Note 21 — Part II

17. In the fifteenth century was begun the manufacture of woolen stuffs [paños] in Inglaterra; for before that they sold (as we are now doing) their woolens to other nations, especially to the Flemings and the people of Brabant—from whom some seditious persons went over to the said kingdom, about the year 1420, and taught manufactures to the English. Monsieur de Thou,21 however, attributes this establishment [of a new industry] to Queen Isabel [i.e., Elizabeth], and to the disturbances, on account of religion, in which the great Duke de Alva and the Inquisition of España were insulted—without having borne in mind, when he allowed his pen to move with the envious and bitter temper that swayed him, that, many years before the revolution of some of the seventeen [Netherlands] provinces which threw off the mild yoke of the Spaniards, the artisans of Lovaina [i.e., Louvain] had already introduced the manufacture of woolen stuffs in Londres.