SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



therewith. They settled chiefly in Spitalfields and its neighbourhood. 1 * 3 

 Strype writes : 



The north-west parts of this parish became a great harbour for poor protestant 

 strangers, who have been forced to become exiles from their own country for the 

 avoiding of cruel persecution. Here they found Quiet and Security and settled them- 

 selves in their several trades and occupations, weavers especially. Whereby God's 

 Blessing surely is not only upon the Parish, but also a great advantage hath accrued to 

 the whole Nation by the rich Manufactures of weaving silks and stuffs and camlets : 

 which art they brought along with them. And this benefit to the neighbourhood, that 

 these strangers may serve for patterns of Thrift, Honesty, Industry, and Sobriety as well. 



And indeed it is a fact that foreign names are of the rarest occurrence in 

 the indictments of the county sessions. But the introduction of the silk- 

 weaving industry cannot have been so entirely their work as Strype 

 states. Even camlets were introduced by earlier immigrants, if we may 

 trust an entry in Evelyn's Diary on 30 May, 1652 : ' Inspected the man- 

 ner of chambletting silks and grograms at one Mr. La Doree's in Moore- 

 fields.' And a decade before the Revocation, in 1675, the Shoreditch 

 and Spitalfields silk weavers indulged in an anticipation on a small scale 

 of the future frame-breaking riots. 1 * 4 For three days, the 9, 10, and 1 1 

 August, bands of from 30 to 200 persons went about Stepney, Shoreditch, 

 Whitechapel, Hoxton, and Clerkenwell breaking into houses, carrying 

 out the obnoxious ' wooden machines called engine weaving looms,' 

 which they smashed and burnt in the streets. Now it is curious to note 

 that none of the indicted rioters, and none of the owners whose 

 machines they destroyed, bear foreign names. The riots were easily 

 suppressed, and the ringleaders sentenced to heavy fines and stations in 

 the pillories in different parts of London. 



Middlesex, as described in the reports on the county drawn up for 

 the Board of Agriculture at the end of the eighteenth century, differs a 

 good deal from the corn-producing county described by Norden two 

 centuries before. The subordination of the whole county to the rapidly 

 expanding capital has increased. That city which already in Norden's 

 day ' draweth unto it as an adamant all other partes of the land,' still 

 ' attracts people so strongly from every part of the kingdom that no large 

 towns can exist in its neighbourhood.' U5 ' The whole county may be 

 very properly considered as a sort of demesne to the metropolis, being 

 covered with its villas, intersected with innumerable roads leading to it, 

 and laid out in gardens, pastures and inclosures of all sorts for its con- 

 venience and support.' 



These reports commend the fertility of the soil as emphatically, 

 though not so picturesquely, as Norden. The best wheat was still grown 

 at Heston and towards the western boundaries of the shire, but most of 

 the highly cultivated ground beyond Hounslow was given up to growing 

 hay for the London market, and between this and London, from Kensington 

 to Hounslow, ' is one great garden for the supply of London.' On the 

 north-eastern side, about Islington and Hackney, a great deal of ground 



'" Huguenot Soc. Publ. vol. xi. "* Jeaffreson, MM. Sest. R. iv, 60-65. 



'** Rep. lo the Bd. of Agric. 1793-5 ; also Middleton, Agric. in Midd. published by the Bd. of Agric. 



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