ABSTRACT
So wrote Oliver Goldsmith in The Deserted Village, with scant historical justifi cation. For most people, life at the end of the Stuart age was a grim struggle for sustenance and survival. Prosperity still rose or fell with a good or bad harvest. England in 1714 still had a predominantly agrarian economy and therefore the state of the harvest affected the standards of living not only of landowners, farmers and farm labourers, but also of those not directly connected with agriculture. Industry in 1714 was still intimately linked with agriculture, both for its raw materials and for its organization of industrial production. Most industries remained labour-intensive and most were organized on the domestic system. Large-scale units of production with fi xed capital plant, with the exception of a few shipyards and coalmines, were rare. In 1714 the factory age lay at least sixty years in the future. Despite the economic progress between 1603 and 1714, the English economy remained pre-industrialized.3
