The fortunes of England's cloth industry and trade in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries have long been a matter of interest and, thirty years ago, Edward Miller contributed to the debate an essential, wide-ranging and careful article, whose value is demonstrated by the frequency of its citation. With Miller, most historians would probably accept that England's industry declined or at best failed to expand in the thirteenth century, that this had much to do with competition from Flemish imports, that certainly some urban centres were in difficulty while some country areas grew. Many would probably also agree with Anthony Bridbury who, with his usual invigorating criticism of all earlier discussions, emphasised the absence of secure figures, and the fact that evidence can be read in several ways. However, without doubt the evidence assembled over the years shows that whatever the industry's difficulties, it was far from dead in the early fourteenth century. Continuing high imports of mordants and dyestuffs, especially of woad, the crown's willingness to support groups with an interest in home industry (as in the prohibition of the export of teasels and fullers earth in 1326 at the behest of Londoners) and the tightening of the cloth assize (which may have been meant to hamper foreign competition), all suggest growth before 1347. In his article Miller also identified the diversity of English products, and suggested that the cheaper cloths available indicated that England was responding to market difficulties by falling back on ‘slump’ products.