The clear-sighted Dutch diplomatist has summed up the grand points of England's advantages at that and succeeding periods, and some of these deserve our particular attention. The union with Scotland, though yet dependent only on the Crown of the two countries resting on the same head, was a circumstance of infinite advantage. It gave a settlement and security to all the northern portions of the island which they had never enjoyed before. Till James VI. of Scotland became James I. of England, not only agriculture but all kinds of manufacturing and commercial enterprise were kept in check by the frequent hostile inroads of the Scots. Even when there was peace between the Crowns, the fierce people inhabiting both sides of the Border were in continual bickerings with each other; and a numerous body of mosstroopers, whose only profession was plunder, harassed the rich plains of England by their predatory raids. The state of things described by Sir Walter Scott as existing in these regions only about a century ago, gives us a lively idea of what must have been the savagery of the Borderers at the time we are describing. If he himself, as he tells us, was probably the first who drove a gig into Liddesdale, and if at that time the wilds and moorlands of the Border were peopled by tribes of freebooters as lawless as savages, what must have been the state of the northern counties whilst the two countries were at feud? We are told that even the judges and king's officers could not reach the towns on the Border without a strong military guard.
But as the union of the Crowns became settled and consolidated, a new era commenced north of the Trent. These counties, full of coal and ironstone, abounding with streams and all the materials for manufacture, began to develop their resources, and to advance in population and activity at an unexampled rate. Birmingham and Sheffield extended their hardware trade; Leeds and its neighbouring villages, its cloth manufactures; Manchester, its cotton-spinning, though yet little aided by machinery; and Liverpool was rapidly rising as a port by its trade with Ireland. The union of the Crowns was, in fact, the beginning of that marvellous impetus which has at this day covered all the north with coal-works, iron-works, potteries, spinning and weaving factories, and towns, which have grown up around them with their 530,000 people, like Birmingham; their 425,000, like Sheffield; their 445,000, like Leeds; their 780,000, like Manchester (with Salford); and 716,000, like Liverpool. It was the same security amid attendant advantages which raised the immense commercial and manufacturing population of Glasgow, Paisley, Greenock, and neighbouring towns on the other side of the Border—Glasgow alone now numbering its 787,000 people.
In the south and west Norwich and Bristol were most flourishing towns. Norwich owed its growth and prosperity to the establishment of the worsted manufacture, brought thither by the Flemings as early as the reign of Henry I., in the thirteenth century, and to the influence of four thousand other Flemings, who fled from the cruelty of the Duke of Alva in Elizabeth's time, bringing their manufacture of bombazines, which has now expanded itself into a great trade in bombazines, shawls, crapes, damasks, camlets, and imitations of Irish and French stuffs. Norwich had its fine old cathedral, its bishop's palace, its palace of the Duke of Norfolk, adorned with the paintings of Italy, and where the duke used at this time to live with a state little less than royal. It had also a greater number of old churches than any town in England, except London: old hospitals and grammar schools, and the finest market-place in the kingdom.
Bristol, next to London, was the great trading port, and the commerce with America and the West Indies was fast swelling its importance. One of its most lucrative and, at the same time, most infamous sources of commerce was the conveyance of convicts to the Plantations of America and Jamaica. We have seen the eagerness of the courtiers of James II., and even the queen and ladies, for a share of this traffic, and the numbers of the unfortunate men implicated in the insurrection of Monmouth who were sent off thither and sold. Jeffreys himself condemned eight hundred and forty of them to this slavery, and calculated that they were worth ten pounds apiece to those who had to sell them to the British merchants, who probably made much more of them. That the profits were enormous is evident by the avidity with which victims were sought after, and with which innocent persons were kidnapped for the purpose. Bristol, indeed, at that time was engaged in a veritable white slave-trade, and the magistrates were deep in it, which fact coming to Jeffreys' knowledge, he made it a plea for extorting money from them.
To understand, however, the immense difference between the England of that day and of the present, we have only to state that the population of none of these pre-eminent towns amounted to 30,000, few county towns exceeded 4,000 or 5,000, and the whole population of England was, according to various calculations, at the most five millions and a half, nor was it increasing at all rapidly.
To protect the trade of England, Charles II. passed an Act (statute 12 Car. II., c. 18), commonly called the Navigation Act, carrying out the principle of the Act of the Commonwealth already referred to, confining the import of all commodities from Asia, Africa, or America to English bottoms, and also all goods from Europe to English ships, or the ships of the particular country exporting them. The next year a similar Act was passed by the Scottish Parliament. The Act of the Commonwealth had effected its purpose—the depression of the Dutch carrying trade—and it was now time to relax these restrictions, but we shall see that even at a later day it required a struggle to repeal these laws, and to convince people, by the subsequent immense increase of foreign commerce, of the impolicy of them. Charles's Government went further, and, in 1662, forbade any wine but Rhenish, or any spirits, grocery, tobacco, potashes, pitch, tar, salt, resin, deals, firs, timber, or olive oil, to be imported from Germany or the Netherlands. In 1677, alarmed at the vast importation of French goods and produce, his Government prohibited every French article for three years; but the Act remained unrepealed till the 1st of James II., by which our merchants and shopkeepers were deprived of great profits on these silks, wines, fruits, and manufactured articles, and the public of the comfort of them.
Another evidence of the growth of the country was the increase of the business of the post-office. The origin of the English post-office is due to Charles I., who, at the commencement of his disputes with the Parliament, established a system of posts and relays. This the Civil War put an end to; but the Commonwealth, in 1656, established the post-office, with several improvements. At the accession of Charles, a new Act was passed (12 Car. II., c. 25); and three years afterwards the proceeds of this office and of the wine duties were settled on the Duke of York and his heirs male. The duke farmed it out at £21,500, but on his accession the revenue amounted to £65,000. By this post a single letter was carried eighty miles for twopence; beyond eighty miles threepence was charged, and there was an advance according to the weight of packets. The privilege of franking was allowed, though not expressly granted in the Act, to peers and members of Parliament. There were mails, however, only on alternate days, and in distant and difficult parts of the country, as on the borders of Cornwall and the fens of Lincolnshire, only once a week. Wherever the Court went mails were sent daily; this was the case, also, to the Downs, and, in the season, to Bath and Tunbridge Wells. Where coaches did not run, men on horseback carried the bags. The increasing business of London soon demanded a more frequent delivery, and the penny post was first started by William Dockwray, which delivered letters six times a day in the City, and four times in the outskirts. At this time the post-office business included the furnishing of all post-horses—whence the name; and the Governments on the Continent generally retain more or less of this practice. The growth of England from the time of the Stuarts till now receives a significant proof in the present gross revenue for letters, stamps, telegrams, and other post office business being upwards of £16,000,000 a year.
The transmission of the mails made it necessary to improve the roads, and hence arose the toll-bar system, by an Act of 15 Car. II., which ordered the repairing of highways and the erection of bars or gates upon them, in Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire, and Huntingdonshire, owing to the Great North Road being so much cut up by the heavy malt and barley waggons going to Ware, whence their contents were forwarded by water to London and other towns. The system was found so advantageous that it gradually became general.
THE OLD EAST INDIA HOUSE IN 1630.