glass used in England had hitherto been almost entirely French, "for not only," observes Anderson, "very near all the plate glass of our coaches and chairs, and of our fine looking-glasses, came from France, but likewise our finest window-glass, which was usually called Normandy glass and French crown-glass; both which we have since made entirely our own manufacture in the highest perfection." This writer conceives, also, that the improvement of the various manufactures introduced some years before by the French Protestant artizans who fled to this country on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes could not have been so speedily nor so effectually accomplished, had it not been for the complete prevention of intercourse between the two countries by this war. To this cause he attributes the progress made by us in the manufacture of cutlery, watches, toys, ribbons, and especially of broad silk; in all of which branches we came in course of time even to outdo the French. In other cases, however, it is admitted that the failure of the usual supply from France merely occasioned the importation of the article from another quarter. Thus, before the war, we had been accustomed to consume the coarse linens of that country, called dowlases and locksams, chiefly manufactured in Normandy and Britany, to the annual value of above 200,000l.; but now, "England," says Anderson, "not being well able to be without those two sorts of linen, set the Hamburghers on imitating them so well, that the very names of those French linens with us are buried in oblivion." Here, then, the consolation was, that, if we were no gainers, our enemies at any rate were losers—that France was almost entirely deprived of a most profitable manufacture, which she was never likely to recover.
On the whole, however, the war, wasting capital on the one hand, and impeding its accumulation on the other,—augmenting the public burdens, and generally diminishing private gains,—could not fail, ere long, seriously to affect our economical prosperity; and accordingly, when it had been brought to an end by the peace of Ryswick, in 1697, the kingdom seems to have felt like a man staggering with fatigue and weakness. One writer of the day affirms,
