THE falling of rents is a consequence of the decay of the Turky-trade; which is the principall cause of the falling of the price of wooll. Another reason that conduces to the falling of the prices of wooll is our women’s wearing so much silk and Indian ware as they doe. By these meanes my farme at Chalke is worse by sixty pounds per annum than it was before the civill warres. The gentry living in London, and the dayly concourse of servants out of the country to London, makes servants’ wages deare in the countrey, and makes scarcity of labourers. Sir William Petty told me, that when he was a boy a seeds-man had five pounds per annum wages, and a countrey servant-maid between 30 and 40s. wages. [40s. per ann. to a servant-maid is now, 1743, good wages in Worcestershire.—MS. NOTE, ANONYMOUS.] Memorandum. Great increase of sanfoine now, in most places fitt for itt; improvements of meadowes by watering; ploughing up of the King’s forrests and parkes, &c. But as to all these, as ten thousand pounds is gained in the hill barren countrey, so the vale does lose as much, which brings it to an equation. The Indians doe worke for a penny a day; so their silkes are exceeding cheap; and rice is sold in India for four pence per bushell. CHAPTER XI. HISTORIE OF CLOATHING. [THE following are the only essential parts of this chapter, which is very short.—J. B.] KING Edward the Third first settled the staples of wooll in Flanders. See Hollinshead, Stowe, Speed, and the Statute Book, de hoc. Staple, “estape”, i e. a market place; so the wooll staple at Westminster, which is now a great market for flesh and fish. When King Henry the Seventh lived in Flanders with his aunt the Dutchess of Burgundie, he considered that all or most of the wooll that was manufactured there into cloath was brought out of England; and observing what great profit did arise by it, when he came to the crown he sent into Flanders for cloathing manufacturers, whom he placed in the west, and particularly at Send in Wiltshire, where they built severall good houses yet remaining: I know not any village so remote from London that can shew the like. The cloathing trade did flourish here till about 1580, when they removed to Troubridge, by reason of (I thinke) a plague; but I conjecture the main reason was that the water here was not proper for the fulling and washing of their cloath; for this water, being impregnated with iron, did give the white cloath a yellowish tincture. Mem. In the country hereabout are severall families that still retaine Walloun names, as Goupy, &c. The best white cloaths in England are made at Salisbury, where the water, running through chalke, becomes very nitrous, and therefore abstersive. These fine cloathes are died black or scarlet, at London or in Holland. Malmesbury, a very neat town, hath a great name for cloathing.