brics that are made in Devon; some
of them seem to be materials no longer in use, from the unfamiliarity of
the names. Exeter manufactured serges, both fine and coarse; Crediton
(the famous locality of the burning of Crediton Barns, in the Middle
Ages) made kersies; and Totnes a stuff called "narrow pin-whites," which
is, I believe, a coarse, loosely woven white material; Barnstaple and
Torrington were noted for "bays," single and double (perhaps of the same
texture as our modern baize), and for "frizados"; and Pilton, adjacent to
Barnstaple, was notorious rather than celebrated for the making of cotton
linings, so cheap and coarse a stuff that a popular "vae" or "woe" was
locally pronounced against them. "Woe unto you, Piltonians, that make
cloth without wool!"

It was in the woollen trade that the family of De Wichehalse, afterwards
so intimately connected with Lynton, made the fortune that enabled them
to become one of the leading houses of Barnstaple, and to acquire the
beautiful estate near Lynton, which is now known as Lee Abbey. It may,
perhaps, be of interest to the "curious-minded" to give an inventory of
his shop, taken in 1607 at the death of Nicholas de Wichehalse, who had
married Lettice, the daughter of the Mayor of Barnstaple.

The following are the chief items of the inventory, collected from
manuscript records by Mr. Chanter for the Devonshire Association:

182 yds. of coloured bays at . . . . . . 1s. 4d. a yd.
49 " kersey at . . . . . . . . . . . 2s. 4d. "
broadcloth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8s. 0d. "
147 yds. of coarse grey ffrize at . . . 11d. "
buffyns in remnants (whatever
they may be!) . . . . . . . . . . L1 9s. 4d.
Also lace, silk, black velvet, broad taffeta, leaven taffeta
. . . and 5 small boxes of marmalade.

Mr. Chanter conjectures that this last item is marmalade, and can read it
as nothing else, though he was not aware that it was a preserve of Queen
Elizabeth's time, nor why, even if it were, it should be in De
Wichehalse's shop.

It was the prosperity of the De Wichehalses, the Salisburys, the
Deamonds, and other enterprising merchants, which beautified the town
with public buildings, almshouses, and their private residences--for the
enrichment of which, as I have already stated, Italian workmen were
brought over--and the seventeenth century was the time of the town's
greatest importance and prosperity, when Barnsta