The mercer's stock-in-trade at Colchester was much upon a level with the carpenter's tools. It was somewhat various, but very limited in quantity. The whole comprised a piece of woollen cloth, some silk and fine linen, flannel, silk purses, gloves, girdles, leather purses, and needle-work; and it was altogether valued at 3_l._ There appears to have been another dealer in cloth and linen in the town, whose store was equally scanty. We were not much improved in the use of linen a century later. We learn from the Earl of Northumberland's household book, whose family was large enough to consume one hundred and sixty gallons of mustard during the winter with their salt meat, that only seventy ells of linen were allowed for a year's consumption. In the fourteenth century none but the clergy and nobility wore white linen. As industry increased, and the cleanliness of the middle classes increased with it, the use of white linen became more general; but even at the end of the next century, when printing was invented, the paper-makers had the greatest difficulty in procuring rags for their manufacture; and so careful were the people of every class to preserve their linen, that night-clothes were never worn. Linen was so dear that Shakspere makes Falstaff's shirts eight shillings an ell. The more sumptuous articles of a mercer's stock were treasured in rich families from generation to generation; and even the wives of the nobility did not disdain to mention in their wills a particular article of clothing, which they left to the use of a daughter or a friend. The solitary old coat of a baker came into the Colchester valuation; nor is this to be wondered at, when we find that even the soldiers at the battle of Bannockburn, about this time, were described by an old rhymer as "well near all naked."