A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE 



in the hilly district of Blackburnshire and Salfordshire within a radius of 

 thirty or forty miles from Manchester. This we gather rather from the 

 evidence of Tudor times when the industry had been fully established for 

 more than a century previously. 



At the time when cloth-making had become the staple English manu- 

 facture, at the close of the fifteenth century, various kinds of weaving — in- 

 cluding a somewhat new departure, the manufacture of ' fustians,' a mixture 

 of wool and linen, and subsequently styled ' cottons ' — were being busily pro- 

 secuted in the hundred of Salford, and particularly in the town and neigh- 

 bourhood of Manchester. The contemporary references to the supremacy of 

 the Manchester woollen trade indicate that it had flourished there for a con- 

 siderable period, and was in a condition of prosperous stability in the first few 

 decades of the sixteenth century. Leland, visiting these parts somewhere 

 about the year 1538, writes noticeably of Manchester as 'The fairest, best 

 builded, quickhest and most populous town of all Lancastreshire.'"^ Other 

 towns also connected with the woollen manufacture were not far behind their 

 leader, and Bolton le Moors is especially mentioned by the antiquary as 

 standing mostly by cottons and coarse yarn ; ' ' Divers villages in the moors 

 about Bolton,' he adds, ' do make cottons.' "^ In the Duchy Records of the 

 reign of Henry VIII references occur to the fulling mills of Bolton, Mid- 

 dleton, and Bury.'" 



Evidence of the commercial importance of Manchester in the early six- 

 teenth century is afforded by the removal of the privilege of sanctuary for 

 thieves from there to Chester, effected in 1 543,"* in order to add to the 

 security of the 'cotton' trade. In the next reign the Manchester 'cottons,' 

 so called,'" were again the subject of legislation, when in an Act "' entitled 

 ' for the true making of woollen cloth ' it was enacted that ' all the cottons 

 called Manchester, Lancashire, and Cheshire cottons ..." should be of a 

 certain length, breadth, and weight. An entry in the Duchy Records for 

 this reign refers to the cloths and cottons of Bury and Manchester,'" while 

 as early as 1562 the towns of Radcliffe and Bury are named as furnishing 

 packs of ' cloths called cottons.' "' 



Again, in 1566 the towns of Rochdale, Bolton, Bury, Leigh, and Man- 

 chester were noted for this ' fustian ' or so-called ' cotton ' manufacture,"' The 

 regulations applying to the woollen trade were extended to the fustian manu- 

 facture. Two years previously a case was brought to the Duchy Court to 

 recover the aulnager's fees for the sealing of woollen cloths, cottons, friezes, 

 and rugs of a certain length, breadth, and weight according to the statute, at 

 Bolton and Bury.'^" In 1566 an attempt was made to counterfeit the 

 aulnager's seal on cottons, friezes, and rugs at Salford, Manchester, Rochdale, 

 Bury, and Bolton.'" In 1567 ' cottons ' and cloths are referred to as being 



'" Leknd, Itin. By ' quickhest ' Leland probably meant the ' most bustling,' the most alive town in 

 Lancashire. 



"» Ibid, vii, 56. '" Duchy of Lane. Dep. xliv, R. 8. 



'" Statutes of the Realm, 33 Hen. VIIL cap. xv. 



'" The word ' cottons ' here, and subsequently until the middle of the eighteenth century, refers to 

 ' fustians,' as previously explained. It was probably a coarse &bric akin to the ' linsey-woolseys ' commonly 

 in use among the poorer classes as late as the middle of the nineteenth century. 



"• 5 & 6 Edw. VI. '" Duchy of Lane. Dep. xlix, C. z. "' Ibid. Plead, xlvi, M. 5. 



'" Statutes of the Realm, 8 Eliz. ; also Ure, Cotton Manuf. 221 (1835, reprinted 1861). 



=» Duchy of Lane. Plead, lix, L. 4 (6 Eliz.). »' Ibid. Ixviii, L. 3 (8 Eliz.). 



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