was in fact growing with the growing wealth of the people.
The crowd of civil and ecclesiastical buildings which date from this period
shows the prosperity of the country. Christian architecture reached its
highest beauty in the opening of Edward's reign; a reign marked by the
completion of the abbey church of Westminster and of the cathedral church
at Salisbury. An English noble was proud to be styled "an incomparable
builder," while some traces of the art which was rising into life across
the Alps flowed in, it may be, with the Italian ecclesiastics whom the
Papacy forced on the English Church. The shrine of the Confessor at
Westminster, the mosaic pavement beside the altar of the abbey, the
paintings on the walls of its chapterhouse remind us of the schools which
were springing up under Giotto and the Pisans. But the wealth which this
art progress shows drew trade to English shores. England was as yet simply
an agricultural country. Gascony sent her wines; her linens were furnished
by the looms of Ghent and Liege; Genoese vessels brought to her fairs the
silks, the velvets, the glass of Italy. In the barks of the Hanse merchants
came fur and amber from the Baltic, herrings, pitch, timber, and naval
stores from the countries of the north. Spain sent us iron and war-horses.
Milan sent armour. The great Venetian merchant-galleys touched the southern
coasts and left in our ports the dates of Egypt, the figs and currants of
Greece, the silk of Sicily, the sugar of Cyprus and Crete, the spices of
the Eastern seas. Capital too came from abroad. The bankers of Florence and
Lucca were busy with loans to the court or vast contracts with the
wool-growers. The bankers of Cahors had already dealt a death-blow to the
usury of the Jew. Against all this England had few exports to set. The lead
supplied by the mines of Derbyshire, the salt of the Worcestershire
springs, the iron of the Weald, were almost wholly consumed at home. The
one metal export of any worth was that of tin from the tin-mines of
Cornwall. But the production of wool was fast becoming a main element of
the nation's wealth. Flanders, the great manufacturing country of the time,
lay fronting our eastern coast; and with this market close at hand the
pastures of England found more and more profit in the supply of wool. The
Cistercian order which possessed vast ranges of moorland in Yorkshire
became famous as wool-growers; and their wool had been seized for Richard's
ranso