XIII
EMBROIDERED MANGA OR CASE OF PROCESSIONAL CROSS
(Early 16th Century; Toledo Cathedral)
In 1809 the same author remarked: “The kingdom of Valencia produces little wool, yet there are five manufactories of woollens and coarse and fine cloths: they are at Morella, Enguera, Bocairente, Onteniente, and Alcoy. The small woollen stuffs are principally made at Enguera; nothing but the coarsest cloths are made at Morella, Bocairente, and Onteniente. The manufactory at Alcoy is the most considerable: the cloths, though finer, are generally of an inferior quality. The woof of them is thick, with little nap upon it. The finest are scarcely superior to the beautiful cloths of Carcassonne.”
Footnotes:
[27] Colmenares, who wrote a history of Segovia down to the reign of Philip the Second, says that in his time the clothmakers of this town were “true fathers of families, who within and without their houses sustain a multitude of persons (in many cases two and three hundred), producing, with the aid of other people's hands, a great variety of finest cloth: an employment worthy to be ranked with agriculture, and that is of the utmost profit to any city, or to any kingdom.”
[28] An amusing passage in Fernandez Navarrete's Conservación de Monarquías (a.d. 1626) tells us that most of the costlier dress-materials used in Spain about this time proceeded from abroad, and that they were “of so fine a texture that the heat of an iron scorches them and wears them out in a couple of days; while a great number of men employ themselves in the effeminate office of dressing collars, who, ceasing also to be men, forsake the plough or warlike exercises; for it is certain that when the Spaniards kept the world in awe, this land produced a greater number of armourers, and less persons who busied themselves with looking after womanish apparel” (p. 232).
[29] This recalls the statement made, centuries before, by Alonso de Cartagena at the Council of Bâle: “And if the English should vaunt the cunning of their cloth-makers, then would I tell them somewhat; for if our country lack the weavers to make a cloth so delicate as the scarlet cloths of London, yet is that substance titled grana (the kermes, or scarlet grain), from which the scarlet cloth receives its pleasantness of smell and brilliancy of hue, raised in the kingdom of Castile, and thence conveyed to England, and even to Italy.”—Larruga, Memorias, Vol. XIV., p. 167.
[30] “The weight of an arroba is twenty-seven pounds. The average price is from twenty-three to twenty-seven livres the arroba of unwashed wool of the best quality, which pays five livres ten sols of export duty. The arroba of washed wool pays double.”
[31] “It has been calculated that Spain, about this time, paid annually to England two million pounds sterling per annum, solely on account of her woollens.”
[32] “His Majesty maintained this factory by a monthly payment from his treasury of one hundred and fifty thousand livres; an exorbitant amount, which very possibly would not be covered by the sales of cloth.”