1689-1714.] VARIETIES OF EMPLOYMENT IN THE WEST. 15 in one of the industries of Somersetshire-the cheese-making of Cheddar— for which Fuller has the characteristic name of " Join-dairies." In this village under the ridge of the Mendip, the whole population were cow-keepers. They all united in manuring the common upon which their cows fed. Every cow-keeper brought his milk daily to a common-room, where the quantity was measured and recorded. The making of a great cheese went duly forward; and when the milk of a poor man who kept but one cow was sufficient for one cheese, he received his cheese. The rich owner of many cows had his return earlier, but the poor man was sure of his just share.* In the rural economy of the West there was nothing peculiar but the apple-growth. It was especially the "Cider-land." The Christmas festivities were not complete, unless the old sacrifices to Pomona were kept up in sprinkling cider upon the apple-trees. The superstition is gone; but the apple-orchards of the West have increased in fruitfulness as they have increased in number. The payment by the farmer of a portion of his labourers' wages in cider is perhaps also a relic of an ancient system, which appears in our day to have become an evil.§ Other distinguishing characteristics of this district have passed away. "The Western English "-the dialect of which the genuine characteristics are to be found in Robert of Gloucester's Chronicle ||-has left no very marked traces. The Somersetshire school-boy would no longer translate, as Defoe heard, the words of the Canticles, "I have put off my coat; how shall I put it on?" into "Chow a doff'd my coot; how shall I donn 't?" The old tourist found the "jouring" dialect prevail when he had come "that length from London." Rapid and easy communication have nearly swept away all such peculiarities, and have made the Southern English absorb the Western, the Mercian, the Anglian, and the Northumbrian. + Defoe's "Tour" vol. ii. p. 30. +J. Philips's "Cider," book ii. Hesperides." § "Journal of the Bath and West of England Society," vol. vi. p. 136. "Quarterly Review," vol. lv. p. 386. "Tour," vol. i. p. 319. The West-Midland and North-Midland Counties-Birmingham-Hardware-The PotteriesGlass-Nottingham-Stockings-Lace-Derby-Silk-Lead Mines-Lincolnshire-SaltSoda-Soap-Lancashire before the Cotton era-Manchester-Liverpool-Linen TradeYorkshire-The Clothing Villages-Leeds-Sheffield-Hull - The Greenland TradeNewcastle-Cumberland and Westmorland-Scotland-Agricultural Counties-Norwich -South-Eastern Coasts-Cinque Forts-Brighton-Dover-Portsmouth-Southampton. THE progress of Manufactures in districts favourable to their pursuit is decidedly marked by the rapid increase of population. The extension and improvement of Cultivation are not ordinarily followed by any such proportionate increase of the numbers of the people. Thus, of the West Midland Counties, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Worcestershire, did not add more than one fourth to their population throughout the eighteenth century. Warwick 1689-1714.] BIRMINGHAM-HARDWARE. 17 shire and Staffordshire, which before the end of that period had become great seats of the iron and hardware trade, and of the trade in earthenware, had doubled their population. In the same manner, though not in the same degree, of the North Midland Counties, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, which had grown up into large hosiery districts, added half to their numbers during that century. Of Lincolnshire, in the same period, the population was nearly stationary. Bishop Berkeley, in 1737, by way of example to the Irish of the rapid turning of money, asks "Whether the small town of Birmingham alone doth not, upon an average, circulate every week, one way or other, to the value of fifty-thousand pounds ? "* The iron-ware of Birmingham was in repute long before the beginning of the eighteenth century. In the time of Henry VIII. Leland wrote that a great part of the town is maintained by smiths, who have their iron and sea-coal out of Staffordshire." The people of Birmingham were then makers of knives, of bridle-bits, of nails. In the reign of Charles II. they still manufactured scarcely anything more than iron tools and husbandry implements. Their forges were open to the public streets, by the side of the rough shop where the spade and the bag of nails were exposed for sale. Under the encouragement given by William III., Birmingham began in his reign to make fire-arms. But how insufficient at that period was the home production of iron articles we may judge from the table of duties on imports,† in which we have iron pots, backs for chimneys, fryingpans, anvils. The vast surface of the great coal and iron field around Birmingham was then scarcely penetrated. The blaze of the furnaces that now lights up the country for miles, was then a very feeble illumination from the few works where iron was smelted by wood. The anvils of Wolverhampton, Dudley, Walsall, Bilston, Wednesbury, were then employed in the humblest work of iron manufacture. Birmingham before the middle of the eighteenth century, had attempted no manufactures in brass; and the greater part of that wonderful variety of industry which has given Berkeley's "small town" a population of a quarter of a million of souls was quite unattempted. The great prosperity of Birmingham belongs even to a much later period than that in which Burke called it "the toy-shop of Europe." It was always employed at work more important than toy-making. It supplied England and its Settlements with many articles of convenience and utility, before it became famous through the world for those manifold products of ingenuity and taste which no nation can rival. Every house that was newly built in England during the eighteenth century gave a stimulus to the activity of Birmingham to provide its locks and bolts. Every acre of ground that was cleared for building in the American Plantations made a similar demand upon the labour of the iron-working district. The Sheffield axe hewed down the woods. The Birmingham spade trenched the ground, and the thorns crackled under the Birmingham cauldron. Slowly but certainly did the exports increase of those articles which we imported at the beginning of this eighteenth century, until, in 1856, the exports of hardware alone amounted to three millions seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling. * "The Querist"-Works, vol. ii. p. 273, ed. 1843. +2 Gul. & Mar. Sess. 2, c. 4. VOL. V. 18 THE POTTERIES-GLASS. [1689-1714. In that district of North Staffordshire, now known as The Potteries-a district of many towns, extending, with few intervals, for eight miles-there was a manufacture of common cooking ware at one of these towns, Burslem, at the beginning of the eighteenth century. It had been discovered that the Brown-ware could be glazed with salt, instead of with pulverised lead-ore; and thus Burslem, in 1700, had twenty-two glazing ovens. This district abounded in clays fit for earthenware; but the art of producing the finer sorts was wholly neglected. These clays were prepared and dried in the sun; and from these "sun-kiln potteries" was turned out a coarse porous ware, which was called "butter-ware "-from its property of keeping butter cool. Burslem was marked in maps as the "Butter Pottery." About the time of the Revolution, superior clays were introduced; and an improved ware was manufactured in small quantities. Nevertheless, the coarse white ware of Holland, known as Delft, was a luxury for the rich. The wooden trencher was the plate of the cottager and the small tradesman. Any approach to a home manufacture of porcelain was far distant. The East India Company imported ornamented ware known as China, for which the introduction of Tea created a demand. The middle of the eighteenth century was passed, before Josiah Wedgewood brought his science and taste to the manufacture of earthenware; and finally produced specimens as admirable for their beauty of design as for their general utility. It is impossible to overrate the blessing to the great body of the people of cheap and good crockery. This is indeed a higher national advantage, even, than the amount of industry, and of high artistical skill, called into activity by our present manufacture of earthenware; which employs thirty-six thousand persons, and of which the exports amount to nearly a million and a half sterling. The manufacture of Glass was one of those industries to which William III. was solicited to give encouragement. The government, in the unwise spirit that has not altogether died out with reference to other manufactures, had thought fit to subject glass to an excise. The duties were partially repealed, and they were wholly removed before the end of the seventeenth century. By a Statute of 1698, they are declared to be very vexatious and troublesome, and of small advantage to the Crown; would lessen the duties on Coals much more than the duty on Glass would yield; and would endanger the loss of the manufacture to the kingdom." * In 1746 duties on glass were re-imposed; and for another century the profitable employment of capital and labour in this admirable manufacture was repressed. A wise statesman abolished the duties, and we look upon the results with wonder and admiration. The manufacture, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and during its first half, was principally confined to green glass and the commonest window-glass. Defoe says, "there were, when I was there, no less than fifteen glass houses in Bristol, which is more than are in the city of London." The glass-houses of London had nothing of the character of factories about them. They were scattered in obscure districts amidst a wretched population. Colonel Jack, the hero of one of those fictions of Defoe which have all the truth of real life, says, "As for lodging, we lay in the summer-time about the watchhouses, and on bulk-heads and shop-doors, * 10 Gul. III. c. 24. "Tour," vol. ii. p. 251. 1689-1714.] NOTTINGHAM-STOCKINGS--LACE. 19 where we were known; and in winter we got into the ash-holes and nealingarches, in the glass-house called Dallow's Glass-house, in Rosemary Lane, or at another glass-house, in Ratcliff-Highway." The Leicestershire had the reputation of producing the largest sheep and horses in England. The graziers, in some places, were so rich that they had become gentlemen. But Leicestershire was also a manufacturing county. long wool of the Leicester sheep gave rise to the worsted stocking-trade. In the town of Leicester, and in other neighbouring towns, the weaving of stockings by frames had become the general employment. "One would scarce think it possible," says the tourist of the early part of the eighteenth century, "that so small an article of trade could employ such multitudes of people as it does." The wonder, no doubt, proceeded from the fact that the great body of the people did not wear stockings; and hence stockingweaving was so small an article of trade." At Nottingham and Derby Defoe saw the same industry affording general employment for labour in combination with machinery. The stocking-loom of William Lea was invented in 1589. In 1670 there were only six hundred and sixty looms in the kingdom, and these were chiefly employed upon silk stockings. At the close of the reign of queen Anne there were nine thousand looms. In the early part of the reign of queen Victoria, the stocking-looms of Leicestershire, Derbyshire, and Nottinghamshire were computed at forty-three thousand. In the northern counties, stockings long continued to be made by hand. At Richmond there was a market for woollen and yarn stockings, which they make very coarse and ordinary, and sell accordingly. Here you see great and small a-knitting." It was the same in Westmorland. Machinery more effective than the stocking-frame is now extensively employed in the production of hosiery. Nottingham is at present the great seat of the Lace-trade-of the Lace produced by that wonder of mechanical ingenuity, the Bobbin-net-frame, invented in 1809. But at the beginning of the eighteenth century the Western and Southern counties were the great seats of the bone-lace manufacture-of that lace which "the free maids who weave their thread with bones" had been fabricating in the days of Elizabeth and James I. In the reign of William III. the importation of foreign bone-lace was prohibited. The Flemings, who had been accustomed to send us their rich point-lace, refused in consequence to take our woollen cloth; and then the prohibition was removed, "by being the occasion that our woollen manufactures are prohibited to be imported into Flanders." Bone-lace making was not exclusively a feminine industry. There is a charming passage in Berkeley's "Word to the Wise," in which he exhibits the domestic industry of England, as a reproof to the Irish labourers, "who close the day with a game on greasy cards, or lying stretched before the fire." "In England, when the labour of the field is over, it is usual for men to betake themselves to some other labour of a different kind. In the northern parts of that industrious land, the inhabitants meet, a jolly crew, at one another's houses, where they merrily and frugally pass the long and dark winter evenings; several families, by the same light and the same fire, working at their different manufactures of wool, Defoe, "Tour," vol. ii. p. 332. + Ibid. Ibid., vol. iii. p. 115. |