A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE 



wise * manufacturer of cottons ' would have been 

 a more natural appellation. However, there is 

 some doubt upon the point, and, at any rate, 

 from the presence of one cotton manufacturer 

 before 1578 much cannot be inferred. The 

 reference next in order is a petitioner's prayer to 

 the earl of Salisbury, probably of the year 16 10, 

 for confirmation of a grant made to him for 

 reformation of frauds daily committed in the 

 manufacture of ' bombazine cotton such as 

 groweth in the land of Persia being no kind of 

 wool.' " 



Of much greater value is another mention of 

 the English cotton industry some eleven years 

 later.^' It is in the form of a petition ' as well of 

 divers merchants and citizens of London that 

 use buying and selling of fustians made in Eng- 

 land, as of the makers of the same fustians ' to 

 ' the honourable knights, citizens and burgessess 

 of the Commonshouse of Parliament.' From 

 it the following important extract has been 

 taken : — 



about twenty years past divers people in this king- 

 dom, but chiefly in the county of Lancaster, have 

 found out the trade of making of the fustians, made of 

 a kind of bombast or down, being a fruit of the earth 

 growing upon little shrubs or bushes, brought into this 

 kingdom by the Turkey merchants, from Smyrna, 

 C)prus, Acr.i, and Sydon, but commonly called cotton 

 wool ; and also of linen yarn most part brought out 

 of Scotland, and other some made in England, and no 

 part of the same fustians of any wool at all, for which 

 said bomb.m and yarn imported, his Majesty hath a 

 great )early sum of money for the custom and sub- 

 sidy thereof. There is at least 40 thousand pieces of 

 fustian of this kind yearly made in England, the sub- 

 sidy to his Majesty of the materials for making of every 

 piece coming to between id. and I0</. the piece; and 

 thousands of poor people set on workmg of these 

 fustians. The right honourable Duke of Lennox in 

 II of Jacobus, 1613, procured a patent from his 

 Majesty, of alnager of new draperies for 60 years, 

 upon pretence that wool was converted into other 

 sorts of commodities to the loss of customs and sub- 

 sidies for wool transported beyond seas ; and therein 

 is inserted into his patent, searching and sealing ; and 

 subsidy for 80 several stuffs ; and amongst the rest 

 these fustians or other stuffs of this kind of cotton wool, 

 and subsidy and a fee for the same, and forfeiture of 

 20/- for putting any to sale unsealed, the moiety of 

 the same forfeiture to the said duke, and power thereby 

 given to the duke or his deputies, to enter any man's 

 house to search for any such stuffi, and seize them till 

 the forfeiture be paid ; and if any resist such search, 

 to forfeit 10/. and power thereby given to the lord 

 treasurer or chancellor of the Exchequer, to make new 



" Maurice Peeters to the earl of Salisbury ; 

 S.P. Dom. lix, 5. Quoted from Mr. Price's 

 article in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. rx. 

 No. 4. Mr. Price points out that the date could not 

 have boen later than 16 1 2, when Salisbury died. 



" It has recently been unearthed by Mr. W. H. 

 Price, who also discovered the reference just quoted. 

 See the article mentioned in the previous note. 



ordinances or grant commissions for the aid of the 

 duke and his officers in execution of their office. 



The petitioners pray for relief from the opera- 

 tion of the patent. There are many interesting 

 points arising out of this petition or the circum- 

 stances which occasioned it. The patent referred 

 to was originally granted to the duke in 1594, 

 but it did not then cover cottons. These, as the 

 petition asserts, were added in 16 13. Hence, 

 presumably, cottons could not have been a very 

 prominent manufacture in 1594. The petitioners, 

 speaking of facts which must have been within 

 the recollection of many living people, allege that 

 the cotton manufacture first attracted attention 

 'about twenty years past,' from say 1621 ; much 

 stress cannot be laid upon the expression ' found 

 out.' Again, we learn from this petition that 

 the cotton industry suffered some kind of regula- 

 tion. After the evidence already adduced it is 

 almost needless for the purposes of this article to 

 notice the isolated proposal made in 1625 that 

 the poor should be employed in the spinning and 

 weaving of cotton."' Although the oft-quoted 

 passage from Lewes Roberts' Treasure of Traffike 

 (1641) no longer possesses the interest of being 

 the earliest known reference to an extensive 

 cotton industry in England, it still has consider- 

 able significance. The passage runs : — 



The town of Manchester in Lancashire must be 

 also herein remembered, and worthily for their en- 

 couragement commended, who buy the yarne of the 

 Irish in great quantity, and weaving it, returne the 

 same again into Ireland to sell : neither doth their 

 industry rest here, for they buy cotton wool in Lon- 

 don that comes first from Cyprus and Smyrna, and 

 at home worke the same, and perfect it into fustians, 

 vermillions, dimities and other such stuffs, and then 

 return it to London where the same is vented and 

 sold, and not seldom sent into forrain parts.™ 



Evidently the cotton industry was of a 

 moderate size before the middle of the seven- 

 teenth century, and it is practically certain 

 that it had attained to no noticeable dimen- 

 sions before the seventeenth century, both from 

 the direct evidence of the petition against 

 the duke of Lennox's patent and from the 

 absence of any mention of it in contemporary 

 records which might otherwise have been ex- 

 pected. The Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601 

 (43 Eliz.), when empowering overseers to 



" London Guildhall Library, vol. Beta, Petitions and 

 Parliamentary Matters, l620-i,No. 16 (old No. 25). 

 The spelling has been modernized. Quoted from 

 Mr. Price's article above referred to, wherein the 

 question of the year of the petition, which is undated, 

 is discussed. There can be no reasonable doubt that 

 the date was not later than 1624, for neither the king 

 nor the duke is referred to as ' the late,' and the former 

 died in 1625 and the latter in 1624. 



"J. Stort, B.M. Add. MSS. 12496, fol. 236. 

 Quoted from the last edition of Cunningham's Grotvth 

 of Engl. Industry and Commerce, vol. ii, pt. ii, p. 623. 



^Orig. ed. 32,33. 



380 



