downfal of the manufactories and of the workmen.
They were manacled men who were
running a race with others whose limbs were
free, and the result could not be doubtful. Yet
it is curious to see what tender care these
ancient kingly grants express for the well-being and
the well-doing of "our subjects" engaged in the
making of woollen stuffs—how, in consequence
of humble representations of benefits to be
derived from this and the other interference, the
sovereign is graciously pleased to concede to
such and such corporations such and such rights
and immunities. The Exonian tuckers, like the
Spitalfields weavers, hugged their banes as
blessings; and a manufacture, which yielded at one
time half a million sterling, silently departed
from the banks of the Exe.

The merchants and master-fullers were really
directing fellow-workmen among their dependents,
taking a part in their manual labour. The
language in which those dependents were
invariably addressed was soce (socii). The city is
crowded with endowed almshouses, whose pious
founders devoted large portions of their gains
to provide comforts for their dependents in their
old age. Time has introduced many abuses, and
made these trusts the instruments of personal
patronage, the exercise of which neither the
Commissioners of Charities, nor the powers of public
opinion, have been able effectually to control.
Formerly, the great merchants and manufacturers
were the sole distributors of the gifts intended
for the labouring people employed in the woollen
manufactures. A few of these and their direct
descendants are still left, but among the present
corporate court there is scarcely a representative
now of that great staple trade which was
patronised by monarchs, founded the fortunes of
the local aristocracy, and gave employment to
multitudes of the labouring poor. The forefathers
of no less than three of the existing directors
of the Bank of England were engaged in
the woollen trade of Exeter.

The charities of these prosperous men were
not only liberally conferred upon the places
where they had amassed their fortunes, but often
brought the benefits of education, and provided
asylums for the aged and the poor, by the endowments
of schools and hospitals in the humbler
places of their birth. The founder of Blundell's
School, at Tiverton, was a "fuller." In the
small town of Kingsbridge, the principal public
school is due to the munificence of Thomas
Crispin, a "fuller," who also contributed largely
to the charitable foundations of the Devonian
capital. One may notice, in passing, two curious
epitaphs, one in the Kingsbridge churchyard,
and another at the neighbouring cemetery at
West Alvington. At the portal of the first are
these lines:

Here lie I at the chancel door;
Here lie I because I am poor.
The farther in the more you pay,
But here lie I as warm as they. (1793.)

The second shows that the harmony between the
clergyman and his parishioners must have been
sorely disturbed. There is a slate stone erected
to the memory of one John Jeffreys, who died in
1748, which tells the following story:

This youth when in his sickness lay, Did for
the minister send, That he would come and with him
pray, But he would not attend. But when this
young man buried was, The minister he did admit,
That he should be carried into the church, That he
might money geet. By this you see what folks
will dwo, To geet money if they can, For he did
refuse to come and pray, By the foresaid young
man.

It would not be easy to find a more emphatic
explosion of indignation. I have heard the
inscription denounced as calumnious. It is very
likely that the clergyman did not visit the sick
young man; it is quite probable that he was paid
his burial fees; but the reason for non-attendance
silently insinuated in the one case, and the bold
proclamation of his motive in the other, "that
he might money geet," do not display much
Christian charity.

One day of the year (Ascension-day) was occupied
in local fights. It was called prossessioning,
or beating the bounds, day. The boys of the
different localities were assembled in the parish
church. Every one received a white willow
wand and a bun, and, accompanied by the beadle
or the sexton, the boys were marched round the
parish boundaries, which they were expected to
defend against all intruders and invaders. Such
invaders there were—the boys of the neighbouring
parish. There were some places where the
line of demarcation was the middle of a pond, or
the centre of a water-course, and there, the frontier
not being exactly defined, the territorial
combats raged most fiercely. There was a remote
parish—that of St. Sidwell's—the claims of
whose "boys" to the right of citizenship were
doubtful. They were contumaciously called
Grecians; but the parish being large, and its
warriors numerous, the citizen lads were accustomed
to combine against "the outer barbarians," and
the battles raged furiously, and black eyes and
bloody noses were left to exhibit the results of
the fray. Each parish had in turns suffered the
ignominy of defeat and reaped the laurels of
victory. Each had its heroes and its poltroons—
the leaders of the forlorn hopes and the lingerers
in the rear.

Most of the green open spaces within and near
the city of Exeter were then tenter-grounds,
locally known as rack-fields, which were employed
for stretching, measuring, and drying the great
variety of woollen cloths woven in the scattered
cottages of the husbandmen, or in the
villages and towns of the neighbourhood, and
brought to the western capital to be milled, and
burled, and carded, and rowed, and singed, and
shorn, and dyed, and racked, and calendered,
and pressed, and tucked, and tilloted, and packed,
and corded, and marked, and shipped for
exportation. The brightest colours stratified the rack-
fields—hues of dazzling scarlet, blue, yellow,