“Adjoining to the mansion of Stand Hall,” observes Miss Spence, “is a barn, which was once a chapel. It has a fine Gothic roof of English oak, and it is a singular fact, no one ever saw a spider’s web upon it; and it always looks as if it had just been swept down. Mr. J—— informed me no person he had ever met with could account for it, although all other barns are covered with spiders’ webs.”
Of Manchester she says, “It is a very large town, but the streets, for the most part, are inconveniently narrow, with very few noble buildings or handsome houses. The population is immense, and the traffic considerable; and it has acquired great celebrity from its extensive manufactories, so productive, all over the kingdom.” We need only make one more quotation. “I wish I could tell your Ladyship,” she says, “that the peasantry were possessed of that native simplicity we expect to find two hundred miles from the Metropolis; their manners accord with their rude and uncultivated appearance, and their demeanour is remarkably forbidding; but this, I understand, is often the case near manufacturing towns, though it is the first time I have had the opportunity of observing it.” Evidently Manchester, even ninety years ago, was some distance from Arcadia.
How the First Spinning Machinery was taken to Belgium.
The introduction of spinning machinery to the Continent is a curious episode in the history of commerce, and has some interest for Manchester people, as it was from that place the men and the machinery were obtained. The industrial activity of England and the riches which the inventions of Kay, Highs, and Arkwright brought her, naturally attracted the attention of her foreign rivals, but in those days there were stringent regulations against the export of machines, and the “seduction of artizans” to engage in the service of a foreign master was a criminal offence. The temptation was, however, too great for the attempt not to be made. As Englishmen had gone abroad in order to obtain the secrets of the silk and other manufactures, so foreigners came here to spy out the industrial riches of the land. The man who succeeded in taking abroad the spinning-jenny was Liévin Bauwens.[8] He belonged to a Belgian family that claimed patrician rank, but had always been associated with the industries of Holland, in Antwerp, Malines, and other places. Although the names and coat-of-arms of the Bauwens are to be found in the books of the Low Country heralds, they are also inscribed for generations in the records of the Tanners’ Guild of Ghent.