DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.22140#0026
io INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL HISTORY.
as the advocate of this abstraction argues in the Plutus, is the
stimulant to the discovery or adaptation of the arts of life, and
during the period on which I am dwelling, from 1260 to 1540,,
poverty was a distant risk in England.
Something, too, must be ascribed to the singular backwardness-
of the English people, on which, indeed, I have already com-
mented, curiously varied by extraordinary and unexpected out-
bursts of political anger. Poor as the progress was, which was
made in the textile industries of the eastern counties, for the
best cloth always came from Flanders, I am persuaded that
even this progress would not have been made but for the constant
immigration of Flemings into Eastern England. I have frequently
seen lists of inhabitants, tenants or owners in villages, which were
within the eastern counties, half of whose names were Teutonic. I
am sure, had I been at the pains of examining the taxing rolls of the
eastern counties, still preserved abundantly in the Record Office,,
that I should have been able to supply cumulative evidence of the
fact to which I call attention. But the organization which in the
Flemish towns rendered it possible to produce the most finished
fabrics was wanting to England. The guild of the Englishman
was narrow, exclusive, local, and was not fitted to bring about
results which had become habitual in Flanders. Besides, it is by
no means easy to develop a new manufacture, even when the
national conditions are present. Of course in those early times,
the efsectual discouragement of foreign imports was out of the
question, and the government wisely imposed only very moderate
customs duties.
There are two national products of England the supply of
which was inexhaustible as far as the raw material went, the one
of which was in the highest degree significant. These are iron
and salt. But the domestic produce of iron in England was
scanty and of inferior quality, the country depending for what it
wanted on'Northern Spain and Sweden. The price, too, was.
prodigiously high. During the fourteenth century iron in mass
was worth in money of the time £9 a ton. Now twelve is a very
reasonable multiplier on the whole of the fourteenth-century prices.
It needs no great acuteness to see what would be the effect on
agriculture, and for the matter of that on any industry, if at the
as the advocate of this abstraction argues in the Plutus, is the
stimulant to the discovery or adaptation of the arts of life, and
during the period on which I am dwelling, from 1260 to 1540,,
poverty was a distant risk in England.
Something, too, must be ascribed to the singular backwardness-
of the English people, on which, indeed, I have already com-
mented, curiously varied by extraordinary and unexpected out-
bursts of political anger. Poor as the progress was, which was
made in the textile industries of the eastern counties, for the
best cloth always came from Flanders, I am persuaded that
even this progress would not have been made but for the constant
immigration of Flemings into Eastern England. I have frequently
seen lists of inhabitants, tenants or owners in villages, which were
within the eastern counties, half of whose names were Teutonic. I
am sure, had I been at the pains of examining the taxing rolls of the
eastern counties, still preserved abundantly in the Record Office,,
that I should have been able to supply cumulative evidence of the
fact to which I call attention. But the organization which in the
Flemish towns rendered it possible to produce the most finished
fabrics was wanting to England. The guild of the Englishman
was narrow, exclusive, local, and was not fitted to bring about
results which had become habitual in Flanders. Besides, it is by
no means easy to develop a new manufacture, even when the
national conditions are present. Of course in those early times,
the efsectual discouragement of foreign imports was out of the
question, and the government wisely imposed only very moderate
customs duties.
There are two national products of England the supply of
which was inexhaustible as far as the raw material went, the one
of which was in the highest degree significant. These are iron
and salt. But the domestic produce of iron in England was
scanty and of inferior quality, the country depending for what it
wanted on'Northern Spain and Sweden. The price, too, was.
prodigiously high. During the fourteenth century iron in mass
was worth in money of the time £9 a ton. Now twelve is a very
reasonable multiplier on the whole of the fourteenth-century prices.
It needs no great acuteness to see what would be the effect on
agriculture, and for the matter of that on any industry, if at the