The woollen manufacture arose perhaps earliest of all, to satisfy one of the most important demands; and though it is doubtful whether native productions are spoken of in a Lucchese document of the year 840 respecting woollen and silk goods, we certainly do not err in the inference that Florence knew and practised this branch of industry at least from the time of her political rise, after the death of the Countess Matilda. In the beginning of the following century, a corporation of cloth-weavers existed, whose consuls signed a treaty of peace between their fellow-citizens and Siena in the year 1202. Thirty-seven years later, this branch of industry received an important accession from the Lombard order of the Humiliates, founded by Bishop Pietro Manadori. They settled first in the neighbourhood of the city, where the extensive buildings and gardens of the Villa San Donato are now to be seen, and finally, removed in 1256, to the monastery of Ognissanti, where they were long actively employed in their own interests and the welfare of the community who protected them, and did much to promote and perfect the woollen manufacture. On the neighbouring banks of the Arno arose workshops, houses for dyeing and washing wool, warehouses and booths of these brethren, who also aided essentially in the draining and cultivation of a somewhat marshy district. By the time the useful activity of the order slackened (about 1330 it entirely ceased), the Florentines had learnt all they could teach, and the city was full of cloth-weavers, as the names of several streets still remind us. From the ordinary kinds of cloth, with which they began, when the finer still came from the Levant, they advanced to better and best qualities, and strict regulations after the fashion of the guilds in the Middle Ages, certainly not to the disadvantage of the producers and their wares, guaranteed their excellence. The extensive sale and higher prices testified to their value. The wool was imported principally from France and Flanders, and also in considerable quantity from England and Scotland, especially from the wealthy abbeys and convents; and in the eighth decade of the thirteenth century we hear of Florentine agents in London buying up the wool for several years in advance. These agents stood in connection with no less than two hundred convents.[38]