82 DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH IN ENGLAND 



the beginning were most closely and continuously associated 

 with the Parliamentary party have the highest poor-rates. 

 To this the only exception is Cambridgeshire. I infer there- 

 fore that during the Civil War there was a considerable migra- 

 tion into these central and eastern counties. The other 

 cause was the growth or the revival of woollen industries in 

 the eastern and home counties. This is illustrated in the 

 case of Norwich. This city was almost certainly the second 

 in the kingdom before the Great Plague. In 1375, according 

 to an assessment which I have not printed, the city is not 

 valued, but the county, which was next after Middlesex in 

 1341, is third, being displaced by Oxfordshire. In the grant 

 of 1453, Norfolk is the third city in the kingdom, York 

 being the second. In the assessment of 1503 Bristol is the 

 second city, Norwich the sixth. But at the beginning and 

 end of the great Civil War Norwich is the second city, and 

 in two of the valuations is assessed at nearly three times the 

 amount of Bristol, while in 1503 the rating of Bristol was 

 more than double that of Norwich. Now it is well known 

 that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a new and 

 successful industry was being developed in certain of the eastern 

 counties, notably in Norfolk, where the say industry had been 

 planted by Flemings, and in Colchester, where the bay or baize 

 weaving had been followed with great success by the same 

 persons. Now security and the prospect of employment were 

 stimulants to migration, and the disappointment of the latter 

 hope may have been the principal cause of the excess of the 

 poor-rate in the counties referred to, this being constantly 

 double the average. 



The migration of labourers is the plea for the famous 

 statute of parochial settlement enacted in 1662 (13 & 14 

 Car. II. cap. 12), which made it lawful, on the complaint of 

 churchwardens and overseers, for two justices to remove any 

 person who settles in any tenement under the yearly value 

 of 10 a year (certainly equivalent to an occupancy of 100 to 

 12,0 a year at the present time), within forty days after his 



