runaway serfs, and their charters, insuring political and
economic freedom, gave them superior advantages for trading.

The guild system of manufacture was gradually replaced by the
domestic system. The workman's cottage, standing in its garden,
housed the loom and the spinning wheel, and the entire family was
engaged in labor at home. But the workman, thus apparently
independent, was not the owner of either the raw material or the
finished product. A middleman or agent brought him the wool,
carried away the cloth, and paid him his hire. Daniel Defoe, who
made a tour of Britain in 1794-6, left a picture of rural
England in this period, often called the golden age of labor. The
land, he says, "was divided into small inclosures from two acres
to six or seven each, seldom more; every three or four pieces of
land had an house belonging to them, ...hardly an house
standing out of a speaking distance from another .... We could
see at every house a tenter, and on almost every tenter a piece
of cloth or kersie or shalloon .... At every considerable
house was a manufactory .... Every clothier keeps one horse,
at least, to carry his manufactures to the market and every one
generally keeps a cow or two or more for his family. By this
means the small pieces of inclosed land about each house are
occupied, for they scarce sow corn enough to feed their poultry
....
The houses are full of lusty fellows, some at the dye vat,
some at the looms, others dressing the clothes; the women or
children carding or spinning, being all employed, from the
youngest to the oldest."

But more significant than these changes was the rise of the