« wool" as one of the chief English exports, and although England had always been in a specially favourable position for growing wool, her manufacture of it had not developed to any great extent. Nevertheless it was practised as a domestic industry in every rural and urban community, and at this period already had its gilds-a sure sign of growth. Indeed, one of the oldest craft gilds was that of the London weavers, of which we find mention in the time of Henry I. In this reign, too, we first hear of the arrival of Flemish immigrants in this country, who helped largely both then and subsequently in the development of the woollen manufacture. Some Flemings had come over indeed in the days of William the Norman, having been driven from Flanders by an incursion of the sea, and had settled at Carlisle. But Henry I., as we read in Higden's Chronicle, transferred them to Pembrokeshire in 1111 A.D.: Flandrenses, tempore regis Henrici primi, ad occidentalem Walliæ partem, apud Haverford, sunt translati." 2 Traces of them remained till a comparatively recent period, and the names of the village of Flemingston, and of the road called the Via Flandrica, running over the crest of the Precelly mountains, afford striking evidence of their settlement there, as also does the name Tucking Mill (i.e., clothmaking mill, from German and Flemish tuch, "a cloth "). Norfolk also had from early times been the seat of the woollen industry, and had had similar influxes of Flemish weavers. Their immigration does not, however, become important till the reign of Edward III., when we shall find that English cloth manufacture begins to develop considerably." In this period, all we can say is that England was more famed for the wool that it grew than for the cloth which it manufactured therefrom, and it had yet to learn most of its improvements from lessons taught by foreigners. Indeed, some have gone so far as to state that weaving as a regular craft was first introduced into England by 1 Cunningham, i. p. 181. 2 Higden, in Gale, Scriptores, Vol. III. p. 210. 3 Cf. Holinshed's Chronicle, 1107. Taylor, Words and Places, p. 186. 5 Burnley (Hist. of Wool and Woolcombing, p. 50) says the distinction between woollen and worsted industry cannot be traced with certainty before the Flemish immigration, though it probably existed in Saxon times. foreigners at the time of the Norman Conquest,1 and that the origin of craft gilds is to be found in the need for combination to protect each other that was felt by these foreign artisans when they first settled here.2 But while certain points, in the history of weavers especially, tend to confirm this view, it seems unlikely that there were no gilds formed by Englishmen themselves prior to foreign settlement, although we may readily admit that it is largely to foreigners, and especially to the Flemish, that England owes its early progress in the making of cloth. It is noticeable also that Domesday Book gives evidence of a considerable number of artisans of French or other foreign extraction living in England at the time of the Conquest.3 § 62. Economic Appearance of England in this Period. Population. The England of the Domesday Book was very different from anything which we can now conceive, nor did its industrial condition change much during the next century or two. The population was probably under 2,000,000 in all; for we saw that in Domesday Book only 283,242 able-bodied men are enumerated. These, multiplied by five, to include women and children, give 1,400,000 of general population, and allowing for omissions, we shall find two millions rather over than under the mark. Nor, indeed, could the agricultural and industrial state of the country have supported more. This population was chiefly located in the southern and eastern counties, which were also politically and socially by far the most important, for the north of England, and especially Yorkshire, had been laid waste by the Conqueror in consequence of its revolt in 1068. The whole country between York and the Tees was ravaged, and the famine which ensued is said to have 1 Cunningham, Growth of Industry, i. 179, 180 (but cf. Ashley, Econ. Hist., i. 83). 2 lb. E.g., at Shrewsbury, Domesday, i. 252 a, 1, Gretford, i. 268 a, 1, Cambridge, i. 189 a, 1. A calculation three centuries later, based on the assessment for the polltax of 1377, gives 2 millions (Topham, in Archeologia, vii. 337). "Cf. Rogers, Six Centuries, p. 119. "See the map in Freeman's Norman Conquest, iv. p. 101. carried off 100,000 victims. Indeed, for half a century the land "lay bare of cultivation and of men" for sixty miles northward of York, and for centuries more never fully recovered from this terrible visitation.1 The Domesday Book records district after district and manor after manor in Yorkshire as "waste." "2 In the North-west of England, now the most densely populated part of the country, and in the East, all was fen, moorland, and forest, peopled only by wild animals and lawless men.3 Till the seventeenth century, in fact, Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire were the poorest counties in England; and the fens of East Anglia were only reclaimed in 1634. The main ports were London for general trade; 5 Southampton, for the French trade in wines; Norwich, for the export wool trade with Flanders, and for imports from the Baltic; and on the west coast Bristol, which had always been the centre for the western trade in Severn salmon and hides." At one time, too, it was the great port for the trade of English slaves who were taken to Ireland, but William the Norman checked that traffic, though it lingered till Henry II. conquered Ireland. For internal trade, market towns, or villages, as we should call them, were gradually springing up. They were nearly always held in demesne by the lord of the manor, who claimed the tolls, though in after years the town bought them of him. Some of these markets had existed from Saxon times, as is seen by the prefix "Chipping" (=chepinge, A.S. a market), as in Chipping Norton, Chippingham, and Chepstowe; others date from a later period, and are known by the prefix " Market," as, e.g., Market Bosworth.9 But these market towns were very small, and, indeed, only some half-dozen towns in the kingdom had a population above 5000 inhabitants. These were London (40,000), York and Bristol (12,000), Coventry and Plymouth (9000), while Norwich, Lincoln, Salisbury, 1 Freeman, Norman Conquest, iv. 272. 8 2 Ib., v. 42. 5 Пb., pp. 122-124. 3 Sim. Dun., Gest. Regg., 1079, p. 85, Hinde. 4 Rogers, Six Centuries, p. 127. 7 Freeman, Norman Conquest, iv. 625. 8 Stubbs, Const. Hist., I. xi. 408. "Taylor, Words and Places, pp. 394, 395 (ed. 1864). Lynn, and Colchester had from 5000 to 7000 each.1 But nevertheless the settlement made by the Norman Conquest had the effect of considerably strengthening the growth of towns,2 and we shall see more of their importance in the next period. § 63. General Condition of the Period. Speaking generally for the whole period after the Conquest, we may say that, though the economic condition of England was by no means unprosperous, industrial development was necessarily slow. The disputes between Stephen and Maud, and the civil wars of their partisans, the enormous drain upon the resources of the country caused by Richard I.'s expenses in carrying on crusades when he should have been ruling his kingdom, and the equally enormous taxes and bribes paid by the worthless John to the Papal See, could not fail seriously to check national industry. It is no wonder that in John's reign, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, we hear of great discontent throughout all the land, of much misery and poverty, especially in the towns, and of a general feeling of revolt. That miserable monarch was only saved from deposition by his opportune death. Yet with all these evils the economic condition of England, although depressed, was by no means absolutely unhealthy; and the following reign (Henry III., 1216-72), with its comparative peace and leisure, afforded, as we shall see, sufficient opportunity to enable the people to regain a position of general opulence and prosperity, An important change was coming over the industrial history of England in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, for now we begin to see manufacturing and other industries arising side by side with agriculture as a new phenomenon, and the manufacturer and artisan was making himself felt as a new power by the side of baron and farmer. This time of quiet progress and industrial growth forms a fitting occasion for the marking out of a new epoch. 3 1 Ashley, Econ. Hist., II. i. p. 11. |