[28] An amusing passage in Fernandez Navarrete's _Conservación de Monarquías_ (A.D. 1626) tells us that most of the costlier dress-materials used in Spain about this time proceeded from abroad, and that they were "of so fine a texture that the heat of an iron scorches them and wears them out in a couple of days; while a great number of men employ themselves in the effeminate office of dressing collars, who, ceasing also to be men, forsake the plough or warlike exercises; for it is certain that when the Spaniards kept the world in awe, this land produced a greater number of armourers, and less persons who busied themselves with looking after womanish apparel" (p. 232). The rise, decay, and subsequent revival of the Spanish cloth industries, and particularly the Segovian, are well described by Laborde, Bourgoing, and Townsend. According to the first of these authorities, "at so early a period as 1629 the merchants (of Segovia) complained that there was every year a reduction in the fabrication of cloth, to the amount of five thousand five hundred pieces; and that there resulted from this deficiency an annual loss of 2,424,818 ducats and 2 reals, or about £274,000 sterling. In the eighteenth century it appeared, from the observations of the Economical Society, that the fabrication of stuffs and cloths employed but one hundred and twenty looms, in which only four thousand three hundred and eighteen quintals of washed wool were consumed. "About forty years ago these manufactures began to revive, the looms were multiplied, and the consumption of wool considerably augmented. A single individual, Don Lorenzo Ortiz, has for some years accelerated their progress. In 1790 there was an addition of sixty-three looms, which employed eight or nine hundred quintals of wool, and afforded occupation to two thousand four hundred manufacturers." The same author wrote that early in the nineteenth century, "the woollen manufactures of New Castile are the most numerous and important. Cloths are made at Toledo, Chinchon, Brihuega, Guadalajara; serges, stuffs, and flannels at Toledo and Cuenca. The cloths of Brihuega are of an excellent quality, but those of Guadalajara are still superior to them; in particular, the cloth of Vigonia. There are twenty-eight looms at Toledo, forty at Guasmenia, a hundred at Brihuega, and six hundred and fifty-six at Guadalajara."