Cloathing.
Here it will not be amiss to insert a passage which I meet with in an Industrious An∣tiquary * as relating to the present subject.
The Manufacture of Cloathing in this County hath been much greater, and those of that Trade far richer, I perswade my self, heretofore than in these times, or else the Heirs and Executors of the deceased were more careful that the Testators dead Corps should be interred in more decent manner, than they are now a-dayes; Other∣wise I should not find so many Marbles richly inlaid with Brass, to the memory of Cloathiers in fore-going Ages, and not one in these later seasons. All the Monuments in the Church of Neyland which bare any face of comliness, and Antiquity are erected to the memory of Cloathiers, and such as belong to that Mystery.
Some perchance would assign another reason, viz. Because Monuments formerly were conceived to conduce much to the happiness of the deceased (as bespeaking in their Epitaphs the Suffrages of the living in their behalf) which errour is vanished away since the Reformation; all which being fully beleeved weakneth not the observation, but that Suff•…lk Clothiers were Wealthier in former than in our Age.
