The weaving in this country of woollen cloth, as a staple branch of trade, is very old. Of the monks at Bath abbey we are told by a late writer, “that the shuttle and the loom employed their attention (about the middle of the fourteenth century), and under their active auspices the weaving of woollen cloth (which made its appearance in England about the year 1330, and received the sanction of an act of parliament in 1337) was introduced, established, and brought to such perfection at Bath as rendered the city one of the most considerable in the west of England for this manufacture.” Worcester cloth was so good that, by a chapter of the Benedictine order held in 1422 at Westminster abbey, it was forbidden to be worn by the monks and declared smart enough for military men. Norwich also wove stuffs that were in demand for costly household furniture; and Sir John Cobham, in 1394, bequeathed “a bed of Norwich stuff embroidered with butterflies.” In one of the chapels at Durham priory there were four blue cushions of Norwich work. Worsted, a town in Norfolk, by a new method of its own for the carding of the wool with combs of iron well heated, and then twisting the thread harder than usual in the spinning, enabled our weavers to produce a woollen stuff of a peculiar quality, to which the name itself of worsted was immediately given. To such a high repute did the new web grow that church vestments and domestic furniture of the choicest sorts were made out of it. Exeter cathedral among its chasubles had several “de nigro worsted” in cloth of gold. Vestments made of worsted, variously spelt “worsett” and “woryst,” are enumerated in the fabric rolls of York minster. Elizabeth de Bohun, in 1356, bequeathed to her daughter the countess of Arundel “a bed of red worsted embroidered;” and Joane lady Bergavenny leaves to John of Ormond “a bed of cloth of gold with lebardes, with those cushions and tapettes of my best red worsted.” Irish cloth, white and red, in the reign of king John was much used in England; and in the household expenses of Swinford, bishop of Hereford in 1290, an item occurs of Irish cloth for lining.