Accordingly in 1239 the Humble Brethren arrived and settled near the city in the Church of San Donato a Torri, granted to them by the State. Their presence led to the expected result. Before long their house became one of the principal centres of Florentine industry, so that the guild-masters complained of the friars' distance from the town, and urged them to move their establishment nearer to the walls. In 1250 they obtained buildings and land in the suburb of Sta Lucia sul Prato, and exemption from all taxes on their property, the which privilege was usually accorded by the Florentines to any one introducing a new branch of trade in the city. Then, in 1256, the Umiliati founded the church and monastery of Sta Caterina, in Borgo Ognissanti, and carved their arms over the entrance, _i.e._, a wool-pack fastened crosswise by ropes. From that moment the wool craft made enormous advance in Florence, and in every European market Florentine cloths began to rank above all others. Efforts were made to improve the rough material and to use additional care in dressing it, finer wools being imported from Tunis, Barbary, Spain, Portugal, Flanders, and lastly even from England. Thus so vast a trade was established, such great wealth accumulated, that the wool craft rivalled and surpassed the Calimala itself. Both guilds became great commercial powers in Europe, while in Florence the government dared not oppose their decisions.[344] Giovanni Villani informs us, in his valuable account of Florentine statistics during the year 1338, that there were more than two hundred wool factories, turning out from seventy thousand to eighty thousand pieces of cloth, of the total value of one million two hundred thousand florins, "of the which sum a good third was kept at home for the works, without counting the earnings of the wool dressers in the said works, the which supplied a living to over thirty thousand persons." The chief profits of the trade were obtained by perfection of manufacture, rather than by any increase of produce. Even Villani remarked that thirty years earlier, that is, in 1308, the factories were more numerous, actually as many as three hundred, and producing one hundred thousand pieces of cloth: "but these stuffs were coarser, and of only half the value, having no intermixture of English wool, the which indeed they had not yet learnt to dress with the skill since acquired."[345] This clearly shows that the craft owed its first improvement in the thirteenth century to the Humble Friars, and was carried to perfection in the fifteenth century by the introduction of English woollens.