1681.
The result of the duke’s patriotic deliberations was the passing of acts of Council in March and April, and the passing of an act of parliament in September 1681, for the encouragement of trade and manufactories. Through his personal exertions, a body of men, including Mr Robert Blackwood and several other merchants in Edinburgh, was induced to associate for the setting up of a new work at Newmills, the produce of which was to be disposed of by them under peculiar regulations. It was to be under the care of an enterprising Englishman named Sir James Stanfield, who for some time had been settled there. In August, six sheermen and a foreman having been brought down from England, this work commenced with two looms—soon increased to eight—soon after to twenty-five; and in 1683 it was still extending. ‘We began,’ says the pamphleteer formerly quoted, ‘to make the coarsest of white cloths first, wherein we continued till October 1682; then we turned part of our people to coarse mixed cloth, and so on gradually to finer, and now we are upon superfine cloths, and have brought the spinners and rest of the work-people that length, that we hope against May next to have superfine cloths as good as generally are made in England.’ There was also a manufacture of silk-stockings going on at Newmills. The whole work seems to have then been in a hopeful condition, albeit on the unsound footing of a monopoly, all English goods of the same kinds being prohibited under severe penalties.
The act was, indeed, too sweeping in its tendency, for it forbade the importing of a great number of stuffs—as silks, embroideries, gold lace, ribbons, silk fringes, cambrics, and damasks, which it was not in the power of any native manufacturer to supply, and which certain classes of the people were little inclined to dispense with. It was thought necessary by these means to save the money of the country. It led to a strange scene one day on the High Street of Edinburgh. George Fullerton, a merchant of that city, had committed a gross violation of the law, first in smuggling in some packs of English cloth, and afterwards, when they were seized by the authorities, repossessing himself of them by violence. The Privy Council ordered him to be declared fugitive, had the two ‘waiters’ of the West Port scourged for allowing the goods to be introduced, and ordained the cloth itself to be burnt at the Cross by the hand of the hangman. The common people beheld this last spectacle with feelings of their own, for they thought it might have been better to distribute the cloth among the poor: however, says Fountainhall in a whisper, it was only the worst bales that were burned: the best were ‘privily preserved.’
1681.
Absurd as all this procedure may appear, it precisely represents the existing policy of Sweden and some other continental countries in respect of British manufactures.
One natural result of the act very soon appears, in the magistrates of Edinburgh being called before the Privy Council at the suggestion of the Duke of York, and recommended to call up the merchants, in order to discharge them from ‘extortioning the lieges, by taking exorbitant prices for the merchandises now prohibited ... on the pretence that there no more of that kind to be imported within the kingdom.’
In February 1683, General Dalyell, finding ‘that he cannot be provided in this kingdom with as much cloth of one colour as will be clothes to the regiment of dragoons,’ obtained a licence from the Privy Council permitting the cloth-manufacturing company at Newmills ‘to import 2536 ells of stone-gray cloth from England, for clothing the said regiment of dragoons,’ they finding caution under £500 sterling to limit the importation strictly to that quantity. About a month later, the Council made a change in this order, to the effect that the general might appoint a person to import the cloth—not exceeding five shillings sterling the ell—instead of the Newmills company.
In May 1683, Captain John Graham of Claverhouse was permitted by the Privy Council, on petition, to import from England, for the use of his troops, 150 ells of red cloth, 40 ells of white cloth, and 550 dozen of buttons; giving security that no advantage should be taken of this licence to bring in any other cloth.
Of a small cloth-work in Leith it was declared (December 1683) that the partners engaged ‘are excellently skilled in their trade, and can dye and mix wool and cloth, and takes in wool from the merchant or other person, and does dye and mix it; and when they get in yarn, does weave and dress it, and deliver it in broadcloth; and has already made good broadcloth to many of the merchants of Edinburgh.’ ‘Seeing that this is so good a work,’ the Privy Council, on petition, extended to it the privileges proposed in the act for encouraging manufactures.—P. C. R.
1681.