THE EARLY COMMERCE OF PLYMOUTH. 327 
are felt-making (William Williams carried on this business in 1699) ; 
a sugar mill and refinery, in which the canes were ground, and 
which was in operation early in the last century ; a salt refinery, so 
old that it was amongst the privileged in the reign of Queen Anne, 
when the erection of new refineries was prohibited except in places 
containing salt pits or springs ; a paper mill, established at Millbay 
by Thomas Netherton in 1710; and a dye work, belonging to 
Abraham Joy, about the same period, I am also inclined to think 
there were potteries, but I can give no proof of their existence 
before Cookworthy set up the china manufacture. 
And now for the internal trade proper. If we were to judge 
simply from the number of merchants whose names we find re- 
corded during the latter half of the sixteenth century, this must 
have been very large indeed. We have nothing like such a show 
of merchants in Plymouth now, even in the modern acceptation 
of that much-abused term. The brewers were nothing to them. 
There are just fifty merchants whose names I have been able to 
recover from incidental mention in the town accounts; and to 
keep up anything like the same proportion to population, Plymouth 
ought to have at least five hundred now. These merchants, I 
fancy, were rather in the nature of general dealers and importers, 
shipowners, and the like. Probably the term included all engaged 
in trade who were not shopkeepers. The early merchants of 
Plymouth were fishermen ; that is, they dealt largely in pilchards, 
In later times they found a mine of wealth in the Newfoundland 
fishery. Early in the last century they drove a considerable 
colonial trade. As our colonial possessions in the West Indies 
and in North America increased, so grew the trade of Plymouth ; 
and in the years immediately preceding the outbreak of the French 
war in 1755, the Parade might be seen “full of hogsheads of 
sugar, rum, rice, tobacco, and every colonial produce.” The custom 
house at that time was the old building on the south of the Parade, 
with the date 1632. This prosperity was put an end to by the 
wars which followed. 
In the seventeenth century Plymouth had its first Exchange— 
erected by John Lanyon in 1673, on the New Quay, at his own 
expense. It was, however, pulled down in 1689-90, to be rebuilt 
at some future time. The careful Corporation, to preserve the lead 
thereof from embezzlement, sold it for £30 12s. 6d., and pocketed 
the money. Twenty years later the site was leased, and thus we 
YZ 
