The trade was started at Kendal, spreading to York and thence to many different towns, where there grew up in due course the manufacture of broadcloth, baizes, kerseys, and serges, the North of England then, as to this day, holding the best interests of the cloth trades firmly in the hollow of its hand. It is interesting to note that an Act was passed forbidding all save the King and Queen and her children to wear any cloth but that made in England, for here we may trace surely the work of the legitimate ancestor of our passionate protectionist, Joseph Chamberlain. But, after all, woollen cloth is dull stuff, and the first on the list of fabrics aiming at the beautiful is cloth of gold, which made its bid for fame in the days of Richard II., whose patronage of the luxury was, however, mild in comparison with that of that past master in the art of prodigality, Henry VIII., who is said to have had as many as twenty-five suits of cloth of gold, securing it at a price of 40s. per yard, which does not seem a very extravagant sum to-day. A textile used in England during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is imperial, wrought with gold, and credited with being woven at the workshops kept by the Byzantine Emperors; and gold also gave its assistance to the making of a well-known stuff in the Middle Ages christened baudekin, which later came to be a term signifying any rich silk. A variety of the cloth of gold was plunket cloth of gold--plunket, however, being more properly described as a coarse woollen cloth; yet it is authentic that Richard III. had a gown lined with this, and in revels held by Henry VIII. at Greenwich it was registered that there were six ladies in "crimosin plunket" embroidered with gold and pearls, so that fashion seems to have idealised the homely plunket, which in its original state would have been more suitably classed with home-spuns, burnet, russet, and frieze. In the fourteenth century taffeta was introduced into England, and taffy was the name of a watered edition of this, which we owe to the refugees, who crowded here in their numbers, and made us familiar with brocade amongst other novelties. Satin was known in England as early as the thirteenth century, having been imported into Europe from China, but not achieving much popularity owing to its exorbitant price, though later Henry VIII. had a great predilection for it in red. Amongst stuffs associated immortally with history and romance are sackcloth and samite, and the latter, besides bearing its fame down from biblical days, has been credited with possessing every known virtue that the textile is heir to; it was originally, no doubt, a heavy silk material woven with a thread of six fibres, and carrying thick upon its surface most glossy honours. When Sir Launcelot came to King Arthur, the poet says: Lancelot and the queene were clede, In robes of a rich weede, Of samit white, with silver shredde.