ABSTRACT
Circumstances favourable to English manufactures—I have frequently remarked in previous chapters that Flanders was the great manufactory of Europe throughout the Middle Ages, and up to the sixteenth century. Her competition would in any case have been sufficient to check much export of manufactured goods from England, though we had by the sixteenth century got past the time when most of our imports of clothing came from Flanders. Now, at the end of the sixteenth century, Flemish competition was practically annihilated, owing to the ravages made in the Low Countries by the Spanish persecutions and occupation. But England did not merely benefit by the cessation of Flemish competition: she received at the same time hundreds of Flemish immigrants, who greatly improved our home manufactures, and thus our prosperity was doubly assisted. The result is seen in the fact that our export of wool diminished, and our export of cloth increased.
