Matters grew steadily worse all through the reign of Philip the Fourth. The principal cause of this additional decline lay in the constant depreciation of the national currency, which kept at an intolerable pitch of dearness the price of home-grown silk, and enabled foreign traders to undersell the Spaniard. This will be better understood if we consider that the composition of the copper and silver coinage was often tampered with by Crown and Parliament in such a way as to allow the foreigner to rid the country of nearly all her gold and silver, leaving in exchange only the baser metal. At intervals of a few years, proclamations were issued altering the values of the coinage in the most capricious and disastrous terms, and Ulloa mentions as still in circulation in the eighteenth century, ochavos of Philip the Third which bore inscribed the value of twelve maravedis in Roman numerals, and also (owing to the restamping of the coins by order of the Crown), the second and successive value of eight maravedis, marked in ordinary numerals. In fact, so grave were these abuses, that the arbitrary value imposed upon the coins in question grew to be six times that of the actual value of the metal.
At the close of the seventeenth century, when Charles the Second was on the throne, a couple of well-meant and not completely ineffectual attempts were made to bring about a fresh revival in the growth of Spanish silk. On November 18th, 1683, the silk-makers of Toledo, Seville, Granada, and Valencia were summoned to a council at Madrid, and the dispositions they then agreed upon received the royal signature and became law on January 30th of the following year, the pragmatic which embodied them being issued to the public ten days later. It was commanded by this document that all the silk produced at the above-named towns should be examined and approved by the veedores or mayorales, and bear the official stamp which guaranteed their quality. The effect of these ordinances was further strengthened by a Crown cedula of July 15th, 1692, confirming other dispositions dated 1635; and later still, in June of 1699, a law was passed prohibiting the exportation of all home-made silks to other countries.
The accession of the Bourbon kings heralded a further slight improvement. Philip the Fifth had barely mounted the throne when the Junta de Comercio was revived by his command, and drafted various laws for bettering this and other industries. Royal decrees of June 20th and September 17th, 1718, renewed in June of 1728 and in April and August of 1734, forbade the introduction of silk and certain other stuffs from China and the rest of Asia—a measure which was made more strict as time went on, the prohibition being extended to linens and cottons produced and printed in Africa or Asia or imitated in Europe. In the meantime another cedula, signed at the Escorial on November 10th, 1726, had ordered that every Spanish citizen of either sex should dress exclusively in silks or cloths of Spanish manufacture.
These laws, though founded on mistaken principles, undoubtedly restored the national silk trade for a while. In 1713 the silk looms of Seville had increased to four hundred and five, and by 1732—in which year the Court resided at that capital—to a thousand; but on the return of the royal family to Madrid, and the declaration of war against England in 1739, the number dropped to a hundred and forty. In 1743 an effort was made to remedy this by exempting Seville silks from payment of the alcabalas and cientos, and further support was rendered in 1749 by Ferdinand the Sixth, who lowered to eighty maravedis per pound weight the tax on Spanish silks exported from the kingdom, and issued, in 1752, 1753, and 1756, additional decrees intended to encourage and protect this industry. In 1748 the same ruler established the celebrated silk factories of Talavera de la Reina, sparing no pains to bring their products to a level with the best in Europe, and choosing as director of the works a thoroughly proficient Frenchman named Jean Roulière, a native of Nîmes, who was assisted by a carefully selected staff of experts, also principally foreigners.
About the end of the century Laborde described this enterprise as follows:—“The manufactures of silks, gildings, and galloons are highly useful and important…. There has also been raised at Cervera, a village two leagues from Talavera, another large edifice, in which are twelve mills for twisting the silk, four large windles for winding it, and six machines for doubling it. This complicated machinery is put in motion by four oxen, and the various processes of twisting, winding, and doubling seven thousand and seventy-two threads of silk are thus performed at once.
“This establishment was rapidly augmented under the direction of Roulière and the other French mechanics who succeeded him in its superintendence. So successful were their labours that, in a short time, stuffs were fabricated in Spain not unworthy of competition with those of France, the demand for which was found to diminish. In 1762, Roulière being obliged to withdraw from this manufactory, the care of it was committed to a company to the exclusion of almost all the French who had previously assisted in its establishment. The consequences of this change were soon discovered; the manufacture declined, the stuffs deteriorated, and the consumption diminished; the artisans were discharged from the loom, and everything threatened the total subversion of the establishment, when the king interposed, and again extended to it his care and protection, It has since been yielded to the incorporated society of the Gremios at Madrid, but has never recovered its former splendour and prosperity.
“Taffetas, satins, silk cloths, and serges are fabricated here, as are silk ribbons, plain and figured velvets, stuffs of silk and silver, stuffs of silk and gold, galloons, gold and silver fringes, and silk stockings. The factory employs three hundred and sixty-six looms, and affords occupation to two thousand persons. There are annually consumed in it about a hundred thousand pounds of silk, four thousand marks of silver, and seventy marks of gold.
“Some of the stuffs issuing from the manufactory are beautiful and good, but they want the gloss and lustre of the French stuffs; and as they are dearer than those, with all the contingent expense of commission and transportation, they are far from being able to maintain a competition with them. The stockings are of the vilest quality, being thin, shaggy, and ill-dressed. The greater part of these articles are exported to the Spanish colonies.”
Further efforts to improve the quality of Spanish silk were made by Charles the Third, in whose reign the silk looms of Seville increased to four hundred and sixty-two for weaving larger pieces, sixty-two for silver and gold galloons, three hundred and fifty-four for finely-worked ribbons, twenty-three for small pieces of gold and silver stuffs, eight for fringes and cintas de rizo, sixty-three for stockings, sixty-five for redecillas, three for caps, and one thousand three hundred and ninety-one for ordinary ribbon. At the same time, according to Ulloa, one hundred thousand pounds of silk required to be annually brought to Seville to supply these factories.
“In its fortunate days,” wrote Alexander de Laborde, “Seville had many splendid manufactures; it wove silks of every kind, gold and silver tissues, linens, and cottons.[14] A memoir presented in 1601 by the seventeen companies of arts and trades of this city gives us an idea of the brilliant state of those manufactures: the amount of the silk looms is there stated to be 16,000, and the persons of both sexes employed at them, 130,000. These manufactures had greatly declined even in the last century. We learn from Francisco Martínez de la Mata, in his Discursos, published in 1659, according to a memoir presented to the king by an alcalde of the silk manufactures of Seville, that there were no more, at that time, than sixty-five looms, that a great number of persons having no work had quitted the town, that the population had decreased a third, and that many houses were shut up, uninhabited, and going to ruin. The silk manufactures began to look up again in the eighteenth century, but they are very far below the brilliant state they formerly displayed: in 1779 there were 2318 silk looms in Seville, including those for stockings, slight stuffs, and ribbons.”[15]