508 PARLIAMENTARY COLBERTISM 
AD. 16% the eighteenth century, show how deeply-seated and how 
wide-spread the severance between capital and labour had 
and formed become. The struggle had assumed considerable proportions 
tions in Devonshire, in 1718, when a proclamation against unlawful 
clubs was published, reciting that, whereas “complaint had 
been made to the Government that great numbers of Wool- 
combers and Weavers in several parts of the Kingdom had 
lately formed themselves into lawless Clubs and Societies 
which had illegally presumed to use a Common Seal and to 
act as Bodies Corporate by making and unlawfully conspiring 
to execute certain By-laws or Orders, whereby they pre- 
tend to determine who had a right to the Trade, what and 
how many Apprentices and Journeymen each man should 
keep at once, together with the prices of all their Manu- 
factures and the manner and materials of which they should 
be wrought; and that when many of the said Conspirators 
wanted work because their Masters would not submit to such 
pretended Orders and unreasonable Demands, they fed them 
with Money till they could again get employment, in order 
to oblige their Masters to employ them for want of other 
hands; and that the said Clubs by their great numbers and 
their correspondence in several of the Trading Towns of the 
Kingdom became dangerous to the publick peace, especially in 
the Counties of Devon and Somerset; where many Riots had 
been committed, private Houses broken open, the Subjects 
assaulted, wounded and put in peril of their lives, great 
Quantities of Woollen Goods cut and spoilt, Prisoners set at 
Liberty by Force, and that the Rioters refused to disperse, 
notwithstanding the reading of the Proclamation required 
by the late Riot Act. For these causes the Proclamation 
enjoined the putting the said Riot Act and another Act 
made in the reign of Ed. VL (intitled The Bill of Con- 
spiracy of the Victuallers and Craftsmen) in Execution 
against all such as should unlawfully confederate and com- 
sn Devon 
and 
KNomerset. 
them as domestic workers. ¢It is sufficiently known to most persons about this 
Citty, what great mischief and disorders happened by the Insurrection of the 
Weavers in August last, not only to the breaking of the public Peace, but to the 
great damage of several persons whose Looms and Instruments of Trade they 
forcibly took away from them and burned.” They persisted day after day “in 
rontinual tnmulis!! and laid ¢ violent hands on looms.’