All pieces of stuff which measured ten yards long and upwards, and which it was desired to sell within the capital or district of Granada, required to be marked with the weaver's stamp. If three pieces were sold together, or sent abroad to other places to be sold, they required to be stamped with the city seal at a fee for stamping of two _maravedis_ the piece. This was to be performed by the _veedores_, who were also to keep a register of all the city looms, and pay them a visit of inspection once at least in every month. Finally, one of the most ridiculous and noxious of these ordinances forbade the planting of more mulberry-trees in or about Granada; notwithstanding that it was also forbidden to deal in silk imported from Valencia or Murcia, as the merchants were said to mingle these foreign silks with that of Granada herself, to the detriment of the latter. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the silk-trade of this capital remained in much the same condition. In 1747 a company was formed at Granada titled the "Compañía Real de Comercio y Fábricas de Granada," and the formal prospectus of this society, of which document a printed copy is in my possession, was embodied in a royal _cedula_ dated in the same year. The preliminary remarks attached to this certificate explain that the people of Granada were now reduced to "the most unhappy state of poverty, insomuch that nowhere is there memory of a greater horde of mendicants." The principal cause of this distress is stated to be the ruin of the silk-trade, in which disaster may be recognised the consequences of the senseless legislation I have instanced in the foregoing paragraphs. The fifteen thousand looms which once upon a time existed there had dwindled to six hundred, and the production of raw silk, from one million pounds a year to one hundred thousand. The new Company was floated with the professed ambition of restoring Granada to a measure of her old prosperity. The capital was half a million _pesos_, divided into shares of two hundred _pesos_ each; but silk and woven fabrics generally, whose value had been suitably appraised by the authorities, were admissible in payment of a share. The holder of each five shares enjoyed one vote, except in the case of founders, who were privileged, as "instruments of this important establishment," to vote upon possession of a single share. If a shareholder wished to sell his interest, the Company was to have the first refusal. It further possessed initially in cash a sum exceeding one hundred and twenty thousand _pesos_--sufficient to construct and work three thousand looms in all; and it engaged, in return for certain favours and exemptions under royal warrant, to set up twenty looms for making serges of fine quality, and eight more in each year, for the space of ten years, for making _carros de oro_, _medios carros_, _anascotes finos_, _christales_, "and every other kind of stuff that is not manufactured in this kingdom."