30

IMPROVEMENT IN THE REIGN OF WILLIAM AND MARY.

discovery on the Continent of its valuable dyeing properties. It' brought here by a German named Drebbel, who had discovered application accidentally, but not meeting with encouragement in own country, he came to London, and carried on the manufacture Bow. The superior scarlet colour thus produced was known for long time as "Bow dye."

The foreign artisans, encouraged by manufacturers who wished introduce novelties in their manufacture and to improve the quali of their goods, continued to be objects of great jealousy to the nati workmen, and, owing to the persecutions to which they were subjecte in 1665, no less than two thousand of them left the country at on time. This circumstance, combined with the Civil Wars during th reign of the Stuarts, caused great falling off in the national prosperity and the woollen manufacturers more especially suffered. The numbe of pieces of white cloth exported fell from 100,000 to 10,000, withou any increase in the export of the dyed and finished cloths. During the Commonwealth, the same unwise legislation which had prevailed during the previous period continued, and with the view of improving the decayed manufacture of cloth, the impolitic measures adopted of prohibiting the exportation of the raw material.

The peaceful reigns of James II. and of William and Mary tended greatly to improve the trade and commerce of the country, and the woollen manufacture participated largely in the improvement. It was estimated that, towards the end of the seventeenth century, the value of the total woollen manufactures of the kingdom amounted to £8,000,000, of which more than £2,000,000 were exported. The effect of the settlement in England of a portion of the French Protestant artisans, expelled from their own country by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, began then to appear in the improvement of our manufactures. Nevertheless, the restless desire to interfere with the natural course of manufacturing industry continued to excite the British Parliament to meddle with the distribution of the woollen manufactures, and in 1698 the House of Lords and the House of Commons presented addresses to the King, representing that the progress of the woollen manufacture in Ireland injured that trade in England, and recommending that the woollen manufacture in Ireland should be discouraged, and that the manufacture of linen should be cultivated there. It was probably owing to this interference with the course of manufacturing industry that the linen manufacture did not

RISE OF MANUFACTURING TOWNS.

31

flourish in England, and that it was until a recent period confined principally to Ireland and Scotland. The wearing of linen was on its introduction considered effeminate, and there is no satisfactory proof that it was made in this country until after the reign of Henry VIII., though an order given by that king to the sheriffs of Sussex and Wiltshire to buy for his use, each in his respective county, 1000 ells of fine linen,* has been supposed to be evidence that the linen was made in those counties. On the other hand, an order issued in the same reign for sowing hemp for the expressed purpose of making nets and cordage, without any mention of linen, shows that the latter was not then considered an article of much importance. In the middle of the following century, however, the linen manufacture had been sufficiently established to attract the notice of Parliament, and an act was passed to encourage the manufacture of linen cloth and tapestry. About the same time some French Protestants settled at Ipswich, who made fine linen that sold for the enormous price of 15s. an ell. The manufacture of linen was then rising into importance in the north of Ireland; but the large quantity annually imported from France at the end of the seventeenth century, which amounted in value to £700,000, shows that the linen manufacture of this country had not been carried on very successfully.

It

The town of Manchester sprang into notice as the seat of the cotton manufactures in the middle of the seventeenth century. had, indeed, been noted for making a class of goods called "Manchester cottons" in 1600, but the so-called cottons were only a peculiar light fabric made of wool. In Mr. Lewis Roberts's work, "The Treasure of Traffic," he thus notices the enterprising character of the manufacturers of that town in 1641, at which time it is evident cotton goods were made there:-"The town of Manchester buys the linen yarn from the Irish in great quantity, and, weaving it, returns the same in linen to Ireland to sell. Nor doth their industry rest here, for they buy cotton wool in London that comes first from Cyprus and Smyrna, and work the same into the finest vermilions, dimities, etc., which they return to London, where they are sold, and they thence not seldom are sent into such foreign parts where the first materials may be more easily had for that manufacture." At the first introduction of the cotton manufacture into Britain, and down to so late

* Madox's "History of the Exchequer," cap. x.

32

INCREASE OF THE SILK TRADE.

a period as 1773, the weft, or cross-threads, of the fabric only w made of cotton; the warp, which requires a stronger thread, consis of linen yarn, which was imported from Germany and from Irela The printing of calicoes, in imitation of the fabrics of India, v introduced in London into 1676.

Silk fabrics were used extensively in Britain at a time when line were comparatively unknown, and the manufacture of silk, soon aft its introduction, became an object of importance. The commenceme of the silk manufacture in England was noticed among the man factures of the preceding period, but it was not until 1620 that bro: silk fabrics were made in this country. In that year a foreign mercha settled in London, who was much employed by James I.; he broug over by direction of the king a number of silk-throwsters, dressers, an broad-silk-weavers, by whom the broad-silk manufacture was establishe in London. The silks previously manufactured consisted of laces cords, and other narrow articles. The silk-throwsters of London had nevertheless, become so important a body in 1560, that they were formed into a fellowship. It is stated, in a statute of Charles II., that in 1666 there were no fewer than 40,000 persons engaged in the silk trade; but this estimate is supposed to have been an exaggeration of the actual number.

The knitting of silk preceded the manufacture of the woven fabric in this country. It is stated by Dr. Howell, in his "History of the World," that " Henry VIII., that magnificent and expensive prince, wore ordinarily cloth hose, except there came from Spain by great chance a pair of silk stockings, for Spain very early abounded in silk. His son, King Edward VI., was presented with a pair of long Spanish silk stockings by his merchant, Sir Thomas Gresham." It is mentioned by others that William Ryder, an apprentice on London Bridge, having seen a pair of knit worsted stockings at the house of an Italian merchant, made a pair exactly like them, which he presented in 1564 to the Earl of Pembroke, which were the first knit stockings made in England.

In the second year of Queen Elizabeth, says Stowe, "her silk woman, Mrs. Montague, presented her with a pair of black knit silk stockings, for a new-year's gift; which, after a few days' wearing, pleased her highness so well, that she sent for Mistress Montague, and asked her where she had them, and if she could help her to any more; who answered, saying, 'I made them carefully on purpose for your Majesty, and seeing they please you so well, I will presently set more

SMELTING IRON WITH COAL.

33

in hand.' 'Do so,' said the Queen, for I like silk stockings so well, that I will not henceforth wear any more cloth hose.'"

The useful metallic arts did not make much progress during the period now under review, for as yet the smelting of iron with coal was very imperfectly known, and but little practised. A patent, granted to Lord Dudley by James II., for smelting iron with pit coal, proved of little use to the public, and nearly ruined the patentee. In 1627 a new patent was granted for the same purpose, with but little better success. Ten years later it was enacted that all iron should be surveyed for the prevention of the sale of bad iron, from which it may be assumed that a quantity of inferior quality had been made; but whether the new process of smelting by coal produced the depreciation of the iron is not stated. That process, which had proved of so little value to the inventor, was revived at the end of the seventeenth century by a Mr. Wood, who in 1700 obtained a lease of all the crown lands for making iron in thirty-nine counties, where coal and iron were found, and where there were established as stated by Mr. Macpherson, "several forges for refining and for drawing iron into bars; also a slitting-mill for rolling, slitting, and preparing iron for its various uses; furnaces for making pig-iron rails and bannisters, backs and hearths for chimneys, and all other sorts of cast iron, both with charcoal and pit coal." The native produce was then far from being sufficient to meet the demand, for we find it recorded that twenty years after Mr. Wood obtained his extensive leases, there were 20,000 tons of iron imported, the price being £12 per ton.

Birmingham had attained some importance as the seat of hardware manufactures in the middle of the sixteenth century, though the making of brass articles was not introduced there until two centuries later. Sheffield was distinguished for its special manufactures at an earlier period than Birmingham, for Chaucer, who was contemporary with Edward III., speaks in his "Millar's Tale" of the Sheffield "thwytel" (whittle), which shows that knives made at Sheffield were then common:-In 1575 the Earl of Shrewsbury, lord of the manor of Sheffield, sent to Lord Burleigh, a case of Hallamshire whittles, being such fruites as my pore countrey affords with fame throughout the realme." A corporation for the encouragement of Sheffield cutlery was established in that town in 1624.

66

The art of glass making, though introduced into Britain, as already noticed, in 674, does not seem to have flourished much in this country

D

34

GLASS, EARTHENWARE, AND PAPER.

for a long time, and it is stated in Anderson's "History of Commerce that it was not till 1557 that "glasses first began to be made in England. The finer sort was made in a place called Crutched Fryers, in London. The fine flint glass, little inferior to that of Venice, was first made in the Savoy House in the Strand, but the first glass plates for looking-glasses and coach windows were made about the year 1673, at Lambeth, by encouragement from the Duke of Buckingham."

The making of earthenware was still less advanced than that of glass, and does not seem to have made much progress, so far at least as regards the material, since the time of the Anglo-Saxons. In 1690 some improvements were made in the earthenware manufacture of Staffordshire by two foreigners named Ellers, who brought purer clays from Dorsetshire and Devonshire, and further improved the body of the ware by the addition of pounded flints, but it is stated by Dr. Plot, in his "Natural History of Staffordshire," published in 1786, that even then the wares were of the coarsest and commonest sort, and consisted principally of pots made for keeping butter. From that circumstance the Burslem pottery, the chief place where the manufacture was carried on, was marked in some old maps as the "Butter potteries."

Until the end of the seventeenth century there was scarcely any other kind of paper made in England but the coarse brown sort; but the war with France having occasioned the imposition of high duties on foreign paper, the French Protestant refugees and also the native paper-makers began to make white writing and printing paper.

CHAPTER V.

THE PERIOD OF MACHINERY.-FROM THE ACCESSION OF QUEEN ANNE TO THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

THE History of the Progress of Manufactures in Great Britain to the period we are now about to review, has been principally a record of the gradual introduction into this country of the modes of manufacture that had been previously known and successfully practised in other parts of Europe. England was for sixteen centuries little more than