It is interesting, too, to find that taxes for King Edward III. were calculated, not in money, but in sacks of wool. In one year the Parliament granted him 20,000 sacks; in another year 30,000 sacks. In 1339 the barons granted him “the tenth sheep, fleece, and lamb.” Early in the fifteenth century £30,000 out of the £40,000 revenue from customs and taxes came from wool alone. Once more, as in the days of the Crusades, we are able to see how the Hundred Years’ War with France, and the exactions of Rome, were paid for by the industrial portion of the community, while underneath the glamour of the victories of Edward III. and Henry V. lies the prosaic but powerful wool-sack.[19] [18. See note 7, p. 244, on Flanders and England.] [19. See note 8, p. 243, on Other Sources of Income.] § 3. PRICES AND BRANDS OF ENGLISH WOOL—Having now seen the importance of wool as a factor in English industry and political history, we must proceed to study more closely the facts of the woollen trade, and the manufacture of woollen cloth. The chief growers of wool were the Cistercian monks, who owned huge flocks of sheep. The wool grown near Leominster, in Herefordshire, was the finest of all, and, generally speaking, that grown in Wiltshire, Essex, Sussex, Hampshire, Oxfordshire, Cambridge and Warwickshire, was the best. The poorest came from the North of England, and from {51} the Southern downs. There were a number of different breeds of sheep, for care was taken to improve the breed, and it would seem that forty-four different brands of English wool, ranging in value from £13 to £2, 10_s._ the sack (of 364 lbs.), were recognized both in the home and foreign markets, as mentioned in a Parliamentary petition of 1454. The average price of wool from 1260–1400 was 2_s._ 1⁠¾_d._ per clove of 7 lbs.—_i.e._ a little over threepence a pound, sometimes fourpence. In the middle of this period (1350) the average annual export, according to Misselden, in the _Circle of Commerce_, was about 11,648,000 lbs., representing a value of some £180,683 yearly.