But, I Say, They Were Employed For Spinning The Yarn
Used For Such Goods As Were All Made In That City.
This account is
curious enough, and very exact, but it is too long for the compass
of this work.
This shows the wonderful extent of the Norwich manufacture, or
stuff-weaving trade, by which so many thousands of families are
maintained. Their trade, indeed, felt a very sensible decay, and
the cries of the poor began to be very loud, when the wearing of
painted calicoes was grown to such a height in England, as was seen
about two or three years ago; but an Act of Parliament having been
obtained, though not without great struggle, in the years 1720 and
1721, for prohibiting the use and wearing of calicoes, the stuff
trade revived incredibly; and as I passed this part of the country
in the year 1723, the manufacturers assured me that there was not,
in all the eastern and middle part of Norfolk, any hand unemployed,
if they would work; and that the very children, after four or five
years of age, could every one earn their own bread. But I return
to speak of the villages and towns in the rest of the county; I
shall come to the city of Norwich by itself.
This throng of villages continues through all the east part of the
country, which is of the greatest extent, and where the manufacture
is chiefly carried on. If any part of it be waste and thin of
inhabitants, it is the west part, drawing a line from about Brand,
or Brandon, south, to Walsinghan, north.
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