The arguments which Maximilien de Béthune, Duc de Sully, brought to bear with his sovereign are summed up in the sixteenth volume of his memoirs, a fine edition of which, printed in 1788 by
F. J. Desoer in Liège, à la Croix d'or, I acquired for a few shillings many years ago at an auction in the small country town of Aylsham, north of Norwich. Sully opened his case by maintaining that the French climate was unsuited to producing silk. The spring, so Sully asserted, began too late, and even when it did arrive, humidity, rising out of the fields or descending on them, tended to be too high. This unfavourable circumstance alone, which nothing could countervail, was extremely detrimental both to the silkworms, which could only with great difficulty be persuaded to hatch, and to the mulberry trees, which needed mild air above all else, especially at that time of year when they were coming into leaf, if they were to flourish. Quite apart from this basic consideration, Sully continued, one had to bear in mind that rural life in France allowed nobody any superfluous leisure, with the possible exception of the habitually idle; and therefore, if one really were to introduce silk cultivation on a large scale, one would have to prevent rural labourers from going about their accustomed daily work and employ them in what was in every respect a dubious enterprise. Sully conceded that country folk would in all likelihood be easily persuaded to make such a change in their basic way of life, for who would not give up labouring on the land for a venture like silk cultivation, which required no real effort at all? And therein lay the most compelling reason against a general adoption of sericulture in France, urged Sully in a deft turn of phrase directed at the soldier king: the danger that the rural population, from whom the best musketeers and cavalrymen had always been recruited, would lose their innate vigour by being employed on work more fitting for women's and children's hands. As a result, it would soon no longer be possible to ensure that among the next generations there would be sufficient numbers of men capable of practising the martial arts. And not only would the manufacturing of silk lead to degeneration among the country folk, Sully continued, but it would also promote the insidious corruption of the urban classes through luxurious living and all that went with it — laziness, effeminacy, lechery and extravagance. Far too much was already being lavished in France on ornamental gardens and ostentatious palaces, on the most extravagant furnishings and décor, gold ornaments and porcelain, carriages and cabriolets, galas and festivities, liqueurs and perfumes, and even, Sully noted, on public offices sold at exorbitant prices, and marriageable ladies from the upper classes, who were auctioned off to the highest bidder. Further to encourage the general decline in moral standards by introducing silk cultivation throughout the kingdom was something Sully must advise his King against, and, par contre, he wished to suggest that one might now like to remember the virtues of those who sustained themselves in the most modest and frugal way. However, the prime minister's objections were ignored, and silk cultivation became established in France within a decade, not least because the Edict of Nantes, which was proclaimed in 1598, safeguarded at least a degree of tolerance to the Huguenots, who until that time had been subject to sever persecution, thereby making it possible for the very people who had played a prominent part in introducing silk cultivation to remain in their French fatherland. — Inspired by the French example, the adoption of silk cultivation by royal patronage occurred at almost the same time in England. On the site where Buckingham Palace now stands, James I had a mulberry garden of several acres laid out, and at Theobald's, his favourite country seat in Essex, he maintained his own silk house for the rearing of silkworms. James was so greatly interested in these industrious creatures that he would spend hour after hour studying their habits and needs, and whenever he undertook journeys about his kingdom he always had with him a large casket full of royal silkworms, the keeping of which was entrusted to a specially appointed groom of the chamber. James had well over a hundred thousand mulberry trees planted in the drier counties of eastern England, and in this and other ways he laid the foundations for an important branch of industry which entered its heyday at the beginning of the eighteenth century, when, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV, more than fifty thousand Huguenots fled to England, many of whom, experienced in breeding silkworms and in the fabrication of silk stuffs — craftsmen and merchant families such as the Lefèvres and the Tillettes, the De Hagues, the Martineaus and the Columbines — settled in Norwich, at that time the second largest city in England, where since the early sixteenth century there had been a colony of about five thousand immigrant Flemish and Walloon weavers. By 1750, a bare two generations later, the Huguenot master weavers of Norwich had risen to become the wealthiest, most influential and cultivated class of entrepreneurs in the entire kingdom. In their factories and those of their suppliers there was the greatest imaginable commotion, day in, day out, and it is said in a history of silk manufacture in England that a traveller approaching Norwich under the black sky of a winter night would be amazed by the glare over the city, caused by light coming from the windows of the workshops, still busy at this late hour. Increase of light and increase of labour have always gone hand in hand. If today, when our gaze is no longer able to penetrate the pale reflected glow over the city and its environs, we think back to the eighteenth century, it hardly seems possible that even then, before the Industrial Age, a great number of people, at least in some places, spent their lives with their wretched bodies strapped to looms made of wooden frames and rails, hung with weights, and reminiscent of instruments of torture or cages. It was a