," and spinning with a distaff;
doubtless this was looked upon by the older generation of conservatives
as a deterioration to luxury and soft living; they would hark back to the
standards of a simpler age, when a King's breeches cost him no more than
three shillings, and "friezes" would be good enough for the noblest. For
Robert of Gloucester, in his Chronicle, tells us of King William Rufus:

"As his chamberlain him brought, as he rose a day,
A morrow for to wear, a pair hose of say,
He asked what they costned; three shillings said the other.
'Fie, a devil,' quoth the King, 'who say so vile deed?
King to wear any cloth, but it costned more:
Buy a pair of a mark, or thou shalt be acorye sore.'
A worse pair of ynou the other sith him brought,
And said they were for a mark, and unnethe so he bought.
'Yea, bel ami,' quoth the King, 'they be well bought;
In this way serve me, or thou ne shalt serve me not.'"

It was King Stephen, I believe,

"who was a luckless clown;
His breeches cost him half a crown;"

but King Stephen had to contend with rebellion and civil war the whole of
his unhappy reign, so doubtless popular sentiment would assign him a
smaller share of the world's goods than King William Rufus.

In Westcote's time, in the early seventeenth century, the wool that was
worked here in Devon was brought from all over England--Dorset,
Gloucester, Wales, London, and also Ireland; and clothmaking had become
so large an industry that agriculture had suffered considerably. "And
every rumour of war or contagious sickness . . . makes a multitude of the
poorer sort chargeable to their neighbours, who are bound to maintain
them . . . the meanest sort of people also will now rather place their
children to some of these mechanical trades than to husbandry, whereby
husbandry-labourers are more scarce, and hirelings more dear than in
former times."

[Illustration: Woody Bay and Duty Point, West Lynton]

This little passage in Westcote is, I think, of great interest, as
showing the difficulties which had already arisen in the time of James I,
with the extension of industry, which must always flourish at the expense
of agriculture, and which seems to tend, nevertheless, both to personal
and to national prosperity.

It is a problem for which we have not yet found a solution, and at the
present time it comes before us with especial vividness and force.
Westcote gives a list of the various fa