Selected quad for the lemma: england_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
england_n	woman_n	wool_n	yard_n	14	3	10.7434	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A54580	The happy future state of England, or, A discourse by way of a letter to the late Earl of Anglesey vindicating him from the reflections of an affidavit published by the House of Commons, ao. 1680, by occasion whereof observations are made concerning infamous witnesses : the said discourse likewise contains various political remarks and calculations referring to many parts of Christendom, with observations of the number of the people of England, and of its growth in populousness and trade, the vanity of the late fears and jealousies being shewn, the author doth on the grounds of nature predict the happy future state of the realm : at the end of the discourse there is a casuistical discussion of the obligation to the king, his heirs and successors, wherein many of the moral offices of absolution and unconditional loyalty are asserted : before the discourse is a large preface, giving an account of the whole work, with an index of the principal matters : also, The obligation resulting from the Oath of supremacy to assist and defend the preheminence or prerogative of the dispensative power belonging to the king ...	Pett, Peter, Sir, 1630-1699.	1688 (1688)	Wing P1883; ESTC R35105	603,568	476

employed to feed perhaps about 20 pair of the hurtful Carnivorous Beasts nay which is more that Heaven should permit such great slaughters of its little Flock to feed the very vitiated fancies of the worst of men as was before insinuated But who can without shame for depraved Mankind and a heart inwardly bleeding think of the result of the Popes Gift of America to the King of Spain where so many Millions of the poor Natives having had no promulgation of the Law of Christianity and were accountable to God only for the violation of the Law of Nature were so unnaturally murthered by the Spaniards that it would seem incredible that God having made of one blood all Nations as 't is said in the Scripture and there being a natural Cognation between all Humane kind as the expression is in the Digests they should depopulate that part of the World of a greater number of Souls than is now living in the flourishing Kingdom of France if that Famous Spanish Bishop Bartholomaeus de las Casas hath made a true Estimate of the Spanish Cruelty in the West-Indies namely that in about 45 years the Spaniards by several monstrous Cruelties put to death 20 Millions of Indians At this rate of murderous Mankinds thus outraging one another the World would seem to be likely to end before it was as I may say to purpose begun I mean the purpose of God Almighty But the thought of the shame of being outwitted by our Neighbour Nations and the fear of being outdone by them in strength populousness and riches and our certain knowledge as was partly before hinted that toward the latter end of the World by the growing populousness of Mankind we must naturally and without any eye on prediction in Scripture more and more hear of Wars and rumours of Wars and the shame of our encouraging a few Traders in Contraband Religions to hope they can ever destroy the Peace and Trade of the Kingdom again must supposing Heretics to be men naturally make the former Mode of killing them appear not more barbarous then ridiculous Sir W. P. having in his excellent Manuscript called Verbum sapienti made excellent Computations of the wealth of the Kingdom and of the value of the People and of the several expences of the Kingdom and of its Revenues and in his last Chapter there considered how to employ the People and with what great industry doth like a Noble Philosopher conclude it with these two Queries and their Answers viz. But when should we rest from this great industry I answer when we have certainly more Money than any of our Neighbour States tho never so little both in Arithmetical and Geometrical Proportion i. e. when we have more years Provision aforehand and more present Effects What then should we busie our selves about I answer in ratiocinations upon the Works and Will of God to be supported not only by the indolency but also by the pleasure of the body and not only by the tranquility but serenity of the mind and this exercise is the natural end of man in this World and that which best disposeth him for his Spiritual Happiness in that other which is to come The motions of the mind being the quickest of all others afford most variety wherein is the very form and being of pleasure and by how much the more we have of this pleasure by so much the more we are capable of it ad infinitum And thanks be to Heaven we have no Isthmus in Nature to dig through which yet by our many hands might be done 'T is but the removal of the broken Fence and bowing Wall of a Religion-Trade which we can well look over and easily see through as now broken and bowing and which is the more loath'd for having so long and so much debarred us from real Trade and real Knowledge and too from real Religion and this flowry Coast will be as free to the feet of us Northern Heretics so called as 't is now to our Eyes and we through the effects of our populousness and being necessitated to industry be secured from any fear of sharing in a Prophetick Calculation that might be called The Burthen of the North made by a late Author of a Discourse of Trade That the French without the use of their Iron will command all the Silver of the North and sweep it away thence by the over-balance of Trade But after all the Souths raillery on the North they will find that the Northern half of the World hath more Earth more Men more Ships and Sea-men more Stars more day and more light of the Gospel and I may add more good nature and frankness more bodily strength and fewer Plagues and Earth-quakes then the Southern And where most people are 't is no Heresy nor Enthusiastic Prophecy to say that there will in time be most Trade which appeared by England's not being afraid to throw the Die of War against both France and Spain in the beginning of the Reign of the Royal Martyr As the over-balance of Trade is insensibly lost in any Country it is likewise so regained and in time will appear regain'd and like health in the body of a man of a strong Vitals after his being seized by and recovered from a Chronical Disease and of the time of the beginning and ending of which by unforeseen Accidents no shadow of a Dial or sound of a Clock could give the indication I shall assign an instance of this in our own Kingdom The Author of Britannia languens calculates 2,50000 l. per Annum to have been formerly at a Medium for 76 years brought into England by the balance of its whole Trade in the World. Committees of Parliament have worthily laboured in several Sessions to model and draw Bills for the making us wear our own Woollen Manufactures and many who have writ Books and Proposals about Trade have very honestly endeavoured to perswade us so to do But as the saying is accidit in puncto c. an Accident too low for our States-mens consideration hath for several years caused England to gain more then it did by the aforesaid Balance of Trade viz. the said 2,50000 l. at a Medium for 76 years and this Accident is the general fashion of Womens wearing Crape And because I have conversed with none who has observed the effect of this Accident and which tho seeming small is very momentous and appears as many things in Trade do like great Weights hanging sometimes on small Wires I shall divert your Lordship by Calculating en passant what England gains thereby in such a way as the Nature of the thing will bear and may passable serve to have it done in A pound of Wooll makes 15 yards of Crape Each Female one with another may be supposed to wear about 10 yards of Crape in her Apparel There are in London probably about 100,000 Females that wear Crape It may be supposed that in all England and Wales there being

ten times as many Females as in London that one half of this proportion of the London Crape-wearers may wear Crape in the Country viz. half a Million in all It may be supposed therefore that the Crape-wearers one with another wearing ten yards a piece that five Millions of Yards of Crape may be yearly worn in England and Wales and that one pound of Wooll making fifteen yards of Crape will occasion the Consumption of a third part of a Million of Pounds weight of Wooll per Annum viz. 333000 and 333 pounds weight of Wooll which accounting fine Wooll such as makes Crape to be worth one Shilling per Pound amounts to 16000 l. Sterling The labour of the People in Manufacturing the same amounts to about thirty times as much as the Wooll viz. half a Million of Pounds Sterling and this yearly gain England cannot miss of while the Women of the Court continue the fashion of wearing Crape whom the Women of the City and Country will imitate in their garb If any shall think that the allowance of 10 yards to be yearly worn by each Female Crape-wearer may seem too much he may consider that some Crape used by men about their Apparel and the great quantity thereof employed in shrouding the Dead pursuant to the late Act and which but for the invention and use of the Manufacture of Crape perhaps would not have been effectually put in Execution may probably incline him to be of an opinion that England gains more vastly by this new Manufacture of Crape then I have supposed The ridiculing humour of so many in the Age may perhaps move them to think observations of this kind to be unimportant But if any shall take a Prospect of the substantial and great wisdom of our Ancestors in our Statute-Book he may find there 11 Acts of Parliament about Thrums and Yarn and many about Fustians and 26 about Worsted and Worsted-Weavers and another Statute of Pouledavis but there is that of moment in my Account relating to England's Gain from Crape that after 145 Statutes made to advance our Wooll and Drapery and Dyers and our Woollen Manufactures so much decayed in spight of them all this seeming poor little thing hath without any Act of Parliament enriched us And many are the Foundations of Manufactures laid in our Country Cities and daily growing since the time that Dr. Williams Arch-Bishop of York in his Speech in the Parliament of 1640. in defence of the Bishops Votes observed that Tapsters Brewers Inn-keepers Taylors and Shoo-makers do integrate and make up the body of our Country Cities and Incorporations And tho the Northern Heretics are crasso sub aere nati yet have they as was said compensative Advantages from nature and as if nature meant them more then others for Lords of the Sea and Navigation the Pole of the Magnet which seateth it self North hath been observed to be always the most vigorous and strong Pole to all intents and purposes and the Magnetical Virtue impressed on the Earth is there more strong likewise I mean on the Church Land seized on from the Papal Idlers and Burthens of that Earth to support the necessary defence of the State and therefore will necessarily attract mens Iron and their understandings with Justice to keep it Dr. Heylin in his Geography in Folio tells us that 't is not so much the Authority of Calvin or the Malignant Zeal of Beza or the impetuous Clamors of their Disciples which made the Episcopal Order to grow out of Credit as the Avarice of some great Persons in Court and State who greedily gaped after the poor Remnant of their Possessions But tho nothing like an over-Balance of the Clergy in the wealth of the Kingdom ought to have sunk that Order and its Revenue in England where perhaps ten times as much is spent either on the Law or on Physick as is on the Clergy it need not be wondered at that in those Countries of the North where they are continually standing to their Arms at least of defence and Calculating their Provision for War that the Lutheran Princes as Heylin saith have divided the Episcopal Function from its Revenue assuming to themselves much of the latter and sometime giving part thereof to their Nobility with the Title of Administrators of such a Bishoprick and of super-intendent to those who have there the Pastoral Solicitude and with some proportion of the Revenue for their maintenance not much exceeding what is usually received by Calvinist Ministers And if my Lord Primate Bramhal may pass for a good Casuistical Judge of the Law of God who in p. 39. of his just Vindication of the Church of England speaking of an excessive Revenue of the Clergy and their over-balancing the Layety saith And if the excess be so exorbitant that it is absolutely and evidently destructive to the Constitution of the Common-wealth it is lawful upon some Conditions and Cautions not necessary to be here inserted to prune the superfluous Branches and to reduce them to a right temper and aequilibrium for the preservation and well being of the whole Body Politick and if any Credit ought to be given to the Account of Cardinal Pool shewed to me within these few hours relating to the over-Balance of the old Ecclesiastick Revenue here after he had used all his own diligence and that of others to prepare a Calculation of the same for the Pope and had sent 3 Reams of Paper of this to the Pope that are now in his Archives and had acquainted the Pope therein That it was visible that had not the Church here fallen into the Shipwrack of its Revenues the Ecclesiasticks had here in a short time insensibly rendred themselves Lords of the whole Kingdom and that there were more Colleges and Hospitals in England than in France which exceeds England by two thirds both in Lands and Numbers of People we may very well conclude that had any accidental force in Queen Mary's time renversed the alienation of the Church Lands that force would not have long continued and should any as wild Imaginers may suppose happen for the future here or perhaps in other Kingdoms of the North those Lands would soon appear to all to have such a Magnetical Vertue as is in the Globe of the Earth whereby as to its natural points it disposeth it self to the Poles being so framed and ordered to those points that those parts which are now at the Poles would not naturally abide under the Aequator nor Green-land remain in the place of Magellanica and thus it may be said that if the whole Earth were violently removed it would not forsake its Primitive Points nor pitch in the East or West but very soon return to its Polary position again and resemblingly in any new forced over-balance of those Church Lands the very dull Earth's Animus revertendi to the just libration of States and Kingdoms would soon be apparent and neither the Popes moving the Earth or even

Line as heretofore just as some Crabs on the Land are observed in the West-Indies to be so sullen in their way that rather than they will move in the least on any side they will go over a House or a Tree but may likewise serve as a Praemunimentum to secure men in all future times against the fear of any danger to their Religion by the Heterodoxy of their Princes a thing that may be expected often to happen since People can no more promise themselves that their Princes will successively resemble one another in their understanding faculties than in their bodily shapes Thus then sufficiently for the purpose above mentioned the Reader may take the Scheme of that matter It may be observed that in Sueden and D●nmark and in all the Territories of the lower and upper Saxony where ever Protestants have the sole power no Papists are permitted to have any publick exercise of their Religion and that in Austria Bohemia Moravia and all the Hereditary Lands of the House of Austria Bavaria and the upper Palatinate where the Papists have the sole Power no Protestants are suffered to have the publick Exercise of their Religion And these whole Territories above mentioned being entire bodies within themselves under one head either of the one or the other Religion without the intermixture of different Dominions are uniform in the exercise of their Religion respectively different But the intermediate parts of the German Empire are interwoven under several Princes of different Religions and therefore are of mixt Religionary professions that is to say those professions are exercised some here some there in different places and because the Inhabitants of the intermediate Territories being mixed and pretending to have each of them a right to the same places of Worship various Quarrels did arise among them therefore when they deprived one another of the freedom to exercise their Religion the Treaty of Peace at Munster and Osnabrug in the year 1648. did appoint the restitution of places for the publick exercise of Religion on both sides and ordered that all matters of this kind should be thence forward settled as they were in use heretofore in the Year 1624 which Order occasioned a Deputation from all the States of the Empire at Francford in the Year 1656 and 1657 and following to see that Decree and other matters put in Execution Those intermediate Territories are the Circles of Westphalia of the Rhine of the Welterans of Franconia and of Suaben containing many Principalities and great Cities depending immediately upon the Empire which being of different Religions and mixed one with another in respect of their Territories and Jurisdictions none that in the time of War was prevalent did suffer a different Religion to be exercised but since the Instrument of the Peace made at Munster and Osnabrug was published the liberty of Religion is to be regulated universally by the 7th Article and some other Articles determining matters between Protestants and Papists and according to this Constitution altho some Territories which formerly were under Protestant Divines are now under a Popish power and vice versâ yet the liberty of Religion is to be left to each Party as it was used in the year 1624. Thus the Duke of Newburg and one of the Landgraves of Hessen and a Prince of Nassaw are obliged to leave to the Protestants within their Dominions the free exercise of their Religion And so in some of the Imperial Cities as in Francford Ausburg and others the Papists have the free exercise of their Religion restored to them among the Protestants At Ausburg the Magistracy is half of the one and half of the other Religion but in all the other Imperial Cities the Magistrates I think were wholly Protestants except at Collen and Heilbron where they are wholly Papists If any one considering the sharper Animosities between Lutherans and Calvinists then those between either of them and the Papists accordingly as we are told by Tacitus that Odia proximorum sunt acerrima shall tell me That if the Treaty of Munster and Osnabrug did plant Civility among Lutherans and Calvinists as to the Persons and Religions of each other it did wonders I shall therein accord with him and that it was somewhat like that of the pulling down the Partition-wall between Iew and Gentile and that tho Luther a more Cholerick yet I think a better natured man than Calvin did sufficiently in his Writings inveigh against the asperity of Magistrates in punishing Heterodoxy and particularly in his Tract De magistratu saeculari parte secundâ where he tells Chief Magistrates so doing viz. Per Deum sancte juro si id verum tantillas vires in vos acceperit vestra negligentia nulli estis etiamsi siguli non essetis inferiores Turca ipso potentiâ neque vestra crudelitas rabies vobis quicquam commodabunt yet many of Luthers followers did not imbibe that his opinion and as appeared long ago by a dreadful instance of this in Queen Mary's time when Iohn a Lasco Uncle to the King of Poland and many Families of Strangers who had been here received by Edward the 6th were banished by Queen Mary and went for Asylum to the King of Denmark but as I have read it in the History of that Migration of theirs writ in Elegant Latin by Iohn a Lasco he renders their usage in Denmark by the Clergy and Populace to have been very severe and makes the first Course in their Entertainment to be an Invitation to Church some days after their landing on pretence of being instructed and the hearing there Cal●●● and themselves publickly lampon'd or railed at and because that pleased not their palates their next was an Edict to be gone from the Metropolis in a peremptory short time when the Season of the Frost in that Country was so extremely afflictive and without permission for their Sick or Infants or Women with Child to stay for the Clemency of better weather and whereby many of them there died with the extremity of the cold in their Journeys And it had been in a manner as eligible for them to have stayed and perished in England by the Fires of Queen Mary And Alsted in his Chronology speaking of what happened in Queen Mary's Reign saith to this purpose Multi ob Religionem mutatam Angliâ relictâ primò in Daniam deiude in Germaniam veniunt nam in Dania non poterant habere locum per theologorum rabiem inter exules fuit Johannes Lascus Polonus But I can by the Munster Peace direct the Reader to see that old Lutheran bigotry and hatred of the Persons and Religion of Calvinists exterminated out of Germany whereby it is determined as by a Statu●e Law that the Calvinists shall have the same right for the free exercise of their Religion which the Lutherans and Papists have and that to the end that any might be ashamed of pretending to be afraid of any detriment that might accrue to their Persons or

ends therein contained I fully assent unto and have been as desirous to observe but the rigid way of prosecuting it and the oppressing uniformity that have been endeavoured by it I never approved This were sufficient to vindicate me from the false Aspersions and Calumnies which have been laid upon me of Iesuitism and Popery c. And recollect whether tho that Covenant was contrary to the Oath of Allegiance any thing yet could be more contrary to that Covenant than that House of Co●●ons acting single or any thing could be more contrary to the plain literal Sense of the Covenant than that refined pursuit of the Cause owned by a person of such refined and real great Abilities and within the Prospect of Eternity and whether the owning of the same then contrary to the literal Sense of the Covenant was a proper Medium for him to use then whereby to clear himself from the aspersion of Iesuitism There was another person of great Theological Learning and strong natural parts who lived about that time I mean Mr. Iohn Goodwin the Divine I before mentioned and who in two Books of his the one called Redemption Redeem'd and the other of The Divine Authority of the Scripture hath signaliz'd his great Abilities but in the very Pamphlet where he presumes to vindicate the very Sentence against the Royal Martyr and to make the same Coherent with the Scotch Covenant he in p. 51 saith Evident it is that those Words in the Covenant in the preservation and defence of the true Religion and Liberties of the Kingdom import a Condition on the Kings part without the performance whereof the Covenant obligeth no man to the preservation or defence of his Person or Authority and yet allowing the Words to speak for themselves they do not say in HIS Preservation and Defence c. but in THE Preservation and Defence c. plainly referring to the same Preservation and Defence of Religion and Liberties which is before promised and sworn to in this and the preceding Articles as evidently referring to the same Persons Preservation and Defence of them here who are to preserve and defend them in the former Clauses and who are to preserve and defend the Kings Majesty's Person and Authority in this namely the Covenanters If the Covenant had intended to ground the Preservation and Defence in this Clause upon another Person or Persons as the performers beside those to whom the same Actions are referred immediately before it would have pointed them out distinctly but when it expresseth no other the plain ordinary Grammatical construction will attribute them to the Parties before nominated and cannot put them on any other And the Premisses notwithstanding Mr. Goodwin concludes that if that his Anti-Grammatical Paraphrase were not the true meaning of those words beforementioned in the Covenant it was unintelligible by him and his Words are these If this be not the clear meaning and importance of them the Covenant is a Barbarian to me I understand not the English of it Thus naturally is it even for the learned and unstable to wrest not only the Scriptures but even their own subscribed Covenants where the words have no 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to their own destruction and the destroying of common Sense when they recede from the common Principles of Loyalty and Allegiance There was likewise another Person reputed one of first-rate Parts and great Learning in the late times who published a Book called The lawfulness of obeying the present Government and in his 11th Page there directs the World to make this Enquiry viz. Whether there be any Clause in any Oath or Covenant which in a fair and common sense forbids obedience to the Commands of the present Government and Authority and referreth particularly to the Clause of the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy in the former of which 't is said I shall bear faith and true Allegiance to his Majesty his Heirs and Successors and in the latter I shall bear faith and true Allegiance to the Kings Highness his Heirs and Successors He there goeth on very Childishly to sell the World a Bargain by trying to puzzle it with Questions viz. If it be said that in the Oath of Allegiance Allegiance is sworn to the King his Heirs and Successors if his Heirs be not his Successors how doth that Oath bind Either the Word Successors saith he must be superfluous or it must bind to Successors as well as to Heirs And if it bind not to a Successor as well as to an Heir how can it bind to an Heir that is not a Successor And if you will know the common and usual sense which should be the meaning of an Oath of the word Successors you need not so much ask of Lawyers and Learned Persons as of men of ordinary knowledge and demand of them who was the Successor of William the Conqueror and see whether they will not say W. Rufus and who succeeded Richard the Third and whether they will not say Harry the 7th and yet neither of them was Heir so in ordinary acception the word Successor is taken for him that actually succeeds in the Government and not for him that is actually excluded May we not to this Questionist who was as I may say such a Mountebank of a Casuist put the Question of Tertullian Rideam vanitatem an exprobrem caecitatem And may we not properly bring in St. Austin's Casuistical Decision as to things of this Nature Haec tolerabilius vel ridentur vel flentur i. e. A man is at liberty either to laugh at or lament them I have in p. 41 of this Discourse mentioned D' Ossat's Observation of Father Parson 's often contradicting himself and that very grossly in his Book of the Succession as it happens to all Persons in passion as able as they are who are not guided by truth and reason but transported by interest and passion and I shall here further remark out of the same Letter of D' Ossat by me there cited that to those words last mentioned he there adds this viz. I will here name two of his Contradictions He opposeth to the King of Scots among other things to exclude him from the Succession of England That he was born out of England of Parents not subject to the Crown of England He likewise opposeth to Arabella among other impediments That she is a Woman and that it is not expedient for the Kingdom of England to have three Women Queens successively and that often the Children of Kings have been excluded for being Women and yet not withstanding he adjudgeth the said Kingdom to the Infanta of Spain by preference even to the King of Spain her Brother as if the said Infanta were not a Woman as well as the said Arabella I had almost forgot to observe how the Author of The lawfulness of obeying the present Government that useth such thick paint of Equivocation in his sense of the word Successors having pushed on his Question

the Curious abroad shall send to their knowing Correspondents here for a Political Map or Scheme of our Affairs and ask what is become of the fantastick Vtopias Oceanas and new Atlantis'es that our late Visionaries and idle Santerers to a pretended new Ierusalem ●roubled England with and shall further send hither to their friends that old Question Quid rerum nunc geritur in Anglia The Return they will receive from England will be to the following effect viz. That People in that Noble and very Populous Country do there mind things that the Trade of words is spoiled that the business of sowing Tares is over and that he will be the inimicus homo to himself who doth it that the sowing the Wind of Errors in the Church and the reaping the Whirl-wind of Confusion in the State is grown hateful that they have done weaving of jus Divinum and dying of Religion with false Colours and preparing Nets and Snares of death for one another and that the most ungovernable Animals troubling others with Projects of Government of the Church is out of fashion that they have done there with Science falsly so called and quae non habet amicum nisi ignorantem and with Trade falsly so called the false Religion-one that hath no friend but the knave that their eyes are there opened and they see that res accendunt lumina rebus and their hands are at work in Trade and Lucre without turpitude that they can no more be brought like St. Francis his Novice to set Plants with the head downward nor at the instigation of factious Heads of Religionary Parties to do with their Notions as Fryar Iohn at his Abbots Command did with a dry withered stick which he planted and twice a day for a whole year fetched water two Miles off to water it and omitting it no Festival day that they speak more of Christ and talk less of Anti-Christ and do promote Christianity by solid Industry and Charity and the living there are Aparrel'd with their own Linen as the Dead are with their own Wooll and are grown so dexterous in the Linen Trade that it may be said of them what Klockius doth of the Dutch 't is to be doubted plusne in lanificio an vero in linificio illi praestent and thus by means of a true and undefiled and laborious Religion there Antichristus lino periit as I may say with Allusion to a forementioned Phrophecy The Genius and Interest that England hath in several Conjunctures been intent on devouring the Religion-Trade and which still hath slip'd from its seisure hath now at last effectually swallowed it up and just as a Cormorant swallowing an Eel and the Eel slipping out through its Body is soon by that potent Creature again swallowed and again slipping through its Body is at last certainly macerated and dissolv'd in its Stomach and still the Cormorant hath weakened the Eel in its passage through it thus hath it in England fared with the Religion-Trade that as Luther said of one great point in Religion it was doctrina stantis cadentis Ecclesiae the Notion of the not getting or losing by Religion there is accounted the Doctrina stantis cadentis Reipublicae That time hath laid so close and long a Siege to the Popish and Presbyterian Religion-Trade that as it was in the Siege of Ostend there is no more Earth left it to defend That as Physicians observe of superfetation in Women if it be made with considerable intermission the latter most commonly proves Abortive for that the first being confirmed engrosseth the Aliment from the other it hath happened so in England to the superfetation of Reformation That the Trade of Reformation unduely prosecuted by Art hath been diverted by the Reformation of Trade resulting from Nature and the over spreading the Land with such a great and useful Linen-Trade and Materials for the same as hath in a manner exterminated Poverty from the same And while now Nature seems to Court our Expectation with the probability of this new Scheme of Trade and Manufacture and which perhaps will stay with us till the Scheme or fashion of this World shall finally pass away I shall take occasion to discharge my self of a promise I long ago made to your Lordship when you were Treasurer of the Navy which was to send you an account of the rough Hemp and Flax and Sail-Cloth and of all the other Manufactures of Hemp and Flax imported into England yearly and now that it may appear what quantities of Hemp and Flax and the Manufactures thereof have been here imported and from what Countries and that thereby we may usefully take our measures about the proportion to which this new Trade and improvement of our Land should at least be advanced and because likewise the former measures of computing what Sail-Cloth and fine Linen have been here imported were taken generally from blundering Estimates and random Calculations and that we may see it possible tho France hath got the start of us in the Linen Manufacture that we may yet overtake it in the Race for that 't is apparent tho much Sail-Cloth yet little or no fine Linen hath thence come to us I shall here entertain your Lordship with an Account of the Linen-Cloth Canvas Linen Yarn Hemp Flax and Cordage imported into the Port of London from Michaelmas 1668. to Michaelmas 1669. which was drawn up for me by the favour of one of the late Farmers of the Customs I happened to make choice of that year for the quantity of those importations as being a year of Peace but was since told by the Merchants that that year being the second after the Fire of London there was then imported into London about a 3 d part less of those Commodities than was in common years the which happened because the year before being the next after the Fire an extraordinary glut of those Goods was then brought in Your Lordship thereby seeing what then came into the Port of London will in effect see what came into the whole Kingdom the Out-Ports bearing a proportion of a 3 d to that of London and by finding that we have so much Hemp from the East Countries now we are put to it to go to Market there with ready Money instead of our woollen Manufactures as formerly as we likewise do for our Pitch and Tar and Masts find that we are more closely concerned in point of interest to have our Hemp provided at home And it will appear high time for us to begin somewhat like a Linen Manufacture when a running view of this Account presents us with so great a quantity of old Sheets imported from Holland and France tho perhaps designed by us for our Plantations and of Linen Yarn and some Linen from Scotland and since in that year by an Abstract of the exportations of Ireland I have seen that Country so long unsettled had yet so much Linnen Yarn and Linen Cloth for its own use that 522