John Flower, the younger, clothier of Potterne, declared that he had been so impoverished as the result of a highway robbery and his attempts to bring the criminals to justice that he had 'ben compelled to leave the occupacon of iiij loomes to make brode clothes wherby a grete nomber of the kynges subiectes dyd gete honest lyvynges at his handes'. (fn. 249) These four looms must have kept eight weavers, as many fullers, and very many times that number of carders and spinners busy, in addition to those employed in the preliminary processes of sorting, beating, washing, and oiling the wool, and in such humbler tasks as bobbin-winding.