—— es” Lees Te ee 
113 
Compared with other portions of the kingdom the county was 
at the time thinly peopled and indifferently cultivated. On the 
eastern side the rocky defiles, the wild gorges, and the sterile 
moors, of Todmorden, Burnley, and Pendle, afforded little facility 
and less inducement for intercommunication: broad trackless 
wastes stretched away in the direction of the Fylde, which had 
not yet been brought under cultivation, and in the south the 
country was for the most part made up of uncleared forests, in 
which the lordly stag roamed at will, and extensive mosses and 
fens such as Ashton Moss, Barton Moss, and Chat Moss, where 
the stranger seldom or never adventured himself. Indeed a 
century later the Bishop of Chester found the country so in- 
accessible that he was afraid to hold a Diocesan visitation in it, 
and when compelled by a peremptory letter from Queen Elizabeth 
to do so, the poor man bewailed his fate in piteous tone, and 
complained that ‘“‘ provender for his horses was very scarce ” and 
the country in some parts ‘‘ so very wild and dangerous that had 
it not been for the kindness of some people he would have lost 
his horses.” 
The Flemish immigrants who, in the reign of Edward IIL., 
had been tempted to settle in the county, revealed the secrets of 
their craft, and thus planted the sapling of that industry which 
gradually extended itself through the Lancashire valleys, and to 
the development of which the commercial greatness of the 
country is due. The people made the most of the knowledge 
and skill they had acquired; trade had thriven, wealth had 
increased, and several small towns had sprung into note. In 
the reign of Henry VIII. Lancashire had become famous for its 
cottons, which, by the way, were not cottons at all, the word 
being only a corruption of coatings, for the ‘light gossamer 
thread,” was then unknown, and the cotton manufacture, pro- 
perly so called, did not rise from its cradle till more than a 
couple of centuries later. Manchester was the chief manufactur- 
ing town. Leland, in 1533, described it as ‘‘ the fairest, best- 
builded, quickest (i.e., busiest), and most populous town in 
Lancashire.” What the actual population then was we know 
not, but in 1578, when Queen Elizabeth granted a new charter 
to the Collegiate Church, it was said to be 10,000, though this 
number probably included the whole parish, and not the town 
only. An old chronicler tells us of a famous clothier in 1520, 
one Martin Bryan (Byrom, probably), of Manchester, who “ kept 
a great number of servants at work, as carders, spinners, 
weavers, fullers, dyers, shearmen’ to the great admiration of all 
that came to behold them.” The example he set was largely 
followed by others, and the importance to which the trade 
attained is curiously illustrated by an enactment in the 33rd 
year of Henry VIII.’s reign. In 1540-1 an Act was passed con- 
