INTRODUCTION 



ners, &c. ; and justice seems to have been 

 meted out with a steady hand. Great order 

 was kept in the commonwealth ; a first offence 

 was reprimanded, a second punished, the third 

 entailed banishment from the precincts. 



Rowland thus got a market for all his farm 

 produce. He grew the sheep and kine which 

 both fed and employed his glovers and weavers, 

 the tanners got their bark from his forests, 

 and he seems to have personally superin- 

 tended everything. A great number of the 

 operatives were housed on the premises ; and 

 we read of their washing-places, their eating- 

 hall, their hospital indeed, of every conveni- 

 ence that human ingenuity of those days could 

 dream of. 



Two thousand " mechanicalls " had joined 

 Rowland's community by the time of his writ- 

 ing his book (1604), which was in those days 

 a very much larger number proportionately 

 to the population than it is now, especially 

 in that remote corner of England or Wales, 

 as Rowland repeatedly calls Herefordshire 

 These two thousand workmen daily assem- 

 bled to food in the big hall at sound of 

 trumpet ; but bodily food was not the only 

 thing supplied for them by their energetic 

 xvi 



