Woad

Woad is one of those plants which yield the deep blue colouring matter so greatly valued in the arts — Indigo.

Woad was then placed on the regular shopping list of alternative crops.

The cultivation of woad had taken hold in southern England during the early 1580s, but this dispute provides the earliest evidence of its cultivation in the fields around Tewkesbury.

To prevent this, it was enacted, that no wines of Gaſcony and Guienne, or woads of Tholouſe, should be imported into England, except in ships belonging to the King, or some of his ſubjects; and that all ſuch wines and woads imported in foreign bottoms ſhould be forfeited.

But in the middle of the sixteenth century indigo was introduced from the East Indies: and in the seventeenth century its use became extended, and supplanted that of woad.

Huge quanitities of alum and woad were disembarked each year at Southampton.

For example, woad, a blue dye obtained from the plant Isatis tinctoria, was used throughout the Mediterannean and Europe and is often identified as indigo.

Now as the tenants after woading, pay the ſame rent as before, one cannot wonder at landlords making use of such an easy method to raise money: but it is the tenants that quarrel most at it; they assert the land to be 7 sg. an acre the worse for it; here then lies the enquiry.