First, that there is an Home-consumption; to supply which several considerable traders in Leeds used to go with droves of pack horses loaden with those goods, to all the Fairs and Market-towns almost over the whole island, not to sell by retail, but to the shops by wholesale, giving large credit. It was ordinary for one of these men to carry a thousand pounds worth of cloth with him at a time; and, having sold that, to send his horses back for as much more, and this very often in a summer. But of late they only travel for orders, and afterwards send the goods, by the common carriers, to the different places intended. For they travel chiefly at that season, because of the badness of the roads.
There are others who have commissions from London to buy, or who give commissions to factors and warehouse-keepers in London to sell for them who not only supply all the shop-keepers and wholesale men in London, but sell also very great quantities to the merchants, as well for exportation to the English Colonies in America, which take off great quantities of the coarse goods, especially New England, New York, Virginia, etc., as also to the Russia merchants, who send exceeding great quantities to Petersburg, Riga, Dantzie, Narva, Sweden and Pomerania, though of late the manufacture of this kind set up in Prussia and other Northern parts of Germany interfere a little with them.
The third sort are such as receive commissions directly from abroad, to buy cloth for the merchants chiefly in Hamburg, Holland, etc. These are not only many in number, but some of them very considerable in their dealings, and correspond with the farthest provinces in Germany....
Another hall is appropriated for the sale of white clothes.... This, though large, is much inferior to the other.
THE WEST RIDING, 1724
(Ibid., pp. 144-6)
... the nearer we came to Halifax, we found the houses thicker, and the villages greater in every bottom; and not only so, but the sides of the hills, which were very steep every way, were spread with houses; for the land being divided into small inclosures, from two acres to six or seven each, seldom more, every three or four pieces of land had an house belonging to them.
In short, after we had mounted the third hill we found the country one continued village, though every way mountainous, hardly an house standing out of a speaking distance from another; and as the day cleared up, we could see at every house a tenter, and on almost every tenter a piece of cloth, kersie or shalloon; which are the three articles of this country’s labour.
In the course of our road among the houses, we found at every one of them a little rill or gutter of running water; if the house was above the road, it came from it, and crossed the way to run to another; if the house was below us, it crossed us from some other distant house above it; and at every considerable house was a manufactory; which not being able to be carried on without water; these little streams were so parted and guided by gutters or pipes, that not one of the houses wanted its necessary appendage of a rivulet.