8o History of the English Landed Interest. 



and sewing shirts. The manufacturer had by this time saved 

 our farmers' womankind the trouble of weaving and spinning 

 during the evenings, and the village baker that of making 

 bread ; but what time could be thus spared was devoted to 

 the cultivation of pleasant conversation as soon as candles 

 were lit and the remnants of supper removed.^ 



The women of the cottage class continued to spin far on 

 into the present century ; and though weaving proper had 

 just ceased, there was a good deal of hemp-dressing, sack- 

 weaving, and rope-making done by the eighteenth century 

 villager. It was no unusual occurrence for outdoor pauper 

 relief to take the form of the gift of a spinning-wheel to some 

 ancient gammer. Mr. Kingston, in his Fragments of Two Cen- 

 turies^ cites the changes in the various processes by which the 

 clothing of the sheep became converted into that of man, as 

 illustrative of the evolution of industry. First, the finishing 

 methods of fulling and dyeing were transferred from cottage 

 parlour to oppidan factory ; then the hand-loom disappeared 

 from the villages, then combing, lastly wool-sorting, leaving 

 only one process behind — that of shearing." 



A change for the better had taken place in the English 

 dietary since we last had occasion to discuss this subject. 

 The old days when, in spite of the sumptuary laws, a herd of 

 36 oxen and. a flock of 300 sheep were slaughtered for the 

 Christmas festivities, given by one individual,^ or when 30,000 

 dishes of meat represented an English nobleman's ideas of 

 wedding hospitalities, had vanished for ever. The foreigner's 

 imputation that we English were the greatest flesh-eaters in 

 the world, though true even to this day, had, by the time of 

 which we are speaking, ceased to imply a taunt of gluttony. 

 We have only to compare the account of Taylor's first supper 

 abroad, at a place called Crantz, in 1617, with Kalm's de- 

 scription of the same meal in England, to see that all com- 

 parisons between the foreigner and the Englishman would in 

 this respect be highly unfavourable to the former. 



' Kalm's England, p. 327. 



^ Fragments of Two Centuries, ch. x. p. 103. A. Kingston, 1893. 



' Kichard, Earl of Cornwall. Tfie New State of England, ch. iii. p. 35. 



