The Industrial Revolution of the Fifteenth Century

Until the fifteenth century England had been a land in which agriculture was the, main source of wealth, and the landowners, that is, the old feudal lords, were the most prominent people of the kingdom. But the fifteenth century saw the beginning of a great change that was not to be completed for five centuries. Agriculture ceasing to be profitable, the feudal lords became land poor, and a new aristocracy arose, whose wealth lay in industrial and commercial undertakings. The growing importance of towns, trade, manufactures, and capital mark the entrance of England on her career as a commercial and industrial state.

In the Middle Ages the centre of the industrial life had been the town ; and the town, not the central government, controlled all matters of trade and commerce. All that kings and parliaments had done was to make treaties that would increase the prosperity of the towns. We have seen that Edward III, in his effort to increase the customs revenues, had sought to break down the monopoly of the towns by permitting aliens to trade in England. But his attempt had failed, and the privileges were eventually restored. In consequence of the law of Richard II, which forbade aliens to buy or sell in England, the towns during the fifteenth century had command of the situation, and except in London, developed an exceedingly narrow and selfish system of regulating industry and trade. The craft gilds, which had supplanted the old merchant gild, became almost despotic, and the weakness of the Lancastrian kings and the disorders of the Wars of the Roses left them free to pursue their courses undisturbed. They allowed no one to do business in the towns unless he were a member of one of the crafts, and regulated the details of the business with extraordinary minuteness and care. Among the gilds, distinctions began to appear between the merchants or dealers, who handled goods, and the artisans or handworkers, who made them; and within each gild, between the richer masters on one side and the poorer masters and journeymen on the, other.

THE GUILDHALL, WORCESTER.

The severity of the regulations, the jealousy of the crafts for each other, and the want of unity among the members of each gild, led to their eventual downfall.

The old towns paid the penalty of their selfishness. Under the new conditions of trade they were outstripped in the race by other towns, in which the old gild restrictions did not exist. Towns like Norwich, Exeter, York, Winchester, and Southampton, representing the earliest period in the growth of industry', gave way before such new industrial centres as Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, and Sheffield, which were destined eventually to become the leading industrial cities of the kingdom.

Growth of Foreign Trade

That which broke down the supremacy of the old towns and contributed to the prosperity of the new was foreign trade. Until the middle of the fourteenth century, England, as has already been said, had furnished for export only raw materials, such as wool, wool-fells, leather, lead, and tin; and at first the business of exporting these materials lay in the hands of strangers and not of Englishmen. It was an important step when Englishmen, the Merchant Staplers, began to do their own exporting of raw material, chiefly wool, to a staple town on the Continent, such as Calais. It was a still more important step when in the fifteenth century England began to work up her own wool, instead of sending it to Flanders and elsewhere to be woven. This home industry was bound to injure, and eventually to destroy, the business of the Staplers, because their supply of wool would thenceforth be utilized at home.

In consequence of the new industry, a new body of merchants came into existence, exporting not raw wool, but manufactured cloths, and carrying their goods not to one fixed place, but "venturing" at first wherever they could find a market. These were called the Merchant Adventurers, and they boldly competed with foreign merchants in Holland, Spain, Venice, and other lands. At first separate towns sent out their fleets; but later, individuals acting together in the form of stock companies carried on the business, until, at the end of the fifteenth century, half of the English cloths were carried in English vessels. The Merchant Adventurers, by dealing in manufactured woollen cloths instead of raw wool, broke the power of the Merchant Staplers; by doing their own carrying trade, they succeeded before 1500 in wresting the foreign commerce, of England from the Hanseatic League in the Baltic and from the Venetians in the Mediterranean. By the reign of Henry VII they had become a regularly organized company, carrying the greater part of England's exports in English vessels, and laying the foundation of England's greatness as a trading and commercial state.

Thus we see that while the Wars of the Roses effected the overthrow of the feudal nobility, they did not prevent a real progress from taking place among the other classes of the kingdom. In the downfall of villeinage, the self-reliance of the towns, the rise of manufacturing, and the growth of commerce, we see the beginnings of a new English society. As has been well said, The men of the new learning, the men of the Reformation, the men who revealed the New World, were men who had been formed under the influences of the fifteenth century." And the security which Henry VII brought to the English land after the confusion of the Wars of the Roses made permanent the advantages thus gained.