THE INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND THE INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND BY H. DE B. GIBBINS, LITT.D., M.A. SOMETIME SCHOLAR OF WADHAM COLLEGE, OXFORD AND UNIVERSITY (COBDEN) PRIZEMAN IN POLITICAL ECONOMY WITH FIVE MAPS AND A PLAN TWENTY-SEVENTH EDITION METHUEN & CO. LTD. 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. LONDON _First Published_ _July 1890_ _Second Edition_ _1890_ _Third Edition_ _1892_ _Fourth Edition_ _1895_ _Fifth and Sixth Editions_ _1897_ _Seventh Edition_ _1900_ _Eighth Edition_ _1902_ _Ninth Edition_ _1903_ _Tenth Edition_ _1904_ _Eleventh and Twelfth Editions_ _1906_ _Thirteenth and Fourteenth Editions_ _1907_ _Fifteenth Edition_ _1908_ _Sixteenth Edition_ _1910_ _Seventeenth Edition_ _1911_ _Eighteenth Edition, Revised_ _1912_ _Nineteenth Edition_ _1913_ _Twentieth Edition_ _1914_ _Twenty-First Edition_ _1916_ _Twenty-Second Edition_ _1917_ _Twenty-Third, Twenty-Fourth and Twenty-Fifth Editions_ _1918_ _Twenty-Sixth Edition_ _1919_ _Twenty-Seventh Edition_ _1920_ PREFACE This little book is an attempt to relate in a short, concise, and simple form the main outlines of England’s economic and industrial history. It is meant to serve as an introduction to a fuller study of the subject and as a preliminary sketch which the reader can afterwards, if he wishes, fill in for himself from larger volumes dealing with special periods. At the same time it is hoped that this outline may succeed in giving not only to the student but to the ordinary reader a general view of a side of history too frequently neglected, but of the utmost importance to a proper understanding of the story of the English nation. I have endeavoured, as far as possible in the brief limits of a work like this, to connect economic and industrial questions with social, political, and military movements, believing as I do that only in some such mutual relation as this can historical events obtain their full significance.