578 CALICO-PRINTING 



about tho closo of tho seventeenth century. It is believed that the first attempts at 

 imitating the printed calicoes of India were made in Holland, the Dutch East India 

 Company having introduced the Indian chintzes there before their introduction into this 

 country. It is uncertain where or -when these first attempts were made ; but it 

 appears the art soon spread to Germany, for about the close of the seventeenth century 

 Augsburg had obtained a notoriety for printed linens and cottons. The art was most 

 probably introduced into England about 1676, by Flemish emigrants. Mr. James 

 Thompson, of Clitheroe, one of the most eminent English calico-printers, fixed tho 

 date at 1690, and supposed that a Frenchman, a refugee, at the time of the revocation 

 of the edict of Nantes, was the first to print calicoes in this country, and that his 

 works were at Richmond on the Thames ; but there is evidence to show that prior to 

 this date, calicoes were printed in this country, for Sir Joshua Child, a distinguished 

 director of the East India Company, in a pamphlet published in 1677. mentions that 

 calicoes were then brought over from India to be printed in this country, in imitation 

 of the Indian printed chintzes. It appears, from a petition addressed to the House of 

 Commons by the East India Company in 1627, that Indian calicoes were at that timo 

 imported, and in 1631, in a catalogue of legal imports from India, painted calicoes 

 are mentioned as to be allowed. In 1634, apparently, attempts were made to ornament 

 fabrics with coloured patterns by mechanical means, for in that year Charles II. 

 granted an exclusive patent for fourteen years, for the art or mystery of affixing 

 wool, silk, and other materials of divers colours upon linen, silk, or cotton cloth, 

 leather, and other substances, by means of oil, size, or other cements, to make thorn 

 useful for hangings, &c., the patentee paying 101. yearly to the Exchequer. Calico- 

 printing was commenced in 1689, at Neufchatel, by Jaques Deluze, a native of Sain- 

 tonge, and this establishment rapidly became prosperous, and in time the parent of 

 numerous offshoots in Germany, Portugal, and France. 



Some time after the Richmond establishment, a considerable printing work was 

 established at Bromley Hall, in Essex, and several others sprung up successively in 

 Surrey, to supply the London shops with chintzes, their import from India having been 

 prohibited in 1700 by Parliament. The art in its infancy had to struggle with many 

 difficulties ; an excise tax on all printed or dyed calicoes of 3d. per square yard was 

 enacted in 1702, and which was increased to 6d. per square yard in 1714, only half 

 these duties being laid on printed linens. 



The silk and woollen weavers had all along manifested the greatest hostility to tho 

 use of printed calicoes, whether brought from the East or made at home. In tho 

 year 1680 they mobbed the India House in revenge for some large importations then 

 made of the chintzes of Malabar. They next induced the Government, by incessant 

 clamours, to exclude altogether the beautiful robes of Calicut from the British market. 

 But the printed goods imported by the English and Dutch East India Companies 

 found their way into this country, in spite of the excessive penalties annexed to 

 smuggling, and raised a new alarm among the manufacturing population of Spital- 

 fields. Tho sapient legislators of that day, intimidated as would appear, by the East 

 London mobs, enacted in 1720 an absurd sumptuary law, prohibiting the wearing of 

 all printed calicoes voJiatsoever, either of foreign or domestic origin. This disgraceful 

 enactment, worthy of the meridian of Cairo or Algiers, proved not only a death-blow 

 to rising industry in this ingenious department of the arts, but prevented the British 

 ladies from attiring themselves in the becoming drapery of Hindostan. 



Tho effect of this law,' says Mr. Edmund Potter, in his lecture on Calico- 

 Pnnting, before the Society of Arts, as reporter on printed fabrics in the Exhibition 

 of 1851, 'wus to put an end to the printing of calicoes in England, and to confine 

 the printers to the printing of linens. In 1736, so much of this Act was repealed 

 as forbade the use or wear of printed goods of a mixed kind, containing cotton ; and 

 these fabrics were allowed to be printed, weighted with a duty of 6d. per square 

 yard. In 17,50, the entire production of Great Britain was estimated at 50,000 pieces 

 por annum. In 1764, printers established themselves in Lancashire, tempted, doubt- 

 less, by the cheapness of fuel, and by this being the locality in which the cloth was 

 manufactured. In 1774, the printer was released from his fetters with regard to tho 

 kind of cloth he must use, by the repeal of this law, so as to leave him the choice pf 

 his material ; but he was still saddled with a duty of 3d. per square yard, to which a 

 halfpenny was added in 1806. On the accession of Lord Grey's government to office 

 it was one of their first acts to repeal this duty. Thus, after a period of about 140 

 years from its first introduction, the print trade was allowed to enter into competition 

 with other kindred fabrics on a fair footing.' 



France pursued for some time a similar false policy with regard to calico-printing, 

 but she emerged sooner from the mists of manufacturing monopoly than England. 

 Her avowed motive was to cherish the manufacture of flax, a native product, instead 

 of that of cotton, A raw material, for which prejudice urged that money had to bo 



