of Charles the
Second as a busy and opulent place. Cotton had, during half a century,
been brought thither from Cyprus and Smyrna; but the manufacture was in
its infancy. Whitney had not yet taught how the raw material might be
furnished in quantities almost fabulous. Arkwright had not yet taught
how it might be worked up with a speed and precision which seem magical.
The whole annual import did not, at the end of the seventeenth century,
amount to two millions of pounds, a quantity which would now hardly
supply the demand of forty-eight hours. That wonderful emporium, which
in population and wealth far surpassed capitals so much renowned as
Berlin, Madrid, and Lisbon, was then a mean and ill built market town
containing under six thousand people. It then had not a single press. It
now supports a hundred printing establishments. It then had not a single
coach. It now Supports twenty coach makers. [93]

Leeds was already the chief seat of the woollen manufactures of
Yorkshire; but the elderly inhabitants could still remember the time
when the first brick house, then and long after called the Red House,
was built. They boasted loudly of their increasing wealth, and of the
immense sales of cloth which took place in the open air on the bridge.
Hundreds, nay thousands of pounds, had been paid down in the course of
one busy market day. The rising importance of Leeds had attracted
the notice of successive governments. Charles the First had granted
municipal privileges to the town. Oliver had invited it to send one
member to the House of Commons. But from the returns of the hearth money
it seems certain that the whole population of the borough, an extensive
district which contains many hamlets, did not, in the reign of Charles
the Second, exceed seven thousand souls. In 1841 there were more than a
hundred and fifty thousand. [94]

About a day's journey south of Leeds, on the verge of a wild moorland
tract, lay an ancient manor, now rich with cultivation, then barren and
unenclosed, which was known by the name of Hallamshire. Iron abounded
there; and, from a very early period, the rude whittles fabricated there
had been sold all over the kingdom. They had indeed been mentioned by
Geoffrey Chaucer in one of his Canterbury Tales. But the manufacture
appears to have made little progress during the three centuries which
followed his time. This languor may perhaps be explained by the fact
that the trade was, during almost the whole