Note 287 — Chapter X · Commerce and Trade
Reading edition
No woollen cloth was allowed to be dyed black except with woad. See Liber Custumarum, Introd., pp. xl., xliii., quoted in Letter Book C, ed. Sharpe, pp. 135, 136 (note), from which this information is obtained. The whole history of the cultivation and use of woad is one of great interest. It was cultivated in England from the earliest times, and the trade was ruined by the indigo growers as they in turn have been ruined in our own day by the manufacture in Germany of synthetic indigo.