The Popular History of England

Front matter

N°- XXXIII. Peice Is. OCTOBER. CHEAP EDITIONS 01 MR. DICKENS'S BOOKS. Printed specially for his readings. Price One Shilling each, THE OHBISTMAS CAEOL, THE CRICKET ON THE HEAETH, THE CHIMES, THE STOEY OE LITTLE DOMBEY, AND THE POOE TEAVELLEB, BOOTS AT THE HOLLY- TEEE INN, AND MES. GAMP. Cheap Edition of the Works of Mr. Charles Dickens. In One Volume, with an Engraved Frontispiece, price 5s. each, DOMBEY AND SON. DAVID COPPEEFIELD. BLEAK HOUSE. Vs The above editions arc uniform in size and price with the Cheap Edition of Mr. Dickcns's former "Works, published by Messrs. Chapman and Hall. BRADBURT AND EVANS, 11, BOUVERIE STREET.. This day is published, in Four Volumes, demy Svo, price 36s., with a Copious Index, and Illustrated by 32 Steel Engravings and numerous Woodcuts, THE POPULAR HISTORY OF ENGLAND, FROM THE EARLIEST TIME TO THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.

By CHARLES KNIGHT. In a postscript to the Fourth Volume, which concludes this Period, the author says, " It is now almost the invariable custom in all competitions of students, to divide their examina tions iu English History into two great eras— the period before the Revolution, and the more modern period. For the period to 1689, either Hume's or Lingard's histories have "been generally chosen as the works to he studied. I may venture to affirm that, in our immediate day, the growth of a sounder public opinion repudiates such a choice of either of these books in some respects so valuable. The political prejudices of Hume,— the ecclesiastical convictions of Lingard,— render them very unsafe guides in the formation of the principles of the youth of this kingdom. Without pretending that I have supplied the want, I trust that I have made some approaches to such a result, by an earnest desire to present a true picture of past events and opinions, as far as I could realise them.'.' For the reason thus stated the narra tive of public events, and all the subsidiary details of this First Division of the PoprjL\r Histoky are treated as forming a Separate and Complete Work ; with which view* a Copious Index is added to the Four Volumes.

The Second Division will come down to that period of the reign of her present Maic-itv which has become a constitutional epoch in the important change of the commercial poUcv of the country. The author, iu his Postscript, expresses his earnest desire to bring his work to a close as speedily as possible, consistently with his purpose ; not to produce a mere sui^r ficial summary of a century and a half of England's greatest progress. BRADBURT AND EVANS, 11, BOUVERIE STREET.

Chapter I

View of the National Industry from the Revolution of 168S to the Accession of the House of Brunswick — Population — the South-Western Counties — The Woollen Manufacture — Clothing trade of the West — Domestic Character of the Manufacture — Foreign Trade- Bristol — Watering-places of the Coast — Travelling for pleasure — Inland Watering-places — Bath — Arsenal of Plymouth' — Iron Manufactures — Forest of Dean — South Wales — Tin Mines of Cornwall — Copper Mines— Welsh Coal Field — Varieties of Employment in the West of England. "We are entering upon that period of our national progress hi which England is very slowly developing itself into a manufacturing and commercial country. The great features of that progress, and its accompanying changes in the character of the population, must ever he horne in mind when we attempt to trace the political history of the eighteenth centmy.

This gradual development of her resources is not a mere accident in England's career. It constitutes the most important feature of her advancing political condition. It requires to be thoroughly understood, if we would rightly understand the circumstances which have given us our present place amongst tho nations. We propose to offer a picture, derived indeed from scattered and imperfect materials, but with some approximation to exactness, of the industry, and the consequent condition and character of the people, during the period from the Revolution of 1688 to the accession of the house of Brunswick. Some of our authorities extend through the reign of George I.* But there were few changes of invention or discovery to mark a new epoch of industry as immediately following the close of the reign of Anne.

It was the period before steam-engines and navigable canals — the period before the cotton trade — the period before scientific husbandry in its humblest form. J Such as Defoe's " Tour," which was commenced in 1722. D VOl. V VIEW OF THE NATIONAL INDUSTRY. [1689-1714, 2 It was the period when the infant industry of England was thought to be only secure under the system of Protection, carried to the utmost amount of actual prohibition of foreign manufactures, or of repression by high duties. It was a period of nearly stationary population. It was a period of old staple production that was thought all sufficing for national prosperity, and of timid experiment in new fields of enterprise that were regarded as dangerous and delusive. Such notions went before the coming era of marvellous extension of productive power ; and they long contended against the political philosophy and the scientific knowledge that determined that extension.

Let us endeavour to trace what England was under its accustomed industrial habits, — patient, persevering, slow England — during the quarter of a century that succeeded the Revolution. To our minds this is a period of extreme interest. It is the period of transition from the plough to the loom; from the spinning-wheel to the factory ; from the age of tools to the age of machinery. Employments are intermingled. The shuttle is plied in the valleys where the fleece is sheared ; the iron is smelted on the hills where the timber is felled for charcoal. Ships of small burden carry the products of one locality to another, up the estuaries and tributary rivers; and when navigation is impeded by sands and rocks, paekhorses bear the cargo into the interior. The people of one district know very little of another district.

Each district has something to exchange with its neighbour could they be brought into communication ; but impracticable roads and unnavigable streams keep them separate. Every county has its peculiar dialect, the traces of which philologists eagerly hunt after. The sports of the West are not the same as those of the South — the superstitions of the North have a different character from those of the East. Tet, with all these material causes of isolation, England has one heart. She is made compact by her Protestantism, by her general laws, by her system of local government, by historical memory. Her people, in their island home, intensely feel their nationality. But on this island home, which has a greater sea-board than any other European country, there is a constant incentive to an adventurous race to go forth to the most distant shores — to trade, to colonise, to make all the choice productions of the world their own by exchange— to be the sea-kings, as were their Saxon forefathers.

To comprehend what England has done in a century and a half, we must carefully look back upon the point from which she started in this wondrous race. One of the earliest proceedings of the first Parliament of William and Mary, was to grant an extraordinary Aid of £68,820 per month, for six months, payable in certain proportions by the several counties.* Shortly following this grant was an enactment "for the taking away the revenue arising from Hearth-money." This tax is described as "not only a great oppression to the poorer sort, but a badge of slavery upon the whole people, exposing every man's house to be entered into and searched at pleasure." t But this tax of Hearth-money was in one respect a national advantage. It formed the basis of all reasonable calculations of the amount of the population of England and Wales, towards the close of the seventeenth century, and for many years afterwards.

Gregory King took the number of houses returned by the hearth-money collectors as determining his estimate that the * 1 Gul. & Mar. c. 3. t 1 Gul. & Mar. c. 10. 1689-1714.] POPULATION.— SOUTH WESTERN COUNTIES. 3 population was about five millions and a half ; a calculation very nearly borne out by statistical researches in our own days. Other accounts take the population of this period at a higher rate. From a table printed in 1693 it •appeared that there were 1,175,951 houses.* Upon the authority of this table, allowing six persons to each house, the population was subsequently calculated at 7,055,706. f In the " Magna Britannia," which commenced to be published in 1720, the number of houses in each county is given; and, in many cases, the equivalent number of the population is also given, though upon a varying scale.

J The result is not very materially different from the estimates of Gregory King ; and if the houses, in number about 1,200,000, were averaged to give five persons for each house, they would show a population of six millions, at the period to which our present inquiry extends. The use we propose to make of these returns of houses, and of the assess ment for Aid, § is to endeavour to form some estimate of the comparative population, industry, and wealth of each of the great divisions of the country ; with occasional glances at the striking contrasts in our own times presented by some large industrial districts. At the beginning of the eighteenth century the West of England was the seat of the greatest commercial and manufacturing industry of the kingdom. The five South-Western Counties of Wilts, Dorset, Devon, Cornwall, Somerset, then contained the largest number of houses, and consequently the largest population, as compared with any other of our present eleven Regis tration Divisions.

This district was also assessed in 1689 at a higher rate than any other. It was to pay £10,850 per month in aid, whilst the North western District of Cheshire and Lancashire was only to pay £1753. It contained 175,403 houses, whilst Cheshire and Lancashire only contained 64,256. The population of the South-Western Counties was (at the rate of 5 persons for a house) 877,015, whilst the North- Western District was .321,280. At the census of 1801, the South-Western District contained a population only increased by about one fourth during a hundred years ; whilst tbe North- Western was three times as numerous as at the beginning of the century. The contrast will be more striking if we look at the fact that, in 1851, the population of Cheshire and Laucashire nearly doubled that of the five South-Western Counties, which counties, a century and a half earlier, contained three times as many inhabitants as the North- Western.

If we add Gloucestershire to the other five counties, we shall find that these six chief counties of the West at the beginning of the eighteenth century contained 202,167 houses, and therefore above a million ten thousand inhabitants. At the same period, Cheshire, Lancashire, Yorkshire, Durham, and Northumber land only contained 209,132 houses, and therefore these great Northern counties only exceeded the West in population by about thirty-five thousand souls. In 1851 these five Northern Counties contained five millions of inhabitants, being an excess above the six Western Counties of two million seven hundred thousand. * " Parliamentary History," vol. v. Appendix No. 10. + Chamberlayne's Present State, 1748. "t The principle of assigning five persons to a house is sometimes observed ; sometimes, six persons ; and sometimes a medium between the two. § The Assessment was doubled in 1693, but the proportions were the same.

D [1689-1714. THE WOOLLEN MANUFACTURES. 4 In the first year of the new dynasty an Act was passed " for the better preventing the exportation of Wool, and encouraging the Woollen Manu facture of this kingdom." * The great object of commercial legislation for two centuries was to encourage the Woollen Manufacture. The one mode of accomplishing this was to prevent the exportation of Wool, and to prohibit the importation of textile articles from every other country, not excepting Scotland and Ireland. Wool was justly held to be " eminently the foundation of England's riches." t To let wool go away unwrought, or even in the shape of yarn, was to lessen or destroy this source of wealth. But the richer Dutch, especially, could give a better price for the wool than the English clothiers ; and, said the first political economist of that time, " they that can give the best price for a commodity shall never fail to have it, by one means or other, notwithstanding, the opposition of any laws by sea or land ; of such force, subtilty, and violence is the general course of trade."

X Under the Statute of the first year of William and Mary, Commissioners were appointed to prevent by forcible means the exportation of Wool. They employed a sloop and boats for the search of vessels. They had an army of riding-officers and superiors in the wool-growing counties and adjacent ports. The contests between these riding-officers and the carriers of wool were frequent and sometimes deadly ; and the aggregate number of packs rescued from the officers was greater than the number seized. The service was most inefficient and dangerous in the North. § The landed interest and the manufacturing interest were for years at issue upon the question of the exportation of wool. The manufacturers desired a monopoly. The land lords and cultivators advocated a perfectly open trade, and proclaimed the most liberal principles of commercial freedom.

Such is the varying course of opinion which follows the varying interests of industrial operations. The economical writers of the end of the seventeenth century, who estimated the whole annual income of England at forty-three millions, and the rental at ten millions, reckoned the annual value of wool at two millions, and the annual value of the woollen manufacture at eight millions. That manufacture was chiefly in the Western Counties, as it had been from the time of Edward VI. In that reign, though Coventry and Worcester produced "White Cloths" and "Coloured Cloths;" though the "Coloured Long Cloths " of Suffolk, Norfolk, and Essex were worthy of mention, as well as " Northern Cloths " and " Welsh Eriezes ; " Wiltshire, Gloucester shire, Somersetshire, Devonshire, were especially famous for their "Whites" Bind "Reds," their "Azures" and "Blues."

"Devonshire Kerseys," and " Broadcloths called Tauntons and Bridgewaters," were the objects of minute regulation. " Manchester, Lancashire, and Cheshire Cottons " — (a fabric so called in which cotton is held to have had no place)— and " Manchester Rugs and Eriezes " form a small object of that legislative vigilance which was to insure " the true making of cloth within this realm," and to prevent the " many subtil sleights and un truths" which were imputed to greedy clothiers. || A hundred and fifty years later the West was still the great Cloth-making district ; and to 1 Gul. ancUIar. c. 32. + Sir Josiah Child. § Returns given in Smith's "Memoirs of Wool," vol. ii. p. 166 II 5 & tj Edward VI. c. 6. J Ibid. 1639-1714.] CLOTHING TRADE OF THE WEST. 5 this cause may be chiefly attributed its comparative superiority in wealth and population.

In the days before steam-power, and the application of chemical science to manufactures, natural advantages wholly determined the localisation of trades. The same principle must always prevail to a great extent in the most advanced stage of manufacturing industry. The clothing trade of the West was created by the adaptation of the district to sheep pasturage. On the grassy downs and wide plains of Wiltshire, innumerable flocks of sheep had yielded the fleece before the time when Stonehenge and Abury were mysterious ruins. The fleeces of the long-woolled sheep of the Cotswold Hills were famous in the fifteenth century ; and Camden describes the substantial cotes with which this hill-district was covered, to shelter the flocks from the winter storm or the keen winds of the lambing season. The Mendip Hills supported a short-woolled breed, whose wool was as fine as that of Spain, which entered so largely into our woollen manufacture.

The supply of wool was thus at hand for the clothiers who dwelt in the valley of the Lower Avon. The waters of that river, with its many branches, were especially fitted for fulling and dressing and dyeing cloth. The finest cloths were here fabricated. Erome, Bradford, Trowbridge, Devizes, with many adjacent towns then of great importance, were the seats of this " prodigy of a trade."* Erome had added ten thousand to its population in thirty years, and was considered to have more inhabitants than Bath or Salisbury."}' The clothing towns were surrounded with their tributary villages and hamlets, in which the work of spinning was performed by women and children. To the cottages where the hum of the wheel was ceaselessly heard, the clothiers of the towns sent their pack-horses laden with wool, and brought back the spun yarn, ready for the weaver's loom.

The operative weaver was also in many cases a domestic worker. In the fulling and dyeing processes was combined labour alone necessary. The forgotten poem of John Dyer, "The Eleece" — which Johnson disdained on account of "the meanness naturally adhering and the irreverence habitually annexed to trade and manufactures " — gives us many accurate as well as pleasing pictures of the weaving labours of the valleys of the Avon, the Air, and the Stroud. The young man, entering upon his career of industry, sets up his own loom ; he stores his soft yarn ; he strains the warp along his garden walk, or by the highway side ; he drives the thready shuttle from morn to eve ; he takes the web to the fulling-mill near some clear-sliding river, where tumbling waters turn enormous wheels and hammers ; the wet web is often steeped, and often dragged by sinewy arms to the river's grassy bank ; it is hung on rugged tenters to brighten in the fervid sun ; the clothier's shears and the burler's thistle skim the surface ; and lastly, the snowy web is steeped in boiling vats, where woad or fustic, logwood or cochineal, give their hues to the purple of the prince, the scarlet of the warrior, and the black of the priest.

X There can be no greater contrast than that of the Woollen trade of the West, a century and a half ago, with a Cloth factory of the North in our own times ; where, with the gigantic aid of steam, wool from every quarter of the * Defoe's " Tour," vol. ii. p. 35, ed. 1738. X See Dyer's "Fleece," book iii. t Ibid. p. 34. [1689-1714. 6 FOREIGN TRADE. habitable globe is carded, spun, woven by the power-loom, fulled, sheared, and dyed, in buildings one of which would turn out more cloth than a dozen old clothing-towns, with their tributary villages. The contrast between the semi-pastoral state of the great staple of England, and its factory perfection, is equally remarkable as regards the moral condition of the people. The old loom is passing away : and so is the weaver of Kidderminster, who had his book before him as he threw the shuttle, and had "time enough to read or talk of holy things."* The Gloucestershire clothiers of Stroud and the neighbourhood were especially famous for their fine cloths of scarlet and other gaudy hues, to which the purity of their streams was held as much to contribute as the skill of the dyer.

It was the fineness and brilliancy of the English broad-cloths which gave them a value beyond their own silks and brocades to the Persian and the Turk, " even for their habits of ceremony." It was their intrinsic goodness — to preserve which so many statutory regulations had been prescribed for centuries — which recommended them to Spaniards and Portuguese, to Venetians and Italians, to the Greeks of the Levant and even to the Moors of Africa.f But this foreign trade was greatly straitened by circumstances and opinions. At the beginning of the eighteenth century the trade with Erance was gone. In 1674 a jealousy of that trade was the paramount idea of the commercial legislator ; for England sent Erance only about eighty thousand pounds' worth of woollen manufactures, and imported ten times that value of linen and silk manufactures, besides wine, brandy, paper, and many toys and luxuries.

The difference, in the economical language of that day, was called the " Balance gained by the Erench from us yearly." J When, after the accession of William and Mary, th^- nation was at war with Louis XIV., all trade and commerce with Erance was prohibited ; and it was declared that it had been found by long experience that the importation of the commodities of Erance " hath much exhausted the treasure of this nation, lessened the value of the native commodities and manufactures thereof, and greatly impoverished the English artificers and handi crafts." § The same proposition was repeated in the same terms in 1704. || To compensate for the loss of the Erench trade, the North American colonies and the West Indies had become important customers for our woollen manufactures. The ports of Bristol and of North Devon thus continued to prosper ; Liverpool was growing into importance ; but many of the smaller ports of the Channel were ruined.

The towns of Weymouth and Lyme, that drove a flourishing trade with Erance before the Revolution of 1688, fell into decay. Lyme once sent large cargoes of woollen goods to Brittany,^! and its " Cobb " was busy with little vessels laden with imports of Erench wines and linens. In 1709, the cobb-dues were under fourteen pounds, and the houses were fast falling into decay. Ships were employed in foreign trade of a larger tonnage than was fitted for small ports. Great towns alone became the seats of external commerce.** Such a port was Bristol at the commencement of the eighteenth * See ante, vol. iv. p. 170. f "Atlas Maritimus," 1727. X "Parliamentary History," vol. iv. Appendix, No. xi. § 1 Gul. & Mar c 33 II 3 & 4 Anne, c. 12. «r "British Merchant," 1713. ** Roberts' "Southern Counties," p. 540. 1689-1714.]

BRISTOL. 7 century — the famous port of the West— the only port that could pretend to enter into competition with London, and to trade with an entire independence of the capital.* The Bristol shopkeepers were also merchants — " wholesale men " — and they conducted an inland trade through all the Western counties by means of carriers, and extended their traffic through the midland districts, even to the Trent. Roger North had observed that at Bristol all the dealers were engaged in adventures by sea ; — " a poor shopkeeper that sells candles will have a bale of stockings, or a piece of stuff, for Nevis or Virginia." f There was too much truth in his notice of one portion of the Bristol com merce — " rather than fail, they trade iu men." The planters with whom the Bristol traders corresponded wanted labour, and in exchange for rum, and sugar, and tobacco, men were sent — wretched outcasts who had been kid napped, or "small rogues" who were threatened by the justices with the extreme penalties of the law, and were instructed to pray for transportation " before any indictment was found against them."

J Bristol had this dishonour in the days of Charles II., as it was the last to cling to the dishonour of the slave trade in the days of George III. The Bristol traders, moreover, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, had to bear a reproach, which even the noble charities of one of their great merchants, and their old reputation for hospitality, which earned them the title of " the courteous Bristolians," § could not outweigh. Defoe, in general no illiberal judge, complained of the inconveniences of Bristol — its narrow streets, its narrow river, and " also another narrow — that is, the minds of the generality of its people." He recommends them to travel to London — " from the second great trading town to the first ; and they will see examples worth their imitating, as well for princely spirit as for upright and generous dealings." || At that period Bristol was cursed with a very exclusive prosperity ; and its uneducated free men, amongst whom strangers were jealously forbidden to settle, indulged, when their adventures were prosperous, in that vulgar display which is the general accompaniment of sudden riches.^ It was also cursed with an exclu sive municipal government.

From this great port of the Severn, Sebastian Cabot, "a Bristol man born," went forth in 1497 to set his foot upon Newfoundland. Two centuries later Bristol was the great emporium for American produce, and Dampier, with other bold buccaneers, sailed from the Avon to come back rich with Spanish prizes. A century and a half later, the " Great Western" steamed down between the narrow rocks of St. Vincent, on her first voyage to New York, caring little for tides and adverse winds, for she had a self-contained power which took away the uncertainty of maritime communication, and made time and space of small amount in commercial calculations. The difference between the Bristol of Cabot and the Bristol of Dampier, is not greater than the difference between the Bristol of William III., whose statue was worthily raised in Queen Square by her citizens, and the Bristol of Queen Victoria.

The Avon is now far too narrow for the mighty vessels, crowded amongst the diminutive, that steam to her quays from South Wales and Ireland, from Africa and America. But the old * Defoe's "Tour," vol. ii. p. 249. t "Life of Lord Guilford," vol. i. p. 250. + Ibid, and vol. ii. p. 24. § Fuller's "Worthies." || "Tour," vol. ii. p. 250. *TI Defoe perhaps wrote under the influence of some personal slight. He sought a refuge in Bristol when under pecuniary difficulties ; and was there pointed at as " the Sunday gentleman." WATERING-PLACES OF THE COAST. [1689-1714, 8 commerce of wool and woollen manufactures, of which Bristol was the seat, is gone. The North has carried away the woollen manufacture from the West, to a very considerable extent. South Wales has far more productive industry than the making of flannels.

Tbe hearth-money returns of Bristol show little above five thousand houses, which would give a population not much exceeding twenty-five thousand. Defoe says, " Bristol is supposed to have a hundred thousand inhabitants within the city, and within three miles of its circumference." This is a material increase in less than forty years. A later writer observes that " Bristol, the second city in England, next to London has made the largest improvements since the Revolution, of any one place in the kingdom, unless Manchester shall be thought an exception to this." * The great woollen manufacture extended itself in the eighteenth century still further west. At Taunton, Defoe found eleven hundred looms at work for the weaving of common stuffs ; and he was told that there was not a child in the town of above five years old who could not earn its own bread.

At Honiton he first saw the serge manufacture of Devonshire, which occupied the whole county. At Exeter, a city then full of trade and manufacture, he looked with admiration upon the serge market, where the people assured him that serges to the value of a hundred thousand pounds were sometimes sold in one week. The port of Topsham was then one of the most considerable amongst the smaller ports of England; and the woollen manufactures of Devonshire were thence largely exported to Holland, to Portugal and Spain, to Italy. The commerce of the Exe is now comparatively small. Devonshire has still its scattered woollen manufactures, which give employ to fifteen hundred males and two thousand five hundred females ; and five hundred males, and eight thousand five hundred females, are now connected with the production of gloves and lace.

But new populations have been created by circumstances of which the Devonians of a century and a half ago had no conception. It was for modern times to behold all the bays of the south-western coast, where the myrtle is unharmed by the winter gales, transformed into flourishing towns, where a few fishermen once earned a precarious livelihood. The rush to the coast for sea-bathing and sea-air was a fashion unknown in the middle of the last century! Still less was it the fashion to locate the invalid under the shelter of hills and promontories, where the south-west breeze might give its soft but invigorating freshness to those who were held to have been perishing in the crowded city. Torquay was then a name for a few huts. Even more rare was the fashion of travelling for pleasure through scenes which we now call beautiful, but which our forefathers held to be horrible wastes In the days of almost impassable roads, and when wheel conveyances were not common, the hills of Devonshire and Derbyshire, the mountains of Wales and Westmorland, were left to their primitive occupants, unsouo-ht by the tourist, and hated by the business traveller.

No one sailed down the Wve and the Dart for pleasure ; the Dove and the Wharf were known in their inaccessible beauties only to the solitary angler. When the companion of Charles Cotton rides with him near Ashbourn, the Essex man exclaims Bless me, what mountains are here!" and when told that the hills bred * Smith's "Memoirs of Wool," 1747. Vol. i. p. 263. 16S9-1714.] TRAVELLING FOR PLEASURE. 9 and fed good beef and mutton, ejaculates, " They had need of all those com modities to make amends for the ill landscape." * To the eyes of Defoe, Westmorland was a country eminent only for being the wildest, most barren, and frightful of any that he had passed over in England, or even in Wales itself. He talks of the terrible aspect of the hills, and laments that all the pleasant part of England was at an end.f Gray was the first who looked at Windermere and Borrowdale, at Skiddaw and Saddleback, with the eye of the poet.