INDUSTRIES 



The impression left by this lease is that the 

 manufacturers were subject to, if they did not 

 actually suffer, an amount of supervision which 

 probably became more and more irksome, despite 

 its laudable object of upholding the prestige of 

 the hempen goods made in Bridport. 



Among the numerous uses to which Bridport 

 rope was applied was that of hanging men ; and 

 the custom was so common that when a man 

 was hanged he was said to be ' stabbed with a 

 Bridport dagger.' Leland seems to have heard 

 this saying in the Midlands, and to have under- 

 stood it literally, for he left a note in his Itinerary^ 

 'at Bridport be mace good Daggers,''* when he 

 should have written * good hempen ropes for 

 hanging rogues.' There is also a morality play 

 called ' Hycke Scorner ' (probably printed early 

 in the reign of Henry VIII), in which one of the 

 characters, ' Imagynacyon,' makes the grim re- 

 mark that the inhabitants of Newgate have ' ones 

 a yere some taw halters of Burporte.' Probably 

 in the sixteenth century the town's halters were 

 as famous as its hawsers, and the demand for the 

 first article was out of all proportion to the de- 

 mand that exists to-day ; but they could not have 

 been such a profitable item as hawsers, especially 

 in Elizabeth's reign, when the fabulous riches of 

 America inflamed men's minds, and the prohibi- 

 tions of the Spaniards stirred up their obstinacy. 



Historians of Bridport have sought in vain 

 for evidence that the town sent any ships to 

 help to fight the great Armada, but they com- 

 fort themselves by maintaining that nearly if 

 not quite all of the cordage and ropes for the 

 English fleet of that time was supplied by Brid- 

 port ; as the victory was due in great part to 

 superior seamanship, and as such skill is of no 

 avail without trustworthy rigging, the inference 

 redounding to the honour of the town is obvious. 



If the fact about the rigging of the English 

 fleet be true, it would account for the myth with 

 regard to the power and the extent of ' the 

 statute,' as the Bridport burgesses called it, which 

 sprang up in the forty odd years between the 

 time it became law and the visit of Camden. It 

 is true he collected his information in the years 

 1575-86, i.e. before the great sea victory, but 

 he may have found the town all agog with 

 excitement over some order for rigging, as there 

 must have been continuous supplies from Brid- 

 port if it were responsible for so much rigging in 

 1588. His version of the myth is all the more 

 interesting, as it is quoted by almost every writer 

 who mentions the hemp industry in the seven- 

 teenth and eighteenth centuries. He wrote : — 



In our time in respect of the soil using the best hemp 

 and the skill of the people for making ropes and cables 

 for ships, it was provided by a special statute to remain 

 in force for a certain set time, that ropes for the navy 

 of England should be twisted no where else." 



" Leland, Itin. (ed. Hearne, I 7 10), vii, 48. 

 " Camden, Brit. (ed. Holland, 1610), i, 54. 



But most probably the statute never did confer 

 this monopoly, and was never intended so to do. 

 The second clause of 21 Henry VIII, cap. 12, 

 reads as a general prohibition of rope-making 

 except at Bridport, but it is qualified by the first 

 clause, which forbids the sale of hemp grown 

 within five miles of the town except at the 

 Bridport market, and by the fifth clause, which 

 gives permission to people 'dwelling within the 

 said distance,' i.e. five miles, to make whatever 

 kind of rope they need for their own use and 

 occupation. Later writers have taken Camden's 

 description as a convenient high-water mark by 

 which they can ascertain the degeneracy of their 

 own days. 



The close connexion between Bridport and 

 the royal navy was seriously affected in 161 o, 

 when a contract was signed with William 

 Greenwell and Thomas Still, 'merchants in 

 London trading for the East country,' by which 

 they undertook to erect a rope-walk at Wool- 

 wich, and thence supply the navy, delivering 

 their goods as required at the government stores in 

 Deptford. Later a royal rope-walk was estab- 

 lished at Portsmouth, and in the second half of the 

 seventeenth century hemp yarn was imported from 

 Holland.^ The choice of Woolwich and Ports- 

 mouth for the new rope-walks points at once to 

 Bridport's heaviest handicap in the industrial 

 race. Some trade had been driven away by rules 

 and regulations, but it is safe to say that much 

 more was lost through its position. The ropes 

 required for the navy were very bulky, and the 

 cost of their carriage must have been a consider- 

 able item. It was considered cheaper and more 

 convenient to set up rope-walks near the ships, 

 and to import the hemp, than to bring the 

 ready-made ropes, either by land or sea, from 

 Bridport. 



The Dorset hemp was the best in England. 

 This is asserted by everyone, and is never dis- 

 puted. Drayton mentions the 



Bert whose bat'ning mellowed bank, 

 From all the British soil for hemp most hugely rank. 

 Doth bear away the best. 



And in his poetical journey round the coast of 

 Dorset he describes 



Bert port, which hath gained 

 That praise from every place, and worthilie 



obtained 

 Our cordage from her store, and cables should be 



made 

 Of any in that kind most fit for marine trade." 



But whether poet laureates or country clergy- 

 men, the panegyrists never discuss the relative 

 quality of English and foreign hemp ; and, 

 judging from the climatic conditions which 

 are required to bring the plant to perfection, 



'" Pepys, Diary, i, 330. 



" Drayton, Polyolbion, Song 2. 



347 



