Selected quad for the lemma: england_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
england_n	wool_n	woollen_a	year_n	100	3	5.1557	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A41337	Some proposals for the imployment of the poor, and for the prevention of idleness and the consequence thereof, begging a practice so dishonourable to the nation, and to the Christian religion : in a letter to a friend / by T.F.	Firmin, Thomas, 1632-1697.	1681 (1681)	Wing F972; ESTC R12645	35,645	48

our Streets they are a People that one would think came from the Suburbs of Hell it self a Dishonour to humane Nature a Shame to the Government and an intolerable Trouble to all persons they come near by their Swearing Scolding Fighting c. You may easily know them as also by their numbers for they commonly go in Companies and will be present at all Solemnity but more especially at Feasts and Funerals Of late they are grown so impudent that they will thrust themselves into Churches and by their Brawling and Scolding many times disturb the Minister when Sermon is done the Congregation must not pass out but one by one because they will make the most they can of it by asking every person something and what they get they spend as wickedly as they get it So that to relieve these Miscreants is a greater Act of Folly that I say no worse of it than to throw a man's Money down the Thames for hereby you give Encouragement to this wicked kind of Life and would once People be perswaded to forbear this foolish Pity they would be necessitated to work I lately heard a Gentleman tell this Story who was persued by a lusty Rogue in Lincols-inn-fields that refusing to give him any thing cryed Ah Master if all were of your Mind I know what I would do upon the hearing of which he turned back again and said why Sirrah what would you do Truly Master said he I would fall to work and I doubt not but the rest of his Brethren would do the like but that they find Begging so beneficial a Trade It is not above six Months since that a Gentleman of good Quality that lives in the Country told me that having occasion to pass some of the Fields about the Town he met with a young Fellow that askt him for an Alms whom he no sooner lookt upon but he well remembred him to have lived in the same Parish where he did and asking him if he were not such a man he told him he was and presently called the Gentleman by his name who asking him how long he had folowed that Trade told him ever since his Wife died which was about three years in short the Beggar askt him where he lay and desired he might have leave to wait upon him at his Chamber which he readily granted him withal wondring in himself what he should have to say to him but when he came he soon acquainted him with his Business which was to get him to put out 200. l. that he had gotten by his new Trade to keep him as he said when he was old by which you see that begging is a very gainful Trade So that 't is no wonder that so many fall upon it and that all places but especially this City and Suburbs are so filled with them nor is there any Hopes to see them fewer till the Laws are put in Execution both against them and those that do relieve them If any shall think that I am very uncharitable because I would have all lusty Beggars made to work or soundly whipt and such as relieve them punished as the Laws require I am very confident that they do not consider upon what good Grounds such Laws were made nor the great Evil such Relief doth both to the persons themselves as well as to the Nation nor yet the plain Injunction of the Apostle who saith If any will not work neither let them eat Obj. But some will still object against the setting up the Linnen Manufacture That the Commodity is more proper for other Countreys because they have more plenty of Hemp and Flax and also that if we do not take off their Linnen they will not take off our Woollen Cloth which is the Staple Commodity of our Nation and ought rather to be encouraged than any other Answ To which I answer First that for Flax our Country at least some parts of it is as proper as any other and may with good Management be made so for Hemp also A Worthy Person in Surry having a mind to employ his poor Neighbours and to prevent the great Mischiefs that Idleness had produced among them as Begging Stealing and breaking of Hedges resolved to set up the Trade of Spinning Flax and making of Cloth which for some time he did by supplying himself with Flax from London but afterwards he caused ten Acres of his own Land to be sown with Flax and after a just Computation of his Charge reckoning his neat Flax at one penny in a pound less than he paid for the same sort from London the Year before made twenty shillings an Acre of his Ground which would not have been let at four shillings But Secondly Let it be considered that some Countreys have fallen upon the making of Wollen Cloth and others in a manner prohibited it by laying so great a Charge upon it so that it is in a manner absolutely necessary for us to fall upon the making of Linnen Cloth to make up the Damage they have done us 'T is true the Exchange of Commodities one Nation with another is a very profitable way of Commerce provided the Ballance of Trade be any thing equal which it is well known hath not been with France for some Years of late So that there is very great reason we should fall upon making such Cloth as we receive from thence and that as great an Imposition should be laid upon their Linnen Cloth as they have laid upon our Woollen The Linnens imported from France of late years as saith Britania Languens hath been estimated at five hundred thousand pounds and so much as our Importations from France exceed our Exportations thither So much the Nation loseth and is impoverished and in the same Proportion France gains which may be accounted a double Loss to England not only in making us so much poorer but also in making our most formidable Neighbour so much the richer and consequently so much the more able to do us harm Therefore so much Cloth as we make here and would otherwise be brought us from France to the same proportion our Nation saves and France loseth which is a double advantage to us I confess it is very necessary that the Woollen Manufacture should be kept up to the height and a thousand pities that any of our Wooll should be carried out of England unwrought especially at such a time as this when the Commodity is so much advanced and grown so scarce that 't is much to be feared we shall not long have enough for those Hands that are already employed in it so that instead of prohibiting the wearing of Silk and Hair Stuffs for five months in a Year when so many thousand Persons are employed in those Commodities It is thought may prove very prejudicial and that we had more need to encourage these Manufactures or any other to employ our Poor than forbid them neither indeed will this be a way to lessen our Woollen Manufacture but much more

Shee layeth her Hand to the Spindle and her hands hold the distaffe Pro 31. 19. Depiction of woman at spindle SOME PROPOSALS For the imployment of the POOR AND For the prevention of Idleness and the Consequence thereof Begging A Practice so dishonourable to the Nation and to the Christian Religion In a Letter to a Friend by T. F. For even when we were with you this we commanded that if any would not work neither should they eat 2 Thes 3. 10. Let him that stole steal no more but rather let him labour working with his hands the thing that is good that he may have to give to him that needeth Eph. 4. 28. LONDON Printed by J. Grover and are to be sold by Francis Smith at the Elephant and Castle and Brab Aylmer at the Three Pigeons in Cornhill 1681. Some Proposals for the Employment of the Poor and for the Prevention of Idleness c. SIR IT is now above four years since I erected my Work-House in Little Britain for the Imployment of the Poor in the Linnen Manufacture which hath proved so great a Help and afforded such Relief to many Hundreds of poor Families that I never did nor I fear ever shall do an Action more to my own satisfaction nor to the good and benefit of the Poor In a former Letter that I wrote upon this occasion I gave you some account of the management of the said Work-house especially with relation to the Parish of Aldersgate which Letter being wholly out of Print and much desired by some persons I shall here insert the chief things conteined therein with what else hath come into my thoughts concerning that matter hoping that when the great benefit of such an Undertaking shall be made publick every good man will some way or other give incouragement to it there being nothing so necessary for the prevention of Poverty and the consequence thereof Begging as to provide some Imployment for our Poor People whereby to prevent Idleness the Mother and Nurse of all Mischief and one of those sins for which God destroyed Sodom with Fire and Brimstone from Heaven as the Holy Scripture informs us To the end therefore that Poverty together with that wicked Trade of Begging which so many thousands of late years have taken up to the dishonour of Almighty God and the great scandal of the Government of this Nation may be prevented I shall humbly propose a few things which being put in practice may with Gods Blessing prove effectual to the ends designed And the first is this That every Parish that abounds with Poor People would set up a School in the nature of a Work-house to teach their poor Children to work in who for want thereof now wander up and down the Parish and parts adjacent and between Begging and Stealing get a sorry liveing but never bring any thing to their poor Parents nor earn one Farthing towards their own maintenance or good of the Nation This in a short time would be found very advantagious not only to the poor Children themselves who by this means whilst young should be inured to labour and taught to get their own Livings but also to their Parents who should hereby both be freed from the Charge of keeping them and in time be helpt by their Labours as it is in other places and moreover the Parish should be freed from much Charge which many times they are at to keep such poor Children or at least which they are necessitated to allow their Parents towards it Nothing being accounted a better Argument for a large Pension than that a Man or Woman hath six or seven small Children whereas unless they were all born at a time or came faster into the World than ordinarily so many Children do it is very hard if some of them are not able to work for themselves I my self have at this time many poor Children not above five or six years old that can earn two pence a day and others but a little older three pence or four pence by spinning Flax which will go very far towards the maintenance of any poor Child Not that I would have these Schools confined only to Spinning but left at liberty to take in any other work that the Children shall be capable of as knitting of Stockings winding of Silk making of Lace or plain Work or the like For it matters not so much what you employ these poor Children in as that you do employ them in some thing to prevent an idle lazy kind of Life which if once they get the habit of they will hardly leave but on the contrary if you train up a Child in the way that he should go when he is old he will not depart from it And this is the way as I am informed that is practiced in Holland and other places with so great advantage that there is very few Children who have attained to seven or eight years of age that are any charge to their Parents or burthensome to the Parish And Mr. Chamberlain in his Book Intituled The Present State of England hath observed that in the City of Norwich it hath been computed of late years and found that yearly Children from six to ten years old have gained twelve thousand pounds a year more than they have spent chiefly by knitting fine Jersey Stockings This School would be of no great Charge but many ways advantagious to the Parish At this time I have a person who for five shillings a week doth constantly teach between twenty and thirty poor Children to spin Some that are little upon the single Wheel and others that are bigger upon the double or two handed Wheel like that which you have at the beginning of these Papers which I esteem the best way for spinning and full as proper for Wooll as Flax which when they are expert in I give the Children leave to carry away with them to their several places of abode that so there may be room for others and of these there are divers that can earn six pence a day and some more allowing them two hours in a day to learn to read in instead of that time which is allotted to the poorest of our Children to play in a custom that I verily believe hath been the ruin of many thousand poor Children and hath nothing in the World to justifie it but an old Proverb which yet we have not fully observed For instead of giving them all work and no play the generality of our poor Children have all play and no work which is a thousand times more mischievous than the other Not that I would have all manner of Recreation and Divertisement prohibited to Children nor will it be hard to find some others besides playing at push-pin or hide-Farthing neither of which nor twenty others now in use are any ways conducing to the health of their Bodies or to the improvement of their minds but are only fit to teach them lying and wrangling with twenty cheating Tricks which