antilla.
Camlets, too, were woven for the religious orders of priests and monks,
as also calimancoes, tabinets, brocaded satins, florettes, and damasks,
of which the legends of our grandmothers, and occasionally their
wardrobes, bear trace; crape, the celebrated Norwich crape, now almost a
forgotten fabric, was of later invention; but its fame is chronicled in
Ministerial mandates during Walpole's administration, 1721, when court
mourning was ordered to consist of nothing but that pre-eminent material.
Long since, the paramatta cloth has superseded both bombazine and Norwich
crape; nor must we be unmindful that this superfine invention owes its
origin to the skill and ingenuity of a manufacturer of the same city.
Shawls of every variety have held a prominent place among the
manufactures; indeed, may be considered as nominally the staple produce
of the Norwich looms, though in reality such is not the fact, an infinite
variety of materials, bearing as many new and fashionable titles, being
in truth the result of the labour of its artisans, silk--satins,
brocades, alpaccas, bareges, and many more; and of late years the shoe
manufactory has so vastly increased, that it may fairly take a place
henceforth among the constituents of the "fame" of the capital of
Norfolk. It may not be out of place here also to give some little sketch
of the rise and progress of that most important of all inventions and
arts, printing, in these particular parts,--more especially as William
Caxton, the first English printer, was one of the agents, and a principal
one, in opening the commerce between this country and Flanders in 1464,
when that port was appointed a staple for English goods as well as
Calais, a measure fraught with immense advantages to the manufacturing
districts of the country, and of course pre-eminently to this city. When
he, the mercer's apprentice, first stamped the "merchants' mark" upon his
master's bales, he little thought that by this same process of stamping,
carried forward by the ingenuity of many men into a new art, the whole
aspect of the world's history would be changed. The origin of these
distinctive "marks," still to be seen engraved on brasses, painted in
church windows, and here and there carved on the doors and panels of old
houses, is about as obscure as most of the other customs of those ages.
They were undoubtedly used to distinguish the property of one merchant
from another; and if their owners gave money