The substitution of the Renaissance Hotel de Ville for the old Cloth Hall is also the symbol of the decline of the cloth industry. The wool industry in Flanders had passed through three consecutive stages which directly affected the relationships between Belgium and England. We have seen how, during the early Middle Ages, Flemish wool being sufficient for Flemish looms, the cloth industry was almost entirely independent, and how, as the industry increased, Flemish weavers depended more and more on the imports of English wool during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. During the fourteenth century, however, owing partly to the immigration of Flemish weavers encouraged by Edward III and partly to the natural course of events, which must induce a country to work up its own raw material, the English cloth industry had become very active, and the quantity of wool available for Flanders consequently decreased, while its price increased, and the Flemish industry was faced by the double difficulty of preserving its market from the import of English cloth, through Hanseatic ships, and of obtaining the necessary raw material. The restrictive measures taken against the import of English cloth proved ineffectual, and Spanish wool, which was tried as a substitute for English, was of inferior quality. Ypres was the first to suffer, in spite of the solicitude of the dukes, who reduced commercial taxes in its favour. Its population fell from 12,000 in 1412 to 10,000 in 1470, and in 1486 one-third of its inhabitants were reduced to begging. Bruges succeeded in maintaining herself for a time through her banking establishments, while Ghent benefited from the staple of grain, Brussels from the presence of the dukes, Malines from its parliament, Louvain from its newly created university and Antwerp from its rising trade. [_LINEN AND TAPESTRY_] Besides, when the resistance to English rivalry proved fruitless, in spite of the repeated prohibitions decreed by Philip the Good, the country turned, with extraordinary adaptability, to the linen industry as a substitute for the woollen. Linen replaced cloth, and the same processes and looms which had been applied to the old industry were successfully applied to the new. Clothmaking took refuge either in the Flemish country districts, where the wages were lower, or in some remote parts of the Walloon country. The existence of Verviers as a clothmaking town dates from 1480. The decline of the cloth industry was also to a certain extent compensated for by the introduction in Northern Flanders and in Brabant of tapestry, whose centres, until then, had been in Arras and Tournai. * * * * *