CHAPTER XXII. 



i 



ON THE PRICE OF TEXTILE FABRICS AND CLOTHING. 



THE information supplied by the accounts which have passed 

 through my hands on these subjects has been arranged under 

 two tables. One of these gives quotations of the price of the 

 coarser kinds of canvas, that is of hempen fabrics. These were 

 chiefly employed for the sails of windmills, for sacks, for the 

 flaps of winnowing-fans, for dairy-cloths, for woolpacks, and 

 for harness-linings. The other gives such entries as are plainly 

 relative to clothing and to domestic purposes, as table-linen 

 and the like. With these have been collected such notices of 

 the price of fur as the accounts supply, and a few entries of 

 other articles of dress, as boots, shoes, gaiters or gaskins, and the 

 like. Furthermore, the table of Sundry Articles contains divers 

 entries of hair-cloth, as used in the manufacture of malt, which, 

 though highly significant, are, as may be anticipated, too few 

 for the purpose of a separate tabular statement. 



It is certain that the manufacture of the coarser kinds of 

 hempen cloth was carried on in many parts of England, and 

 that it was even found in most districts. The practice of 

 spinning yarn and weaving coarse cloth from the produce was 

 far from infrequent a century ago in parts of England which 

 now rely entirely on the great centres of textile industry for 

 produce. I have myself seen yarn spun in Hampshire villages, 

 though it may be that the practice is now wholly abandoned. 

 In point of fact, such a kind of industry would have been, as 

 we know it was, naturally adopted by the farmers and rustics 

 of bygone times, when in lack of any artificial light they 



