:-
Thetford, Hingham, Harleston,
Diss, West Dereham, E. Dereham,
Harling, Attleborough, Watton,
Bucknam, Windham, Loddon, etc.
Most of these towns are very populous and large; but that which is
most remarkable is, that the whole country round them is so
interspersed with villages, and those villages so large, and so
full of people, that they are equal to market-towns in other
countries; in a word, they render this eastern part of Norfolk
exceeding full of inhabitants.
An eminent weaver of Norwich gave me a scheme of their trade on
this occasion, by which, calculating from the number of looms at
that time employed in the city of Norwich only, besides those
employed in other towns in the same county, he made it appear very
plain, that there were 120,000 people employed in the woollen and
silk and wool manufactures of that city only; not that the people
all lived in the city, though Norwich is a very large and populous
city too: but, I say, they were employed for spinning the yarn
used for such goods as were all made in that city. This account is
curious enough, and very exact, but it is too long for the compass
of this work.
This shows the wonderful extent of the Norwich manufacture, or
stuff-weaving trade, by which so many thousands of families are
maintained. Their trade, indeed, felt a very sensible decay, and
the cries of the poor began to be very loud, when the wearing of
painted calicoes was grown to such a height in England, as was seen
about two or three years ago; but an Act of Parliament having been
obtained, though not without great struggle, in the years 1720 and
1721, for prohibiting the use and wearing of calicoes, the stuff
trade revived incredibly; and as I passed this part of the country
in the year 1723, the manufacturers assured me that there was not,
in all the eastern and middle part of Norfolk, any hand unemployed,
if they would work; and that the very children, after four or five
years of age, could every one earn their own bread.
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