In the reign of Stephen the woollen manufactures were so flourishing in many large towns, that the merchants petitioned for power to form themselves into distinct guilds or corporations,—the earliest development of the principle of joint stock companies, borrowed by the Normans from the free cities of Italy, where trade and manufactures had long flourished, and where this combination of mercantile influence had been employed by the Roman monarchs as a check upon the feudal power of the barons. The inconvenience, however, that attended the monopolies that sprung from this source were soon manifest; and disturbances were continually arising, until free trade was in a measure restored. The sumptuary laws of Edward the Third, and the inducements held out by him to foreigners to settle in his dominions,—the fixing of the _staples_, that obliged all merchants to bring their wool and woollen cloths for sale to Norwich, forbidding any to offer such articles in any other part of Norfolk or Suffolk,—tended materially to the commercial prosperity of the city; but in the reign of Richard the Second, discontent spread itself throughout the working population of the kingdom, and the insurrection of Wat Tyler was followed by an open rebellion in Suffolk, when 80,000 men marched upon Norwich, and committed divers acts of devastation and plunder, headed by John Litester, a dyer. This, united to the jealousies that existed between the native and foreign artisans, caused a decline in the local manufactures for some time. In Elizabeth’s reign they revived, through the invitation given to the Dutch and Walloons, then fleeing from the persecutions of the Duke of Alva. By the advice of the Duke of Norfolk, thirty of these, all experienced workmen, were invited to attend in Norwich, each bringing with him ten servants, to be maintained at the expense of the duke. These speedily multiplied, until their number exceeded five thousand. No matter of surprise, therefore, is it that the Old City retains so many quaint traces of Flemish taste and Flemish architecture, or that strangers, one and all, should be struck with the peculiarly foreign outline of its quaint old market-place. Soon after the settlement of these strangers in the neighbourhood, new articles of manufacture were introduced; in addition to the “worsteds,” “saies,” and “stamins,” hitherto the sole articles of commerce, and the admixture of mohair and silk with the wool, produced a total change in the quality of the goods. Bombazine, that staple “mourning garb,” was the first result of the experiments made in silk and wool combined. The ladies of Spain were thenceforth supplied with the material for that indispensable article of their costume, the mantilla. Camlets, too, were woven for the religious orders of priests and monks, as also calimancoes, tabinets, brocaded satins, florettes, and damasks, of which the legends of our grandmothers, and occasionally their