Читать книгу The Industrial History of England - Henry de Beltgens Gibbins - Страница 59

—From the time of this first Flemish immigration in the fourteenth century, we perceive the beginning of an important modification in our home industries. Hitherto England had been almost exclusively a purely agricultural country, growing large quantities of wool, exporting it as raw material, and importing manufactured goods in exchange. But from this period the export of wool gradually declines, while on the other hand our home manufactures increase, until at length they in turn are exported. In fact, manufactured cloth, and not raw wool, becomes the {56} basis of our national wealth, and finally the export is forbidden altogether, so that we may have the more for the looms at home.

A proof of the growing importance of manufacture in this period is the noticeable lack of labourers and the high wages they get, as set forth in the Act 7 Henry IV. (i.e. 1406), which points to an increase of weavers in all parts of the kingdom, that takes labourers from other employments.