, said that the Author had been Dfr. Harrison good enough to give an account of the substructure of the Tower Bridge. He trusted that when the bridge was finished the Author would also give an account of the superstructure. The bridge was original both in conception and in design and it was important that a complete account of it should appear in the Minutes of Proceedings. He had much satisfaction in proposing a vote of thanks to the Author for his useful and practical Paper. cussion of this important Paper, noticed one point to which he should like to refer, viz., the strengthof the toe which was carried all round the foundation at the base of the concrete, for the purpose, he presumed, of increasing the superficial area of the clay on which the bridge stood. He had done such a thing himself and so far as he k:new it had answered very well. He thought, however, that there must be in this case a considerable tensile strain in the base of the concrete at the heel of the toe. The settlement of such a bridge upon the clay tended to take the form of a curved line, and the pressure must, therefore, be very severe upon the toe. H e believed that, unless there was timber or iron in the base (he should be glad to know if there were such), a considerable tensile stress would be thrown upon the concrete at the point he had indicated, tending to crack if not to shear it. the subject of the Tower Bridge at the present stage of its progress, because there was enough detail in this structure for two Papers, one upon the foundations and one upon the superstructure. A bridge must not only be looked upon by itself in elevation, but the circumstances of the site should be duly considered in every case. The circumstances of the present site were that there were important wharves abore the bridge ; and by building a bridge with an open span, those wharves need not be purchased and need not be W) fully compensated. The two river-piers permitted the construction of suitable arrangements for an opening central span ; and it would be seen that, owing to the area required for the pressure on the base, there was room for the counterbalance in the 70-foot width to assist the opening. After all 70
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Mon, and the most industrious of that profession in the kingdom." iX Benedict Webb, who could thus introduce himself to James I in I6I9, had no hesitation in regarding himself as a leading figure'in the contemporary cloth industry, and he never lost any opportunity of describing himself and his achievements. This belief in himself however, had one most valuable result, for at the end of his life he wrote his own short autobiography 'Anaration of my Imployments sithence I came to discresyon,'' which has been preserved among the two thousand papers of his nephew John Smyth of Nibley in the Gloucester City Library.2 It gives a vivid picture of a man whose career is not only interesting in itself, but throws light on some of the most important aspects of the cloth industry of the early seventeenth century: the expansion of new types of fabric destined to challenge the long supremacy of 'cloth'; the anxiety of governments to stimulate industrial progress and their consequent alacrity to take advantage of local knowledge and expertise; the action taken by local clothiers to secure the repeal of an unwelcome statute; the methods by which new industrial ventures were organized and financed.Benedict Webb came from a family of clothiers. His grandfather who died at Kingswood 3 in 1558 probably conducted only a very small business,4 but his father and brothers held positions of considerable importance in the local industry.5 Benedict was born in 1563, and until the age of sixteen was brought up by hisofather in the cloth trade. He was then bound apprentice in London to a linen draper and French merchant who sent him abroad three months later, so that for the next four or five years he divided his time between Paris and Rouen, with occasional visits to Italy. This unusual apprenticeship makes his case particularly interesting, for while English commercial relations with Flanders, the Baltic, or the East, are frequently discussed, this important market in north France has received little attention from economic historians of the seventeenth century. A treaty of Charles IX in 1572 had granted English merchants extremely favourable terms,6 and in I 6o I imports from Rouen were only surpassed by those from-Bordeaux and la Rochelle.7 The market was * This article is a shortened version of the essay which was awarded the John Nichols Prize by the Department of English Local History, Leicester.
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