Merchants have a
great trade to Genoa, Leghorn, Naples, Messina, and Venice; as also
to Spain and Portugal, also exporting with their herring very great
quantities of worsted stuffs, and stuffs made of silk and worsted,
camblets, etc., the manufactures of the neighbouring city of
Norwich and of the places adjacent.
Besides this, they carry on a very considerable trade with Holland,
whose opposite neighbours they are; and a vast quantity of woollen
manufactures they export to the Dutch every year. Also they have a
fishing trade to the North Seas for white fish, which from the
place are called the North Sea cod.
They have also a considerable trade to Norway and to the Baltic,
from whence they bring back deals and fir timber, oaken plank,
balks, spars, oars, pitch, tar, hemp, flax, spruce canvas, and
sail-cloth, with all manner of naval stores, which they generally
have a consumption for in their own port, where they build a very
great number of ships every year, besides refitting and repairing
the old.
Add to this the coal trade between Newcastle and the river of
Thames, in which they are so improved of late years that they have
now a greater share of it than any other town in England, and have
quite worked the Ipswich men out of it who had formerly the chief
share of the colliery in their hands.
For the carrying on all these trades they must have a very great
number of ships, either of their own or employed by them: and it
may in some measure be judged of by this that in the year 1697, I
had an account from the town register that there was then 1,123
sail of ships using the sea and belonged to the town, besides such
ships as the merchants of Yarmouth might be concerned in, and be
part owners of, belonging to any other ports.
To all this I must add, without compliment to the town or to the
people, that the merchants, and even the generality of traders of
Yarmouth, have a very good reputation in trade as well abroad as at
home for men of fair and honourable dealing, punctual and just in
their performing their engagements and in discharging commissions;
and their seamen, as well masters as mariners, are justly esteemed
among the ablest and most expert navigators in England.
This town, however populous and large, was ever contained in one
parish, and had but one church; but within these two years they
have built another very fine church near the south end of the town.
The old church is dedicated to St. Nicholas, and was built by that
famous Bishop of Norwich, William Herbert, who flourished in the
reign of William II., and Henry I., William of Malmesbury, calls
him Vir Pecuniosus; he might have called him Vir Pecuniosissimus,
considering the times he lived in, and the works of charity and
munificence which he has left as witnesses of his immense riches;
for he built the Cathedral Church, the Priory for sixty monks, the
Bishop's Palace, and the parish church of St. Leonard, all in
Norwich; this great church at Yarmouth, the Church of St. Margaret
at Lynn, and of St. Mary at Elmham.
