Landmarks in English industrial history

Preface

The intention of this book is to bring before the reader the salient features of England's industrial and commercial progress in the past. Progress is not uniform in all branches at all times; in one period we may find expansion in commerce, in another new developments in agricultural life and methods, in a third a growth of a maritime spirit, in a fourth a succession of mechanical inventions. The facts about these events have been related before, although owing to the preference that is generally bestowed on political and constitutional history, they are apt to be regarded as of secondary importance. I make no claim to originality so far as the matter of this book goes; yet as each historical event is important, not only by itself but also in its bearing on other events, I have tried by a new arrangement to bring out these connections more fully. I have chosen what appears to me to be the chief Landmark of each age, and grouped round it the events which led up to it, and the consequences which came from it.

This has involved the sacrifice of any attempt at a strict adherence to a chronological order, and

VI PREFACE.

the omission of much that is in itself important and interesting ; but the compensation will be found, I believe, in an increased simplicity of treatment, and a clearer impression of the main outlines of our country's economic development.

As the novelty of my book lies merely in selection and arrangement, I have not thought it necessary to burden the text with numerous foot-notes of reference to authorities. To two books in particular I owe much, and it is right that I should make special mention of them. They are Cunningham's Growth of English Industry and Commerce and Ashley's Economic History.

It only remains for me to express my thanks to those who have helped me; and especially to the Rev. W. Cunningham, D.D., who has assisted me with numerous suggestions and criticisms.

G. T. W.

Harrow, November, i8g8.

Contents

Chap. Page

Introduction i

I. Before the Norman Conquest . - - - 8 II. The Manorial System. Service and Commutation 26

Introduction

History is opening out so vast a field that by common agreement we have come to recognize certain divisions in it. We speak of Ancient History and Modern History, Political History, Constitutional History, Ecclesiastical History, Military History, Economic or Social History, and so on. But although these divisions are convenient, we must not draw a dividing line too rigidly; we cannot take each fact of history and label it as belonging to one subject or to another, however tempting this may be for the sake of clearness, because there are many events which are important, not only in one, but in several branches of history. With some this multiple importance is evident: no one would dream of assigning Magna Carta to the constitutional historian and forbidding the political historian to mention it; events like the Reformation, or the Model Parliament, or the colonization of Ulster, or the Union with Scotland are plainly many-sided. But there is another class of events which, though they appear to belong very definitely to one division of history, yet on a closer scrutiny reveal influences, at first not suspected, reaching into other divisions. Philip II. 's and Louis XIV. 's persecutions of their subjects seem at first sight events to be classified as political or religious, yet they turned out to be of great economic importance in English history, for the immigration of alien craftsmen into England stimulated our industries at the expense of those of the Netherlands and France. When, as the story goes, an Indian pursuing some deer along a steep mountain side in Peru, slipped, caught hold of a shrub to save himself, dragged it up by the roots and saw revealed a mass of silver — a discovery which led to the working of the Potosi mines and the bringing of immense quantities of silver to Europe — we are tempted to say that this is an event purely economic. Yet it had far-reaching political consequences, not only in Spain, but in our own country, for the rise in prices which the new silver caused had no slight share in making it impossible for the Stuart kings to live on the revenue which had been enough for Elizabeth, and eventually brought Charles I. into violent collision with his parliaments. No doubt there were other and graver reasons, but money difficulties were the beginning of the disagreements between King and Parliament, which led to rebellion. Again, as we shall have occasion to notice more in detail, commercial needs or ideas have often led to prolonged wars, in which, amid the clash of arms and the rejoicings over victories, the original causes are apt to be obscured. For example, we find it easy enough to recognize CHve at Arcot and Wolfe at

INTRODUCTION. 3

Quebec as makers of the empire, but we may not discern at first sight that the British regiments at Minden were doing their share in the same work.

While it is thus necessary to pay attention not only to the immediate results of any event or course of policy, but also to the remote and sometimes unexpected consequences, we must not neglect beginnings, even if they are very small and silent. Anything which acts cumulatively, which, with ever so trifling a beginning, goes on attaining a wider and wider importance as it spreads further and further, is likely to turn out to be of greater consequence than many things which make a great stir and commotion at first, but with the lapse of time become of less account. Compare, for example, the importance of the Great Fire in London in 1666 with the foundation of the Bank of England about thirty years later. ^ The first left the trade of London paralysed, but only for a very short time; the second, intended to be nothing more than a temporary financial expedient, has ended by influencing profoundly the whole commercial system of the country, because its effects have been cumulative. A modern writer on economic history would dismiss the first in a few sentences, and deal fully with the other. Yet to a London merchant who had witnessed both, the immediate impression of the Fire would be far greater, far more dramatic ; he would rate the immediate consequences high, and fail to see those which were more remote. Time, however, reveals the two events in their true proportions.

Since events are so intertwined and draw with them such ramifying threads of after-events, and since in this tangle we cannot use a knife to cut one piece apart from the rest, the whole may well seem too vast to deal with satisfactorily. But, after all, the impression that will be gathered must depend upon the point of view. Just as in looking at a jagged mountain from different standpoints we get different pictures, one face looking smooth and steep when seen from the front, yet revealing its actual slope from the side, a tower of rock standing out against the sky from one place, being lost when we move to another, while fresh crests and shoulders come in sight; so it is with history. The political, the constitutional, the economic historian, each looks from his own point of view ; the great features of history will be visible alike to all of them, but the minor ones which they pick out will be different; each writer deals with what has an appreciable concern with his part of the subject and omits the rest.

The task of selection, then, is of necessity one of the main difficulties; it is perhaps greater in economic history than in any other branch, for economic history is by its very nature barren of incident and somewhat destitute of great landmarks. The ordinary reader would be able to mention ten political or constitutional events to one economic one. Economic history is the history of causes and tendencies and policies, and most of these act very slowly. The movement is so gradual that it is only when comparison is made over considerable periods that we can be sure that move-

INTRODUCTION.

ment is going on at all. Economic history is not often influenced by human personality or character; there are none of the flashes of interest which biography gives ; what it has of dramatic interest is not gained from the rapid succession of incident, or from the varying turns of fortune, but from the slow intensity and resistlessness of the causes which it reveals at work. From a mass of events, few of them at first sight standing out as of much greater importance than the rest, selection has to be made. And if by the nature of things we cannot select much that is in itself striking, we must be careful to choose what has far-reaching connections. Isolated facts may be neglected, if we make sure that they are isolated; the links in the long chains of social progress or industrial development or commercial policy are what should be sought out and fitted together. We may omit what leads backward and what leads nowhere; our concern is with the "low beginnings" from which our country's wealth has grown up. Institutions, policies, ideas rise and flourish and fade again, and there are few of them that leave no mark behind them on the history and development of a nation. What England to-day has either to be proud of, or to regret, is the fruit of the past; how this fruit has been ripened or been blighted in the course of the ages is what history alone can teach us. And it is such a continuity in the social and economic development of England that we must endeavour to trace.

It is a newspaper commonplace of our time to marvel at the speed with which we are progressing. Discovery has succeeded discovery with bewildering rapidity, and inventions have become antiquated almost as soon as they are complete. Politics have shared with trade and commerce the same restless activity. But from this attitude of mind there is a danger of condemning the past unheard, or pushing aside with contemptuous tolerance what it has to tell us. With a pitying smile we are tempted to say that such facts are interesting, of course, from an antiquarian point of view, but quite out of date, and that it is best to try and understand modern conditions without wasting time over what is past and gone. Or else, self-contentedly applying modern considerations and modern standards to old motives and old conditions, we are prone to dismiss the past as hopelessly benighted, carelessly wondering how our ancestors could have been so foolish, and thanking Heaven that we manage things better nowadays. Such attitudes of mind are thoroughly wrong-headed; to condemn the past because it is the past is only to invite the condemnation of the future upon ourselves; the amount of commercial and industrial wisdom may indeed vary from age to age, but there is no reason for supposing that the latter part of the nineteenth century possesses a monopoly of it, and we cannot hope to understand the policy of the past if we obstinately refuse to regard it from the point of view of the past. Further, to disregard the past is both unscientific and ungrateful; unscientific, because the whole course of modern scientific progress has of late laid more and more stress upon observation, tabulation, and comparison, upon the importance of tracing things step by step from their

INTRODUCTION.

origin, instead of beginning with theory and selecting facts to fit the theory ; and ungrateful, because England of to-day is what Englishmen of the past have made her. If modern conditions are all that we need attend to, are we then prepared to say that our own is the only epoch in which England has been great? Was not England great in the eighteenth century, and in Elizabeth's day, and under Edward III.? Was not the vigour of the country at home and abroad at least as conspicuous as it is now? Nay, further, England and Englishmen of those days were tried and not found wanting, while our age has been happy in escaping trials and knowing little of enemies in the gate.

We owe our empire to those who have gone before us: they made it for us by the way they fought and worked and ruled themselves, and brought up children to carry on the work on their lines. If we were to draw a contrast between ourselves and other nations, it might well be found in the fact that Englishmen have not in past times rested content at home, but have embarked on wide schemes of expansion, and have spread their dominion over the face of the world; and that then the State and those who stayed at home have stepped in with the resources of arms and an almost unbounded supply of wealth to maintain what the vigour and enterprise of individuals had begun. Other nations have had great colonies; some are still struggling to get them. England stands alone in having in the main retained her colonies, and this she has been able to do principally by her unequalled material resources. The development of these resources, the growth of her industry and commerce, first at home and afterwards abroad, is a subject which ought not to be neglected. The story may seem dull, destitute of the glamour which attaches to the deeds of soldiers and sailors ; commissariat work is unromantic when compared with the fighting in the front, but it is on the unromantic commissariat that the army depends. Piece by piece has been raised the stately pile which is called the British Empire ; who thinks of the national industry, thrift, enterprise, and material resources which form the foundations of it? Not very many; the majority stare at the pinnacles which crown the whole. But if the pile is to endure it is well to consider these foundations.

Chapter I. Before The Norman Conquest

When in the month of September B.C. 54, Julius C^sar made his landing on the coast of Kent, the Britons came for the first time into direct contact with a power which was to influence them for a time as profoundly as it did the rest of Western Europe; but with this difference, that while in Western Europe the Roman civilization lasted long and left many traces behind, in Britain it crumbled away under the hands of the Saxons with surprising rapidity. In most respects the history of Roman Britain is an episode in our history, almost complete by itself, and having few threads of connection with what came after.

Neither Caesar's first expedition, nor the second in the following year, led to much. He crossed the Thames and defeated Cassivellaunus at St. Albans, but no Roman garrison was left, and for nearly one hundred years nothing further was done. The real work of conquest began with Aulus Plautius and Vespasian in a.d. 43. The south of England and the basin of the Thames were subdued. Scapula carried the troops into Lincolnshire and Shropshire, and Suetonius Paullinus pushed into North Wales. The consolidation and pacification of the country began with Agricola (78-89 a.d.). It was in his time that the Britons first copied Roman habits, built temples, houses and baths in the Roman style, assumed Roman clothes, learned the tongue of their conquerors, and settled down into the life of the Roman provincial. Roman roads, elaborately constructed with successive layers of concrete, stones, lime and gravel, took the place of the imperfect British tracks. Villas in the Roman style arose to astonish the Britons, whose dwellings had hitherto been of roughly squared timbers or wattles, with the interstices filled with clay. These villas were solid edifices of stone or brick, or of wood on stone foundations, sometimes extending 200 feet in length, surrounded by an arcade, and paved with marble and mosaic. The development of agriculture was on the same scale. Even before the coming of the Romans, Britain had the reputation of a fertile country in which corn grew well, and there appears to have been some lO LANDMARKS IN INDUSTRIAL HISTORY.

export trade to Gaul and Ireland. But, as a rule, communication being imperfect, enough corn was grown for food and little more. Under the Romans the corn growing was systematized, and the trade enlarged. To get plenty of corn, and get it cheap, was always an object of Roman administration; it was needed for the troops in the island, for the Roman camps on the German frontier, and for the free gifts of corn made to the population of Rome. Accordingly, as the land was allotted on the Roman principle to soldiers and settlers, under whom the old inhabitants were employed to cultivate the soil, which had once been their own, the amount of corn raised increased vastly. Zosimus speaks on one occasion of 800 vessels being sent to fetch corn from Britain for the Roman cities on the Continent, and though the number is probably exaggerated, there is no doubt that Britain was regarded as a land of exceptional fertility. Eumenius speaks of it as "a land wealthy from its heavy crops, its rich pastures, its veins of metals, its revenues, and its many harbours ". He says, too, that Nature had dowered it with all the advantages of soil and climate, that it neither suffered under extreme winter cold nor summer heat, while the fertility of the land was sufficient either for corn or vines. This again is a panegyric; experience convinced the settlers that if it was not snowy, it was often rainy and foggy, while the cultivation of the vine never was really successful. But for corn-growing the island was indeed admirably suited; besides what was taken as annonuy a tribute of a fixed supply of corn for

BEFORE THE NORMAN CONQUEST. II

the maintenance of Roman soldiers and officials, enough corn was exported in actual commerce to justify the title bestowed on Britain — " The Granary of the North ". The introduction of fowls, geese, and hornless sheep, and some fruit-trees, such as the pear and cherry, are the chief agricultural novelties credited to the Romans.

The same stimulating effect of Roman control is to be observed in industry. Before the invasions we know that the Britons had attained a certain amount of skill in weaving, dyeing, metal-working, pottery, and enamel work. The cloth made was coarse and thick enough to be some protection against a sword. Stripes and chequers in bright colours, of which the favourite was red, were used for coats and cloaks ; dyes were obtained from various barks and lichens; rings, circlets, pins, brooches and beads of amber and jet were worn. Though the first iron swords and spears were brought from Gaul, the Britons speedily learnt to make them for themselves, ornamenting the handles and the bronze sheaths with gold and enamelled work. Coins copied from the Greek had been made since the visit of Pytheas (330 B.C.), and before the Roman conquest coins were lettered in the Roman style, e.g. " Cunobelinos Rex". Although iron came mostly from abroad, some iron ore was worked in the Severn valley before the Romans came, and the mining of tin and lead in Cornwall is very ancient, dating from the days when Phoenician commerce was prosperous. Posidonius\ Cicero's tutor, visited Cornwall and describes the method of tin

1 Born B.C. 135, died B.C. 51.

work; the tin was found in earthy veins, ground down, melted, purified, and made into slabs for exportation. It was shipped off by merchants from the Tin Island (generally supposed to be St. Michael's Mount). From his description it appears that the tin was got by "streaming", that is, washing out alluvial tin ; in this form it is purest, and needs little refining. Other native arts were the building of chariots, coracles, and ships. The chariots were armed with iron scythe-blades, also of native make; the coracles of basket-work and hides were used on the rivers. The western Britons made frequent voyages to Ireland in ships with flat bottoms, so as to draw little water, but high in bows and stern, built of oak, secured with iron spikes, fitted with anchors with iron chains, and equipped with sails made of hides, painted blue to avoid observation at a distance.

All these rudimentary industries made progress during the Roman occupation. The invaders were not themselves to any great extent planters of new trades, but they understood well enough how to foster existing ones. Mines, for example, were mostly in Roman hands; the output of tin in Cornwall increased ; lead from Derby and the Mendips was so abundant that the output was limited by law ; iron works existed in the Forest of Dean, Hereford, and Monmouth ; copper was mined in Anglesey and Shropshire; the practice of stamping bars of metal with the date was apparently common ; coal was dug and burnt in Northumberland. The houses of the new masters called for stone-cutting, slates, and bricks; while their tastes demanded glass and pottery, of which the best was made at Castor, near Peterborough, and rougher kinds in Lincolnshire, Somerset, Worcestershire, Northamptonshire, and Essex. Even at this early date beer was a national product. Care for commerce is shown by a Roman lighthouse in Dover Castle, and it is possible that the Romans began reclaiming and protecting lowlying ground by embankments. Luxuries, such as keys, steelyards, hair-pins, glass botdes, spoons, statues, and bells, were all due to Roman civilization.

The export trade in corn, cattle, hides, metal, British dogs, furs, and slaves, involved some imports. Salt, an article of prime necessity if meat was to keep through the winter, came mostly from abroad, although some was got by evaporation on the sea-coasts. Wine, too, was imported in considerable quantities, as well as some amber and ivory, used for decorative purposes, though the quantity was small. The finer kinds of cloth could not be made in the island, and were imported, as was also the best ironwork. Generally speaking, the exports were raw materials, while the imports were either luxuries or necessities unattainable at home, or manufactured articles. Imports and exports were, as elsewhere throughout the Roman Empire, subject to duties {portoria).

Another effect of the Roman occupation may be seen in the growth of towns. The most important of these were London, on which so many roads converged, and York (Eboracum), the military centre of the north. Bath (Aquae Sulis) was frequented for the sake of the waters. Colchester

(Camulodunum), Wroxeter (Uriconium), Chester, St. Albans (Verulamium), Cirencester, Dorchester, Lincoln, Gloucester, Silchester, and Caerleon, were all places of some size. It is related that 70,000 colonists perished in Boadicea's raid on St. Albans and London. The best houses in these towns were occupied by officials, civil and military, while round them clustered the huts of the poorer classes, generally built of wattles. During the later years of the occupation, churches were built, in towns mostly of stone and brick, in the country of wood. The term mimicipia is applied to some of the towns, and there is evidence of town councils at York, Gloucester, and Lincoln. Presumably they existed in other towns, but in any case it is probable that the office of town councillor became hereditary, and passed from father to son, in spite of every effort to get rid of the troublesome obligations which the office involved. As the government held these municipal bodies responsible for the taxes, and left them to arrange for their levy and collection, the office was most unpopular. Judging from what happened on the Continent, we may infer that trades gathered in corporations {collegia), but there is no very certain evidence of this in Britain.

The principal benefit conferred on the country came from the Roman peace. Quarrels hitherto adjusted by violence were settled in the law-courts, roads brought dwellers in different parts of the country into connection and made internal commerce easier, agriculture and industry were protected from wanton destruction. When the country was once subdued, peace, save on the borders, was complete. None of the country houses of the Roman period show any sign of fortification. This security was at the bottom of all the prosperity which spread over the country, yet it cannot be denied that the Britons felt the occupation in some ways as a burden. Besides the natural preference for independence, and the dislike of strangers who spoke a strange tongue, there were specific grounds of grievance. Those who were turned out from their lands by new settlers could not be expected to acquiesce quietly, and if this trouble was confined to the early days of settlement, others were more permanent. Taxation was heavy, and the taxgatherers rough, peremptory, and unreasonable. In addition to the corn dues and port dues, there was the property tax {tributum), and after 212 a.d., when the mass of the people became Roman citizens, legacy duty had to be paid. And even more annoying was the levy for the army, by which a number of young men were annually chosen for the auxilia and drafted off abroad, from whence none could be sure of returning.

We may find an analogy to the Roman occupation in our own Indian Empire, but the analogy must not be pressed too far. The Romans made no deliberate efforts to improve the lot of their subjects, to educate or train them. The province was considered frankly as a possession to be administered primarily for the advantage of the conquerors. If violence, crime, and hideous customs, such as human sacrifice, were repressed, it was done in the interest of the Government, not of the people. If agriculture and trade were systematized and encouraged, this was because revenue could be drawn from them. If more comfortable habits and more refined tastes came to prevail, it was because the invaders could not dispense with these habits and tastes. Whether the Britons copied them or not was a matter of little consequence. It is not so in India; there the first object of Government is professedly the good of the governed. In India, too, the peoples to be ruled are divergent, of different races and religions, while Britain was more homogeneous. But in the peace and order maintained by alien rule, the superposition of alien habits of thought and justice, the introduction of an alien civilization with strange methods, appliances, and luxuries, there is a strongly-marked resemblance. And just as in India it is clear that if the British rule were withdrawn, most of the British work would fade away, railways would go to ruin, sanitary improvements be neglected, oppression of the weak take the place of equal justice between all, while the country would lie at the mercy of a powerful invader; so in Britain, the veneer of Roman influence and civilization was quickly broken through and destroyed when the power that had applied it was gone. The Romans taught the Britons much, but they did not teach them to be strong or united; rather they took away what unity and national initiative they possessed. Centuries of peace, alien government, and the copying of masters, left the Britons soft, dependent, anxious for peace, yet unable to make an organized and united resistance to secure it, and consequently they fell victims to the ruder and more vigorous Saxons.

Throughout the fourth century Britain formed the starting-point of many claimants to the empire, and was harassed by raids of Scots, Picts, and Saxons. In 400 a.d. Roman aid was finally withdrawn, and the Britons left to look to their own defence. An imitation of the Roman policy of employing barbarians against barbarians proved fatal. Vortigern enlisted a band of Jutes to war against the Picts and Scots ; these they overthrew, but then turned on their employers ; their success attracted their fellows, migration followed migration, battles were fought up and down the country, victory inclining now to one side now to the other, but on the whole the Saxons made steady progress. The Britons were driven westward, till by the end of the fifth century all the east, midlands, and south belonged to the invaders; all that remained to the Britons was Devon, Cornwall, Wales, and the strip of England lying west of the Pennine Hills. The invasion was extremely destructive. It was the work of men who were to the Britons everything that was alarming, barbarians untamed by Roman influences, pagans unsoftened by Christianity, warriors of reckless courage and hardihood. The new-comers had indeed none of the civilization of the Britons, nor any desire to make use of it. They saw a well-kept, orderly land, rich in corn and pasture, sheep and cattle, orchards and farms, and these lay before them as spoil. In their old home in Frisia they had held their land by force of arms, each man being warrior at one time and husbandman at another. If they resembled the German tribes pictured by Tacitus, their methods of agriculture were rude, their industrial skill hardly going beyond the weaving of coarse cloth, the construction of ships, waggons, and arms. Indeed the constant reference to the latter shows how large a part warfare filled in their lives. Towns were unknown ; they settled, when they settled at all, in isolated groups, generally bound by some tie of kindred. But their migratory habits were very imperfectly abandoned, and it is not certain that they had entirely given up extensive^ cultivation by the time they began to invade Britain. It is not difficult to picture, from the accounts that have been left, what the work of such invaders must have been, the slaying, burning, and stormings, the devastated crops, the deserted towns, the fierce pursuit, the flight of the Britons to the recesses of the woods and hills. In the general confusion the civilization introduced by the Romans had little chance of surviving. Whether it is correct to describe the destruction as complete is a question to which the answer cannot be given with certainty. It is important in its bearing on the land-system of England. By the time of Domesday^ England was covered with manors, and in the manorial system the cultivators are unfree. The Saxon cultivators in their old