This book is the first comprehensive account of the wool trade through the whole of the medieval period. Within England it is concerned with the production and marketing of wool and with the ways in which the wool trade influenced the economic and political fortunes of different sectors of society. It describes and analyses in detail each of the periods of growth and decline in the export market. As well as explaining changes in the volume of trade it offers the first attempt to portray the distribution of the trade among individual merchants. As the scene widens Mr. Lloyd explains how...

The German Hanse was the most successful and most far-flung trade association that existed in medieval and early-modern Europe. Inevitably it appears prominently in every general study of trade, sometimes under the label of 'the Hanseatic League'. This, however, is the first study to be devoted to relations between the Hanse and England throughout the entire period of their contact, which lasted for some 500 years. The composition of trade is analysed, and the fluctuations in its volume and value are reconstructed from primary sources, chiefly customs accounts. But trade was often made...