Chapter 36

Now these wool merchants and clothiers were men of mighty repute and good substance in the land. In Thomas Deloney's delightful _Pleasant Historie of Thomas of Reading_, 1600, we read: "Among all crafts this was the onely chiefe, for that it was the chiefest merchandize, by the which our Country became famous throwout all Nations. And it was verily thought that the one halfe of the people in the land lived in those dayes thereby, and in such good sort, that in the Commonwealth there were few or no beggars at all: p…