THE ESSEX WOOL TRADE. 157
Coggeshall and Halstead—the districts of later Dutch settlement
—appear as important towns, whilst Braintree, Bocking and
the Hedinghams were busy places.
The sites of the towns and villages mentioned in these docu-
ments are shown in Figure 3, where some attempt has been
made to indicate their relative importance. It will be noticed
that with the exception of Colchester, the trade centres around
an area a little to the north-west of Coggeshall. Maldon is
conspicuous by its absence. There is in fact a tendency for the
trade to migrate westwards. Examination of the topography
reveals the reason for this change in the siting of the wool towns.
The group of towns and. villages around Halstead, Bocking and
Coggeshall are all situated on the rivers Colne, Pant and their
tributaries. The westward movement to their riverside sites
was, of course, due to the desire of the wool-workers to take
full advantage of the water power for the fulling mills. No
doubt this movement to the more strongly flowing headwaters
explains the decline in the importance of Maldon and the north-
east as centres of the Essex woollen industry, since the latter
were on the more sluggish coastal waters. The movement
can be compared to that taking place in the Yorkshire woollen
industry a few centuries later. Colchester presumably still
retained its pre-eminence, because of geographical inertia—the
trade still being attracted to an area where inherited skill re-
mained.
Thus, at the close of the sixteenth century, the woollen trade
of Essex was at its height, and was localised in the northern
central part of the County. The elements of decay were, how-
ever, present. Feuds between the native and Dutch weavers
hindered trade ; the plague gave a serious setback to Col-
chester ; and the Civil War saw the beginnings of the decline
of the trade. The Colchester Seal standard began to relax,
and, under the pressure of foolish rules amongst themselves
and the rising competition to the north and west of the County,
the following century saw the rapid decay of the woollen industry
in Essex.
Yet the passing of the wool trade left its mark on Essex,
not only in the existence of place names and interesting buildings.
All textile trades seem to produce an inherited skill difficult for
newcomers to acquire. This skill seems to have survived the
passing of the centuries, and in the twentieth century a new
textile industry came to life, near the site of the old woollen
industry, with the initiation of the artificial silk industry near
Braintree.