Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/628

614 threw the capital into paroxysms of terror. "Many English sailors," says Pepys, "were heard on board the Dutch ships crying, 'We did heretofore fight for tickets—now we fight for dollars!'"

Besides the causes already enumerated for the rapid progress of England in wealth and prosperity at this period, the persecutions of protestants abroad, which drove hither their weavers and artisans, and the union with Scotland, giving internal peace and security, had a wonderful influence. De Witt, the celebrated Dutch minister, refers to these causes in a remarkable passage of his work called "The Interest of Holland," published in 1669." "When," he says, "the compulsive laws of the Netherland Halls had first driven the cloth-weaving from the cities into our villages, and, by the cruelty of the duke of Alva, the say-weaving went also after it, the English by degrees began to send their manufactures throughout Europe; they became potent at sea, and no longer to depend on the Netherlands. Also by that discovery of the inexpressibly rich cod-bank of Newfoundland, those of Bristol in particular made use of that advantage. Moreover, the long persecution of puritans in England has occasioned the planting of many English colonies in America, by which they derive a very considerable foreign trade thither; be that this mighty island, united with Ireland under one king, seated in the midst of Europe, having a clear, deep coast, with good havens and bays, in so narrow a sea that all foreign ships that sail either to the eastward or the westward are necessitated, even in fair weather, to shun the dangerous French coast, and sail along that of England, and in stormy weather to run in and preserve their lives, ships, and merchandise in the bays—so that England now, by its conjunction with Scotland, being much increased in strength, as well as by manufactures as by a great navigation, will in all respects be formidable to all Europe."

The clear-sighted Dutch diplomatist has summed up the grand points of England's advantages at that and succeeding periods, and some of these deserve our particular attention. The union with Scotland, though yet dependent only on the crown of the two countries resting on the same head, was a circumstance of infinite advantage. It gave a settlement and security to all the northern portions of the island which they had never enjoyed before. Till James VI. of Scotland became James I. of England, not only agriculture but all kinds of manufacturing and commercial enterprise were kept in check by the frequent hostile inroads of the Scotch. Even when there was peace betwixt the crowns, the fierce people inhabiting both sides of the borders were in continual bickerings with each other; and a numerous body of moss-troopers, whose only profession was plunder, harassed the rich plains of England by their predatory raids. The state of things described by Sir Walter Scott as existing in these legions only about a century ago, gives us a lively idea of what must have been the Siwagery of the borderers at the time we are describing. If he himself, as he tells us, was probably the first person who drove a gig into Liddesdale but about half a century ago. and if at that time the wilds and moorlands of the border were peopled by tribes of free-booters as wild and lawless as savages, what must have been the state of the northern counties whilst the two countries were at feud? We are told that even the judges and king's officers could not reach the towns on the borders without a strong military guard.

But as the union of the crowns became settled and consolidated, a new era commenced north of the Trent. These counties, full of coal and ironstone, abounding with streams and all the materials for manufacture, began to develop their resources, and to advance in population and activity at an unexampled rate. Birmingham and Sheffield extended their hardware trade; Leeds and its neighbouring villages, its cloth manufacturing; Manchester, its cotton-spinning, though yet little aided by machinery; and Liverpool was rapidly rising as a port by its trade with Ireland. The union of the crowns was, in fact, the beginning of that marvellous impetus which has at this day covered all the north with coal-works, iron-works, potteries, spinning and weaving factories, and towns which have grown up around them with their 230,000 people, like Birmingham; their 130,000, like Sheffield; their 170,000, like Leeds; their 310,000, like Manchester; and 375,000, like Liverpool. It was the same security amid attendant advantages which raised the immense commercial and manufacturing population of Glasgow, Paisley, Greenock, and neighbouring towns on the other side of the border—Glasgow alone now numbering its 330,000 people.

In the south and west, Norwich and Bristol were most flourishing towns. Norwich owed its growth and prosperity to the establishment of the worsted manufacture, brought thither by the Flemings as early as the reign of Henry I., in the thirteenth century, and to the influence of four thousand other Flemings, who fled from the cruelty of the duke of Alva in Elizabeth's time, bringing their manufacture of bombazines, which has now expanded itself into a great trade in bombazines, shawls, crapes, damasks, camlets, and imitations of Irish and French stuffs. Norwich had its fine old cathedral, its bishop's palace, its palace of the duke of Norfolk, adorned with the paintings of Italy—the gems of Greece and Rome, and where the duke used at this time to live with a state little less than royal. It had also a greater number of old churches than any town in England, except London: old hospitals and grammar-schools, and the finest market-place in the kingdom. Bristol, next to London, was the great trading port, and the growing commerce with America and the West Indies was fast swelling its importance. One of its most lucrative and at the same time infamous sources of commerce was the conveyance of convicts to the plantations of America and Jamaica. We have seen the eagerness of the courtiers of James II., and even the queen and ladies, for a share of this traffic, and the numbers of the unfortunate men implicated in the insurrection of Monmouth who were sent off thither and sold. Jeffreys himself condemned eight hundred and forty of them to this slavery, and calculated that they were worth ten pounds apiece to those who had to sell them to the British merchants, who probably made much more of them. That the profits were enormous is evident by the avidity with which victims were sought after, and with which innocent persons were kidnapped for the purpose. Bristol, in fact, at that time was engaged in a veritable white slave-trade, and the magistrates were deep in it—which coming to Jeffreys'