Commerce

524. Manufactures.

Woolen goods continued to be a chief article of manufacture. Silks
were also produced by thousands of Huguenot weavers, who fled from
France to England in order to escape the persecutions of Louis XIV.
Coal was now extensively mined, and iron and pottery works were giving
industrial importance to Birmingham and other growing towns in the
Midlands.

525. Commerce.

A permanent English colony was established in America in 1607, and by
1714 the number of such colonies had increased to twelve. During a
great part of this period intense commercial rivalry existed between
England and Holland, each of which was anxious to get the monopoly of
the colonial import and export trade. Parliament passed stringent
navigation laws, under Cromwell and later, to prevent the Dutch from
competing with English merchants and shippers. The East India and
South Sea companies were means of greatly extending English commercial
enterprise, as was also the tobacco culture of Virginia.

526. Roads and Travel.

Good roads were still unknown in England. Stagecoaches carried a few
passengers at exorbitant rates, requiring an entire day to go a
distance which an express train now travels in less than an hour.
Goods were carried on pack horses or in cumbrous wagons, and so great
was the expense of transportation that farmers often let their produce
rot on the ground rather than attempt to get in to the nearest market
town.

In London a few coaches were in use, but covered chairs, carried on
poles by two men and called "sedan chairs," were the favorite
vehicles. They continued to be used for a century after this period
closes. Although London had been in great part rebuilt since the
Great Fire (1666), the streets were still very narrow, without
sidewalks, heaped with filth, and miserably lighted.

527. Agriculture; Pauperism.

Agriculture generally made no marked improvement, but gardening did,
and many vegetables and fruits were introduced which had not before
been cultivated.

Pauperism remained a problem which the government had not yet found a
practical method of dealing with. There was little freedom of
movement; the poor man's parish was virtually his prison, and if he
left it to seek work elsewhere, and required help on the way, he was
certain to be sent back to the place where he was legally settled.

VI. Mode of Life, Manners, and Customs

528. Dress.

In the time of Charl