Page:VCH Suffolk 1.djvu/759

 SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY the reign of Elizabeth,"^ at first subservient to, had gradually replaced the older industry. Side by side, as a dependent industry, must be placed the production of yarn, the new draperies requiring long wool which had to be combed before it was spun, instead of short carded wool. This combing and spinning employed many poor persons, who fed the Norwich and London markets as well, producing more than could be made up in Suffolk. It was said that while 84 lb. of wool, the amount required for a cloth of the old stout texture, gave employment to but fourteen people, forty or fifty were engaged upon working up the same quantity into the flimsier materials. But the period of revival was but a brief one, for towards the close of the 17th century the fabrics brought in by the East India Company came into serious competition with the new draperies,^'' and as time went on they followed the old to the manufacturing towns of the north and west of England. In 1722 Defoe"' comments on the poverty of Sudbury, the centre of the revived industry : ' They have a great manufacture of says and per- petuanas, and multitudes of poor people are employed in working them ; but the number of the poor is almost ready to eat up the rich.' But while the weaving industry steadily declined, a very large quantity of yarn continued to be spun for weavers without the county, especially in Norwich. The earnings were extremely low, from 3^. to 4^. a day,*^° and the trade subject to frequent depression.^" The spinners could not live upon their pittances, and the deficiency had to be made up out of the rates. Arthur Young estimates their number, women and children, at about 36,000.'" Enough has been said to show that the undoubted increase of poverty in certain parts of Suffolk was due to well-defined economic causes. To- wards the middle of the century several districts within the county applied to Parliament for the ' power of incorporating themselves and of regulating the employment and maintenance of the poor by certain rules not authorized by existing poor laws.' '" Several Acts of Parliament were passed, and between 1756 and 178 1"'' the hundred of Colneis and Carlford ; Blything, Mutford, and Lothingland; Wangford; Loes and Wilford; Samford; Bosmere and Claydon; Cosford (with the parish of Polsted) ; Hartismere, Hoxne and Thredling ; and Stow were incorporated. They were permitted under the Act to borrow funds to a limited amount for the purpose of building Houses of Industry,"* and these were erected (in all but the Hartismere district, where smaller local houses in several parishes took the place of a central house) at Nacton (1757),'^^ Bul- camp (1765),' Oulton (1767),'" Shipmeadow (1766),"* Melton (1765),- Tattingstone (1766)," Barham (1766),-" Semer (1780),' Onehouse (1781)."' The erection of the workhouses led to rioting and the attempted destruction of the buildings by the classes they were intended to benefit."* In other ranks of society the movement found supporters among those who considered the spirit of the French Revolution not altogether absent from the English '" y.C.H. Suff. ii, 267. "« Ibid. 269. "' Tour in the Eastern Counties (ed. Cassell), 100. "° F.C.H. Suff. ii, 270. "' Young, Gen. View of Agric. (1794), 50. '" Ibid. (180+), 232. •" Young, App. to Gen. Fiete of Agric. (1794), 75. »'^ Ibid. 76 et seq. "* Ibid. 76. "* Ibid. »« Ibid. 77. »" Ibid. 78. "* Ibid. " Ibid. 79. ~ Ibid. 80. "' Ibid. 81. "' Ibid. 82. •» Ibid. 83. »" Ibid. 92. 679