The wool and cloth trade
English wool was the best in Europe. Lords and abbots kept huge flocks of sheep, and the wool made them rich. Wool-merchants, who bought and sold wool, had big houses and wore fine clothes. The richest men in London were those who sold wool to the cloth-makers of Flanders (modern Belgium). Even the king borrowed money from the wool-merchants.
Before the fourteenth century, woollen cloth was made in the towns. After that, a lot of the work was done by village people. Rich clothiers in the towns bought raw wool from the wool-merchants. Then they sent it by pack-horse out to the villages. Peasants spun the yarn and wove the cloth in their homes. The clothiers paid their wages.
Most English people had always dressed in English-made cloth. But not much English cloth was sold abroad - it was not good enough. Then, soon after the year 1300, there was a change. English cloth improved, and clothiers started selling it in Flanders, France, and Spain. Exports of wool fell, and exports of cloth grew.
Cloth-making did not make the peasants rich. But it made the fortunes of the wool-merchants and clothiers. You can still see clothiers' houses in towns like Colchester and Chipping Campden. And in many parts of England there are churches that were rebuilt with wool-merchants' money.
Walter Robson: Medieval Britain; Oxford University Press, 1991/2000, page 73