SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



For still, as for so many centuries past, it was the Cotswold sheep which 

 formed the main wealth of the hill district, ' so eminent for the best of sheep 

 and the finest wool in the kingdom,' as Defoe says. Larger flocks could be 

 kept, since the introduction of turnips in 1 740 enabled the farmers to keep 

 their sheep all winter, instead of sending them to the vale for winter grazing, 

 as used to be the custom. Early in the eighteenth century there were said 

 to be 400,000 sheep in the county, 1 but even so, the local supply could not 

 equal the demands for the clothiers. Stroud alone needed two or three 

 million fleeces in the year, and wool was bought up in all directions. ' The 

 quantities sold here are incredible,' says Defoe.* From Berks, Bucks, 

 Northants, and Oxon, waggons poured into Cirencester, while more enter- 

 prising dealers went to Kent, Ireland, and, as we have seen (ante, p. 159) to 

 Spain. The merino sheep now far surpassed those of England in fineness 

 of wool, 8 thanks to an early infusion of the Cotswold breed, the fleece of 

 which was growing coarser in England, where it was enlarged by crossing 

 with the Leicestershire. When Rudder wrote (1779) the price of Cotswold 

 wool was low as compared even with some other English breeds, and it was 

 used only for worsteds and coarse cloths. 



But among towns Bristol towered above its contemporaries. Defoe in 

 1753 describes it as 'the greatest, the richest and the best Port of Trade 

 in Great Britain, London alone excepted.' * The Craft Guilds had long been 

 eclipsed by the Fellowship of Merchants, founded by William Canynges the 

 younger in 1474,' and under their guidance the city had flung itself eagerly 

 into foreign trade.' Bristol mariners had been among the first to catch the 

 exploring spirit of the age. ' For the last seven years,' reported the Spanish 

 ambassador in 1498, 'the people of Bristol have sent out every year two, three, 

 or four lightships in search of the Island of Brazil.' In 1497 one ^ * ts mer ~ 

 chants, the Portuguese John Cabot, started on the expedition which discovered 

 Labrador, and a few years later three Bristol men, Warde, Ashehurst, and 

 Thomas, discovered 'New-found-land,' for which feat they received from the 

 royal purse the sumptuous reward of 20 ! 7 With the discovery of the West 

 began a new era in the city's prosperity. The clothing industry, which 

 lingered in the city through the seventeenth century * and was so flourishing 

 in the country, provided its merchants with abundant material for export ; 

 and in the early sixteenth century one of its cloth merchants, Robert Thorne,* 

 also developed the soap manufacture for which Bristol had been notorious 

 since I242. 10 In 1556 a society of merchant adventurers to Russia was 

 founded under the headship of Cabot, a descendant of the discoverer. 11 Irt 

 1 578 Frobisher returned to Bristol. Trade sprang up with the Guinea coast 

 also, and in the seventeenth century Bristol merchants played a large share in 

 supplying slaves to America and the West Indies, whence they brought back 

 sugar and tobacco. It is curious to see how the old taint of slave-trading 

 clung to the town ; not content with the supply of black slaves and of 

 English criminals condemned to transportation, the ship-masters of Bristol 



1 County Curioiitui, tr A New Deicriftion of Clout. 1757; Gough, op. cit. 25. 



Defoe, ii, 268. ' Ibid. 



4 Ibid. 292. * H. R. Fox Bourne, Engl. Merchant, ch. iv. 



* Litilt ReJ Book, ii, 206-10. ' H. R, Fox Bourne, op. cit. 



1 A petition of I 590 ipeab of ' malcyng and ventinge of collored clothet for the tea ' at Bristol. 

 1 H. R. Fox Bourne, op. cit. " Seyer, op. cit. ii, 14. " Ibid. 238. 



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