Further efforts to improve the quality of Spanish silk were made by Charles the Third, in whose reign the silk looms of Seville increased to four hundred and sixty-two for weaving larger pieces, sixty-two for silver and gold galloons, three hundred and fifty-four for finely-worked ribbons, twenty-three for small pieces of gold and silver stuffs, eight for fringes and _cintas de rizo_, sixty-three for stockings, sixty-five for _redecillas_, three for caps, and one thousand three hundred and ninety-one for ordinary ribbon. At the same time, according to Ulloa, one hundred thousand pounds of silk required to be annually brought to Seville to supply these factories. "In its fortunate days," wrote Alexander de Laborde, "Seville had many splendid manufactures; it wove silks of every kind, gold and silver tissues, linens, and cottons.[14] A memoir presented in 1601 by the seventeen companies of arts and trades of this city gives us an idea of the brilliant state of those manufactures: the amount of the silk looms is there stated to be 16,000, and the persons of both sexes employed at them, 130,000. These manufactures had greatly declined even in the last century. We learn from Francisco Martínez de la Mata, in his _Discursos_, published in 1659, according to a memoir presented to the king by an _alcalde_ of the silk manufactures of Seville, that there were no more, at that time, than sixty-five looms, that a great number of persons having no work had quitted the town, that the population had decreased a third, and that many houses were shut up, uninhabited, and going to ruin. The silk manufactures began to look up again in the eighteenth century, but they are very far below the brilliant state they formerly displayed: in 1779 there were 2318 silk looms in Seville, including those for stockings, slight stuffs, and ribbons."[15] [14] In former times, linens and cottons painted, stencilled, or stamped with decorative patterns from an iron or boxwood matrix, were considered to be luxurious fabrics, and are denounced as such in the sumptuary pragmatic (quoted by Miquel y Badía) issued by Jayme the Conqueror in A.D. 1234: "Item statuimos quod nos nec aliquis subditus noster non portet vestes _incisas_, _listatas_, vel trepatas."