WOOLLEN AND WORSTED MANUFACTURES. The manu factures in wool and bi worsted are so closely connected, in reference both to their past history and to the industrial arrangements involved in them, that it will be convenient to treat of them under one heading. Wools are divided into two great classes--dothinestoots and cornbing wools, or short-wools and long-wools; and the fabrics woven from them are termed woollens or worsteds, according as the one or the other is employed. Clothing-wools possess in high perfection that peculiar property which enables the fibres to felt or interlace one among another, and to form thereby the dense compact material of which men's garments are so largely made in this country, as well as the still thicker felt for hats [HAT MANUFACTURE]; whereas combing wools, though long in fibre, are deficient in the felting property, and are therefore employed for stuffs, merinos, hosiery, and a large number of fabrics which do not undergo the felting or fulling process.
llistorg.—It is probable that no other of the textile manufactures is so ancient as that of wool. Sheep were reared from the earliest times, and there can be little doubt that the use of the wool for clothing was soon adopted. If a mass of woollen fibres be pressed firmly together in a flat layer, the fibres, by virtue of their felting property, will cohere into a continuous sheet even without the process of weaving ; and this property could not fail to attract notice. The passages in the Bible which seem to allude to the use of woollen garments are well known; and we have indirect evidence from various quarters to show the pre valence of a similar custom in the East generally, in early times. The spinning of the fibres was most probably effected by the fingers; while the thistle or teazle, as at present, was used to comb out the fibres; the dyeing of the threads, too, it is quite evident, was well understood by the ancients. Among the Creeks and Romans the woollen manu facture was of a domestic character ; but yet it would seem that the clothing of Large armies must have required arrangements of a more extensive kind. The natives of India, after the epoch of Macedonian conquests in that country, made shawl-cloths of exquisite beauty, con sistiug, as is 'supposed, of short wool woven without felting : and the Greeks and Romans may havo derived some of their modes of pro ceeding from such a quarter. But however this may be, the Romans of both sexes wore woollen garments very generally.
The decay of the arts consequent on the irruption of the barbarians into Rome did not appear to have extended to this manufacture. Woollen clothing was still made in most of the countries where the Romans had established colonies; and there are indications that in the 10th century the manufacture became the occupation of a particular fraternity in the Low Countries. The wool employed was at first the
produce of their own country ; but they afterwards imported wool from other countries, and carried on the manufacture to such an extent that the Low Countries became in a great measure the clothing district for Europe. Spain produced cloth for herself, and acquired, about the ath century, considerable reputation for the beauty of the fabrics produced, consequent, we may suppose, on the fine wool which the Spanish sheep have for centuries produced. The Italians and French entered upon this manufacture at a later period.
In the time of William the Conqueror, an inundation which occurred in the Netherlands drove many of the clothiers into other countries, and sonic of them came to England. William of Malmeebury says that the king, glad of such an accession, placed these Flemish clothiers first in Carlisle and then in the western counties. From that time the mention of clothiers is frequent in the old chronicles; London, Oxford, Limas lltintingdon, York, Nottingham, and Winchester, being ena mended as towns wherein the manufacture was carried on ; while at other towns there were cloth-dealers who paid a licence-duty to the king for the privilege of buying and selling dyed cloths. It has been stated [Woos AND TIIE WOOL TRADE] that the king frequently derived considerable revenues from English wool ; and this circumstance led to the enactment of many laws, tending to the exclusion of foreign wool and the use of English wool only in our manufactures. The exclusion of Spanish wool from English broad-cloth ; the limitation of the width of broad Cloth to two yards; the determination of the width of striped cloth made at Bristol ; the appointment of towns where alone cloth could be bought and sold; the appointment of the office of king's Aulnager, whose duty it was to attend the cloth-markets, and measure all the cloth sold, to see that there was no deficiency of length, and who received a fee for every piece of cloth to which he attached his seal ; the prohibltior to export woollen cloths until they had been fulled ; the granting of permission to make certain coarse kinds of cloth three-quarters of a yard In width ; the fixing of a leaden seal to pieces of cloth wrought in London and the suburbs—these are some of the laws by which the government tried or hoped to regulate the manufacture; and they will serve to convey an idea of the general diameter of others.