On the whole,though the evidence on some points is somewhat contradictory,the progress of agriculture between 1700and 1760may be said to have been slow.Writing in 1770Arthur Young ascribes to the last ten years 'more experiments,more discoveries,and more general good sense displayed in the walk of agriculture than in an hundred preceding ones.'Though drill-husbandry was practised by Jethro Tull,'a gentleman of Berkshire,'as early as 1701,and his book was published in 1731,'he seems to have had few followers in England for more than thirty years,'and Young in 1770speaks of 'the new husbandry'as having sunk with Tull,and 'not again put in motion till within a few years.'On the other hand,we have as early as 1687Petty's notice of 'the draining of fens,watering of dry grounds,and improving of forests and commons.'Macpherson in the year 1729speaks of the great sums lately expended in the enclosing and improving of lands;and Laurence in 1727asserts that 'it is an undoubted truth that the Art of Husbandry is of late years greatly improved,and accordingly many estates have already admitted their utmost improvement,but,'he adds,'much the greater number still remains of such as are so far from being brought to that perfection that they have felt few or none of the effects of modern arts and experiments.'
Still,in spite of the ignorance and stupidity of the farmers and their use of wretched implements,the average produce of wheat was large.In 1770it was twenty-five bushels to the acre,when in France it was only eighteen.At the beginning of the century some of our colonies imported wheat from the mother country.The average export of grain from 1697to 1765was nearly 500,000quarters,while the imports came to a very small figure.
The exports were sent to Russia,Holland,and America.
Manufactures and Trade Among the manufactures of the time the woollen business was by far the most important.'All our measures,'wrote Bishop Berkeley in 1737,'should tend towards the immediate encouragement of our woollen manufactures,which must be looked upon as the basis of our wealth.'In 1701our woollen exports were worth *2,000,000,or 'above a fourth part of the whole export trade.'In 1770they were worth *4,000,000,or between a third and a fourth of the whole.The territorial distribution of the manufacture was much the same as now.This industry had probably existed in England from an early date.It is mentioned in a law of 1224.In 1331John Kennedy brought the art of weaving woollen cloth from Flanders into England,and received the protection of the king,who at the same time invited over fullers and dyers.There is extant a petition of the worsted weavers and merchants of Norwich to Edward III in 1348.The coarse cloths of Kendal and the fine cloths of Somerset,Dorset,Bristol,and Gloucester are mentioned in the statutes of the same century.In 1391we hear of Guildford cloths,and in 1467of the woollen manufacture in Devonshire-at-Lifton,Tavistock,and Rowburgh.In 1402the manufacture was settled to a great extent in and near London,but it gradually shifted,owing to the high price of labour and provisions,to Surrey,Kent,Essex,Berkshire,and Oxfordshire,and afterwards still further,into the counties of Dorset,Wilts,Somerset,Gloucester,and Worcester,and even as far as Yorkshire.
There were three chief districts in which the woollen trade was carried on about 1760.One of these owed its manufacture to the wars in the Netherlands.In consequence of Alva's persecutions (1567-8)many Flemings settled in Norwich (which had been desolate since Ket's rebellion in 1549),Colchester.
Sandwich,Canterbury,Maidstone,and Southampton,The two former towns seem to have benefited most from the skill of these settlers so far as the woollen manufacture was concerned.It was at this time,according to Macpherson,that Norwich 'learned the making of those fine and slight stuffs which have ever since gone by its name,'such as crapes,bombayines,and camblets;while the baiye-makers settled at Colchester and its neighbourhood.The stuffs thus introduced into England were known as the 'new drapery',and included baiye,serges,and other slight woollen goods as distinguished from the 'old drapery,'a term applied to broad cloth,kersies,etc.
The chief seats of the West of England manufacture were Bradford in Wilts,the centre of the manufacture of super-fine cloth;Devizes,famous for its serges;Warminster and Frome,with their fine cloth;Trowbridge;Stroud,the centre of the dyed-cloth manufactures;and Taunton,which in Defoe's time possessed 1100looms.The district reached from Cirencester in the north to Sherborne in the south,and from Witney in the east to Bristol in the west,being about fifty miles in length where longest,and twenty in breadth where narrowest -'a rich enclosed country,'as Defoe says,'full of rivers and towns,and infinitely populous,insomuch that some of the market towns are equal to cities in bigness,and superior to many of them in numbers of people.'It was a 'prodigy of a trade,'and the 'fine Spanish medley cloths'which this district produced were worn by 'all the persons of fashion in England.'It was no doubt the presence of streams and the Cotswold wool which formed the attractions of the district.A branch of the industry extended into Devon,where the merchants of Exeter bought in a rough state the serges made in the country round,to dye and finish them for home consumption or export.
