[56]House of Commons Journals, vol. xviii. p. 715, February 5, 1717. Tiverton and Exeter petition to the same effect.
[57]Hughson’s London, p. 337. The proclamation was reprinted in Notes and Queries, September 21, 1867, from a copy preserved by the Sun Fire Office.
[58]See the petitions from Exeter and Dartmouth, February 24, 1723, vol. xx. pp. 268-9; and those from Taunton, Tiverton, Exeter, and Bristol, March 3 and 7, 1725, vol. xx. pp. 598, 602, 648. In 1729 the Bristol weavers, “while the corporation was at church,” riotously attacked the house of an obnoxious employer, and had to be repulsed by the troops (History of Bristol, p. 261, by J. Evans; Bristol, 1824). In 1738 they forced the clothiers to sign a bond that they would “for ever forward” give fifteen pence a yard for weaving, under penalty of £1000 (Gentlemen’s Magazine, 1738, p. 658; see also “An Essay on Riots, their Causes and Cure,” published in the Gloucester Journal, and reprinted in the Gentlemen’s Magazine, 1739, pp. 7-10). In 1756 there was an extensive and serious uprising (see A State of the Case and Narrative of Facts relating to the late Commotion and Rising of the Weavers in the County of Gloucester, in the Gough Collection, Bodleian Library).
[59]Defoe’s Tour, vol. iii. pp. 97-101, 116 (1724). John Bright mentions his father’s apprenticeship, about 1789, to “a most worthy man who had a few acres of ground, a very small farm, and three or four looms in his house” (speech reported in Beehive, February 2, 1867). For a less optimistic account of the Yorkshire clothiers, who were, even in the seventeenth century, often mere wage-earners, see Cartwright’s Chapters of Yorkshire History.
[60]History of Leicester, by James Thompson, 1849, pp. 431-2.
[61]A Short Essay upon Trade in General, by “A Lover of his Country,” 1741, quoted in James’ History of the Worsted Manufacture in England, p. 232.
[62]See, in corroboration, Leicester Herald, August 24, 1793; Morning Chronicle, October 13, 1824; Place MSS., 27801—246, 247.
[63] The Dublin silk-weavers, owing perhaps to their having been largely Huguenot refugees in a Roman Catholic town, appear to have been associated from the early part of the eighteenth century; see, for instance, The Case of the Silk and Worsted Weavers in a Letter to a Member of Parliament (Dublin, 1749, 8 pp.). Compare A Short Historical Account of the Silk Manufacture in England, by Samuel Sholl, 1811, and Industrial Dublin since 1698 and the Silk Industry in Dublin, by J. J. Webb, 1913.
[64] The condition of the framework knitters may be gathered from the elaborate Parliamentary Inquiry, the proceedings of which fill fifteen pages of the Journals of the House of Commons, vol. xxvi., April 19, 1753. See also vols. xxxvi. and xxxvii., and the Report from the Committee on Framework Knitters’ Petitions, 1812; and Conflicts of Capital and Labour, by G. Howell, 1890. Felkin’s History of the Machine-wrought Hosiery and Lace Manufactures, 1867, contains an exhaustive account of the trade, founded on Gravener Henson’s History of the Framework Knitters, 1831, now a scarce work, of which only one volume was published.
[65]Sheffield Iris, August 7 and September 9, 1790. The Scissorsmiths’ Friendly Society, cited by Dr. Brentano, was established in April 1791. Other trade friendly societies in Sheffield appear to date from a much earlier period.