taking up what is called the 'New Draperies', lighter and cheaper cloths called 'bays and says'. 'A bay was lighter and finer than modern baize.... A say was a fine durable cloth, made entirely of wool with a texture resembling serge'. By the 18th century this industry was in decline, becoming concentrated in the larger towns, Ipswich and Colchester. At the close of the 16th century, Sir Robert Jermyn described Clare as '... a populous market town [which] requires an able, painful and discreet teacher ...' in a letter to Robert Cecil requesting the appointment of a 'Mr Colte' as the town's new pastor. Into the modern age From the relative boom of the 16th century, Clare suffered a gradual decline as a leading town in West Suffolk. For a while in the 17th century, it retained some status as a transport and distribution hub, lying on a major highway into London. Hostelries were set up and warehouses occupied a key role in the economy. Trade was diverted as the Stour became navigable as far as Sudbury in 1709. The handloom weaving industry was gone by the 1800s; the last weaver died in 1825, aged 83. Straw-plaiting for ladies' bonnets, a local cottage industry, disappeared as fashions changed. After an agricultural boom in the Napoleonic wars, farmers were hit by falling prices; many labourers were laid off. Opposition to newer technology appeared in Clare and surrounding districts in 1816 and four local men were gaoled after being convicted of burning a threshing machine. This was the Year Without a Summer caused by volcanic dust in the atmosphere: the local press reported floods, 'long continued wet weather', unripened wheat and widespread civil unrest. Harvests were again terrible in 1828 and 1829, followed by the Swing Riots. The Long Depression (1870–1895) caused many families to move away from the town. Historic travel writing William Camden in his Britain, or, a Chorographicall Description of the most flourishing Kingdomes, England, Scotland, and Ireland (1610) wrote: 'On the South side wee saw the river Stour, which immediately from the verie spring head spreadeth a great Mere called Stourmmere, but soone after, drawing it selfe within the bankes, runneth first by Clare, a noble village which had a castle, but now , and gave name to the right noble familie of the Clares'. Daniel Defoe in A tour thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain (1748