Our ‘Baters’ and ‘Beaters,’ relics of the old ‘Avery le Batour’ or ‘John Betere,’ were all but invariably cloth-beaters, although, like the fuller ‘wollebeter,’[326] they may have been busied at an earlier stage of the manufacture. Capgrave, in his ‘Chronicles,’ under date 30 A.D., says, ‘Jacobus, the son of Joseph first bishop of Jerusalem, was throwe there fro the pinacle of the temple and after smet with a fuller’s bat.’[327] With the mention of our ‘Shearers’ (‘Richard le Sherere,’ M.) and endless ‘Shearmans,’ ‘Sharmans,’ or ‘Shermans’ (‘Robert le Sherman,’ ‘John le Shereman,’ M.), who represent the shearing of the manufactured fabric, rather than that of the sheep itself, we have the process complete. The cloth is at length ready to be transmitted into the care of our ‘Drapers’ and ‘Clothiers,’ and from them again through the skilled and nimble fingers of our numberless ‘Tailors.’ From all this we may readily see what an important influence has England’s one great staple of earlier days had upon the nomenclature of our countrymen. Such a name as ‘Ralph le Flexman,’ with its many descendants, reminds us of the manufacture of linen, which, if not so popular as that of wool, was nevertheless anything but unfamiliar to the early craftsman. Our ‘Spinners’ carry us to the primary task of thread-making, an employment, however, all but entirely in the hands of the women. The distaff and the weaker sex have been ever associated, whether in sacred or profane narrative. Thus it is that ‘spinster’ has become stereotyped even as a legal term. Chaucer, four hundred years ago, somewhat uncourteously said:— Deceite, weping, spinning, God hath given To women kindly, while that they may liven. Our modern ‘linen’ is formed from ‘lin’ or ‘line’—flax—as ‘woolen’ is from ‘wool.’ Hence we still speak of the seed of that plant as ‘linseed.’ That this was the common form of the word we might prove by many quotations. He drank never cidre nor wyn Nor never wered cloth of lyn,