The trade in fleece-wool.

Those starting out in the wool-merchant's business, and many small or part-time staplers like William Maryon and John Cely, might deal almost exclusively in fells, that is the wool-bearing skins of slaughtered sheep. But about 72 percent of old Richard's trade was in shorn fleece-wool, and when Richard and George inherited his business they increased this proportion to some 81 percent. One essential in the training of a stapler, whether he dealt in fells or fleece-wool, was the ability to judge the quality of a fleece and to distinguish wools from different areas of England. The original author of one section in that compendium of earnest advice, the ‘Discourse of Weights and Merchandise’, had observed caustically: If a man buy Yorkshire wool [as] Burford wool or Leominster wool, he should know what he bought ere it were all uttered [i.e. ‘his customers would let him know about it before it was all off his hands’]. Therefore there is an old proverb: ‘he is no wise merchant that buy the cat in the sack’, that is to say, he that buyeth a ring and seeith it not, he trusteth another better than himself, which is against all manner wisdom. This obvious counsel was not always heeded. A case heard at Bruges in 1449 concerned the sale of six bales of English wool called Jorcxwouts wulle (wool from the Yorkshire wolds). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]