red years ago, when Yarranton
urged them upon the attention of the English public.

On his return from Holland, he accordingly set on foot various schemes
of public utility. He stirred up a movement for the encouragement of
the British fisheries. He made several journeys into Ireland for the
purpose of planting new manufactures there. He surveyed the River
Slade with the object of rendering it navigable, and proposed a plan
for improving the harbour of Dublin. He also surveyed the Dee in
England with a view to its being connected with the Severn. Chambers
says that on the decline of his popularity in 1677, he was taken by
Lord Clarendon to Salisbury to survey the River Avon, and find out how
that river might be made navigable, and also whether a safe harbour for
ships could be made at Christchurch; and that having found where he
thought safe anchorage might be obtained, his Lordship proceeded to act
upon Yarranton's recommendations.[16]

Another of his grand schemes was the establishment of the linen
manufacture in the central counties of England, which, he showed, were
well adapted for the growth of flax; and he calculated that if success
attended his efforts, at least two millions of money then sent out of
the country for the purchase of foreign linen would be retained at
home, besides increasing the value of the land on which the flax was
grown, and giving remunerative employment to our own people, then
emigrating for want of work. "Nothing but Sloth or Envy," he said,
"can possibly hinder my labours from being crowned with the wished for
success; our habitual fondness for the one hath already brought us to
the brink of ruin, and our proneness to the other hath almost
discouraged all pious endeavours to promote our future happiness."

In 1677 he published the first part of his England's Improvement by Sea
and Land--a very remarkable book, full of sagacious insight as
respected the future commercial and manufacturing greatness of England.
Mr. Dove says of this book that "Yarranton chalks out in it the future
course of Britain with as free a hand as if second-sight had revealed
to him those expansions of her industrial career which never fail to
surprise us, even when we behold them realized." Besides his extensive
plans for making harbours and improving internal navigation with the
object of creating new channels for domestic industry, his schemes for
extending the iron and the woollen trades, establishing the