quality textiles suited for wearing by the better-off. To an unknown extent, many of them were also engaged in agricultural labour. So far, this survey has been concerned mainly with the production and marketing of cloths; it is now time to look more closely at the people involved in these operations, who in themselves by their careers and achievements constituted a phenomenon of no small social and even political importance.