A HISTORY OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE 



took to kidnapping children for the same purpose, until stopped, in 1685, by 

 that angel of mercy, the Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys ! l The West Indian 

 trade, however, continued to be enormously profitable, and sugar-refining 

 became almost the chief industry of the town. Pepys (in 1668) describes its 

 glories and those of the ship-yards. 2 



At one time, indeed, the rivalry of Gloucester had threatened to be 

 dangerous. In 1580 that city had received a royal charter, extending the 

 jurisdiction of its port from Tewkesbury down to Berkeley, whereas hitherto 

 the whole river as far as Gloucester had belonged to Bristol. ' Bystowe 

 is maynteyned only by the trade of merchandizes,' pleads a petition of 

 Bristol merchants : 



Gloucester is no place for trade or merchandize, because they have no lawfull wares 

 meete to be transported in shippes, but yf they adventure anything at sea, the same is in 

 small barkes with corn and prohibited wares, wherewith they make more profitable retournes 

 than Brystall wythe their great shippinge and lawfull wares can doe. 3 



In 16267 the burgesses of Glbucester received a grant from the crown of 

 the right to levy customs on all ships and merchandise passing through their 

 port (except in the case of towns which, like Tewkesbury, had made special 

 arrangements with them).* But the competition of the elder city was not 

 really to be feared. As far back as 1487 the mayor of Gloucester had been 

 complaining of ' the great ruin and decay of the said town, decayed within 

 a few years to the number of three hundred or more dwelling places.' 5 The 

 cloth industry continued, it is true, during the fifteenth or sixteenth century, 

 but in 1646 it was at a low ebb ; nor did the introduction of various small 

 industries, such as pin-making and silk-weaving, in the seventeenth and 

 eighteenth centuries, do much to raise the position of the city. 



Before entering on the last period of our county's industrial history, we 

 must turn back to see how agriculture and commerce had been faring in the 

 last three centuries. We have noticed already the tendency to enclose in 

 the sixteenth century, an age in which men suddenly awoke to the advantages 

 of abandoning the open-field system, either for agriculture or sheep farming. 

 Fitzherbert was eloquent on the subject of enclosures, which he discovered 

 to benefit rich and poor alike, for the landlord ' will be saved expence in 

 labour,' and the 'ryche man shall not overeate the poore man with his catell.' 8 

 The court rolls of the period teem with notices of enclosures, which some 

 manors favoured and others opposed. The queen objects to having her 

 Bisley woods raided for material for hedges ; 1 the tenants of Cheltenham 

 strive to enforce the old rules as to open-field upon each other ; 8 at Bisley 

 tenants are fined for building a ' Figgis cot ' on the common, and for keeping 

 * several ' (or enclosed) a field which ought to lie in common. 9 



But the lords went on with their own enclosures, which by 1517 

 amounted to 3,650 acres on the estates of only twenty-two landlords. 10 In 

 1548 there were risings against enclosures in Gloucestershire and the west 

 generally, 11 and complaints were raised in the clothing districts that farmers 



I W. Hunt, Bristol. ' Ibid. 



* Harl. MSS. 368, quoted by F. D. Fosbrooke, Hist, of City of Ghuc. p. 25. * Glouc. Cat. No. 31. 



* Ibid. No. 59. ' Fitzherbert, Book of Husbandry, 1534 (ed. W. Skeat, 1882), p. 77. 

 r Ct. R. portf. 175, No. 13. Ibid. No. 27. Ibid. No. 13. 



10 Inquest of Enclosures in Gloucestershire, Lansd. i, No. 58 (Plut. Ixxiii, D, fol. 182.) 



II See Evidence of Hales, Commissioner of Enclosures, in App. I, iii, to Discourse of the Common Weal of 

 Ms Realm of Engl. 1581 (ed. Eliz. Lamond). 



164 



