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"Whanne that April with his showres sote The droughte of March hath perced to the rote, And bathed every veine in swiche licour, Of whiche vertue engendred is the flour; When Zephyrus eke with his sote brethe Enspired hath in every holt and hethe The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne, And smale foules maken melodie That slepen alle night with open eye, So priketh hem nature in hir corages; Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages And palmeres for to seken strange strondes To serve hauves couthe in sondry londes; And specially from every shires ende Of Englelonde, to Canterbury they wende The holy blissful martyr for to seke, That hem hath holpen when that they were seke."
But of his craft to recken wel his tides, His stremes and his strandes him besides, His herberwe, his mone, and his lode manage, There was none swiche, from Hull unto Carthage. Hardy he was, and wise, I undertake: With many a tempest hadde his berd be shake. He knew wel alle the havens, as they were, From Gotland to the Cape de Finisterre, And every creke in Bretagne and in Spain."
Already by the end of the fourteenth century the English clothiers were beginning to rival those of the Netherlands in the making of fine cloth, as witness Chaucer's Wife of Bath: Of clooth-making she hadde swiche an haunt She passed hem of Ypres and of Gaunt, and by the end of the sixteenth century all real rivalry was at an end, for the English manufacture was so clearly victorious.
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