Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/96

94 excellently skilled both in the business of making cloth and in that of merchandize, and always ready with any labour or danger to seek for gain by sea or land." It is probable that they also introduced some improvements in agriculture; and, altogether, the example of industry, activity, and superior acquirements set by this interesting colony—the last, as it has been remarked, of any consequence settled in any part of the island till the coming over of the French Protestant silk-weavers, after the revocation of the edict of Nantes in 1685—could not fail to be of high public benefit. Their language was very nearly the same with the English; and the district in which they dwelt, it seems, used to be called Little England beyond Wales; in fact, they made the whole county of Pembroke, though lying at the further extremity of Wales, an English county. Henry II. afterwards added to their numbers by permitting some of those of their countrymen who had served as mercenaries under Stephen to settle among them. It is said that the descendants of these Flemings may still be distinguished from their Welsh neighbours.

The Flemings were indebted, both for the welcome reception they met with in the first instance, and for the permanent settlement they obtained, to their martial more than to their commercial skill—to their being a people, as Giraldus expresses it, equally most ready, now at the plough—now at the sword. The Jews, who came over in great numbers soon after the Conquest, were a people of altogether another stamp. Precluded by their religion from engaging in the wars of any of the European nations among whom they had settled, they had become mere traders, and were, indeed, men of peace in a more strict, sense than any other class of persons in those days, the clergy themselves not excepted. Independently, therefore, of the odium to which their faith exposed them,