A HISTORY OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE 



shewing their former Flourishing, and their Present Ruinous Condition, 

 and that they always flourished when France could not get our Wool, 

 but declined in Proportion to the quantities of Wool exported to them." 

 The same writer also speaks of the Irish export of wool as affecting English 

 trade, while Defoe about the same time mentions the influence of French 

 competition. Probably the masters were cutting down wages as low as they 

 could ; but a more potent cause of the weavers' special distress was the relax- 

 ation of the apprenticeship laws. Apprentices could now be taken very young, 

 and the consequence was an undue increase in the number of weavers, as 

 compared with workmen in other branches of the manufacture. Prices, too, 

 were high at this time. 1 The weavers certainly conceived themselves to have 

 just cause for complaint, for they refused to accept the Justices' decision 

 against them, and raised a riot at Stroud, where several clothiers barely escaped 

 with their lives. On 15 October, 1756, however, an agreement was arrived 

 at, and from this time till 1802, though there may have been discontent, it 

 took no open form. There were, we are told, no combinations of weavers 

 or masters ; no weavers needed parish relief ; and some of their number 

 made fortunes. 8 Possibly the masters did not fare so well as the men, 

 for the complaints of decaying trade, first mentioned by Defoe, 8 still con- 

 tinued. Yet another writer in 1757 says that some clothiers were making a 

 thousand cloths a year, and that the trade of Stroud was worth 50,000 a 

 year.* Rudder, writing in 1779, laments the decay of the trade, yet gives 

 a most attractive description of Chalford-Bottom, with its * eight fulling- 

 mills ' and ' its great number of well-built houses, intermixed with rows 

 of tenters, along the side of the hill, on which the Cloth is stretched.' ' 

 And though Defoe talks of declining trade, yet all the towns he describes as 

 flourishing were connected with clothing Cirencester, Tetbury, Marshfield, 

 Minchinhampton, Stroud, Fairford, and Tewkesbury. Stroud is described by 

 Defoe as mainly notorious for its dyeing * of the beautifullest scarlets and 

 other grand colours that are anywhere in England, perhaps in any part of the 

 world.' ' ' Cirencester is still a very good town, populous and rich, full of 

 clothiers, and doing a great trade in wool.' 7 By this he means wool-stapling ; 

 that is buying up the wool, combing it, and getting it spun in the cottages, for 

 in weaving Cirencester could not hope to vie with the superior water power 

 of the Stroud valley. 'There are,' says a writer of 1800, 'numerous vestiges 

 of the combers' wool-lofts still to be seen in some of their old houses, dis- 

 tinguished by doors in the garret walls, for the conveniency of taking in 

 wool-packs' ; 8 and one firm of weavers was actually using the same stock-mill 

 that Leland mentions as built by John Blake, the last abbot. The French 

 war, he adds, had put an end to the wool-combing, but corn trade was 

 flourishing, and prosperity generally augmented by a canal joining the Severn 

 and Thames by means of the Churn. 



Stow-on-the-Wold was another town still famous in Defoe's time, its 

 ancient fairs being still the centre of commerce to all the Cotswold district. 

 The main articles exchanged there were hops, cheese, and above all sheep, 

 ' of which,' it is said, ' that above 20,000 are generally sold at one fair.' ' 



1 State of the Case, op. cit. ' Brief Hist, of Weavers, &c. 



* lour through Great Britain (jth ed. 1753), ii, 37. 4 County Curiosities, 1757 ; Gough, Glouc. ^5. 

 * S. Rudder, Hist, of Gloucestershire, 289. Defoe, op. cit. ii, 316. ' Ibid. 268. 



* Hist, of Ciren. and. Tewkesburj (1800), 175. Defoe, op. cit. ii, 261. 



162 



