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Original Papers: The Manufactures of Noncich.               9 
a softening brush propelled in the same line by another boy at the other
end 
of the sieve. The block was contrived to dip on the sieve in corresponding
lines with the colours, and afterwards laid on the piece in the usual manner.
No patent right, fortunately for the after-perfection of the process, having
been established, and every printer, in a short time, turning his attention
to 
the style, great simplifications and improvements took place; and vainbowing
became an established feature in the business, reviving the block-printing
department, and yielding profit and interest to all engaged in it. 
(To be continued.) 
THE MANUFACTURES OF NORWICH. 
No. L   History. 
THE position of Norwich, in the midst of an extensive wool-bearing dis- 
trict, originally gave it a pre-eminence in the manufacture of that material,
which, since the invention of machinery and the use of iron and coal, has
been 
transferred to the districts of the north. 
But although Norwich has for the present been outstripped by its northern
competitors in the quantity and price of its productions, yet with its superior
workmen, improved agricultural neighbourhood, and large capitalists, it still
retains advantages which ought to place it rather on an equality with Lyons
than with Manchester and Yorkshire. 
The early history of the woollen manufacture in England is the history of
the manufactures of Norwich; for in the time of the Saxons this city pos-
sessed considerable sheep-walks, and an export trade in wool to the Continent,
where the cloths were woven, and then repurchased by the Anglo-Saxon 
merchants. 
The arrival of William the Conqueror and his Norman followers infused 
energy into the woollen trade; for in his train followed a body of Flemish
weavers, who, gladly availing themselves of his favour and protection, em-
ployed their manufacturing skill in his new dominions. Some of them 
settled in the parish of St. Peter's Mancroft, in Norwich, and, with others
dis- 
persed throughout the country, prosecuted a thriving trade; in return for
certain privileges, and the exclusion of foreign manufactures, they added
much 
to the revenues of the king. These weavers were accompanied by a number 
of Jews, with whom the citizens of Norwich carried on a deadly feud, and
this 
circumstance, combined with the lawless and unsettled state of the country,
tended to the depreciation of the new handicraft. 
A fresh accession was, however, made to the number of weavers, owing to 
a destructive inundation which occurred in the Netherlands during the reign
of Henry the First, and which drove hither a body of Dutch, who settling
at 
Worstead, a few miles distant from Norwich, there commenced the manufac-
ture of the article which took its name from their labours. The arrival of
such large bodies of impoverished workmen was at first considered a national
evil; but the king soon perceived the advantages likely to accrue to his
sub- 
jects from proper instruction in the art of cloth manufacture, at that time
carried to great perfection in Flanders and Brabant. In 1140, the fifth year
of 
King Stephen, the woollen manufacture was so flourishing in many of the 
large towns (probably also in Norwich, which Camden says "was now built
anew, was a populous town, and made a corporation"), that the merchants
petitioned the king for power to form themselves into distinct guilds or
cor- 
porations, under regulations expedient for the especial protection and further-
ance of their trade. The difficulties thrown by the members of these 
guilds around admission into their fraternity, the fees they extorted, the
power they frequently exerted of preventing all not belonging to their com-
pany from engaging in the same business (at least in the neighbourhood of
the 
guild), the long and expensive apprenticeship required, might be, and often
were, rendered exhibitions of cruelty and tyranny such as a monarch himself
scarcely dared to attempt. The inconvenience of such private monopolies was
VOL. IIl.                                                       C