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6 - Wool-fells

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2010

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Summary

The part played by fells – the wool-bearing skins – in the wool trade as a whole has been somewhat under-estimated by students. This neglect no doubt reflects the fact that fells formed a relatively small proportion of the total English wool export. But, equally, contemporary documents reveal little about fells by comparison with the amount of information available on fleece-wool. For example, there is no schedule of prices to be put beside those which survive for wool. It has recently been implied that the sale of fells at Calais was concentrated in the hands of a few ‘specialists’, while the great majority of staplers dealt almost exclusively in fleece-wool. It is true that, as far as the few surviving particular port books go to show, some men had a decided preference for fleece-wool, while a very much smaller number concentrated their trade on fells. Among the latter were several members of the Skinners’ Company, notably (in 1488) Roger Grantoft, John Pelet and John Pasmer, a merchant adventurer who had joined the Staple company three years earlier. Thomas Granger, George Cely's host, belongs in this category. But the vast majority of established staplers, like the Celys and later the Johnsons, habitually sold both kinds of ware, and even Granger and William Maryon occasionally added a few sacks of fleece-wool to their consignments of fells. An individual's shipments could vary widely from one shipping to another, and the proportions of fleece-wool and fell shipped to Calais also varied considerably.

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The Celys and their World
An English Merchant Family of the Fifteenth Century
, pp. 148 - 163
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1985

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  • Wool-fells
  • Alison Hanham
  • Book: The Celys and their World
  • Online publication: 06 July 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511522420.007
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  • Wool-fells
  • Alison Hanham
  • Book: The Celys and their World
  • Online publication: 06 July 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511522420.007
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Wool-fells
  • Alison Hanham
  • Book: The Celys and their World
  • Online publication: 06 July 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511522420.007
Available formats
×