Page:Memoirs of a Huguenot Family.djvu/153

 Rh in the town. My competitors looked on patiently, expecting that it could not last much longer, and their day would come, when I had to put the key under the door. Instead of that, I became only more prosperous. I appeared to succeed in every thing I undertook.

I had just begun to breathe freely, after all my trials, and to feel myself comfortable, when a prosecution was commenced, and I was summoned to appear before the Mayor and Court of Aldermen.

The Mayor was a wool-comber, who came to the town originally possessed of one single groat. He worked a long time as a boy comber; he then married one of his master's servants, scraped together a little money, and began business on his own account. At the age of thirty-six or thirty-seven years he learnt to read, and to write a little. In course of time he accumulated as much as £7000 or £8000, and thereby obtained the honors of the town, for this was the third time he had filled the office of Mayor.

The Aldermen were generally persons of the same class, men who had risen in the world, but who had received very little education. Some were woollen manufacturers, others were shopkeepers, and they all seemed to think that I had interfered with them, so they could scarcely be impartial judges in the case. I certainly had entered into competition with most of them, for I employed men to work for me in my little manufactory, and I sold in my shop most of the articles which they dealt in.

There was but one man in all this body, who had received a good education—the Recorder. He had consequently great influence over the others, and could govern the cohort very much as he pleased. I had every reason to believe that he