21 lb. at the least."[3] These are evidently the weights of woollen
goods: further, it may be observed that milling is not applicable to
cotton goods. The earliest reference to a cotton manufacture in England
which may reasonably be regarded as pointing to the fabrication of
textiles from cotton proper, is in the will of James Billston (a not
un-English name), who is described as a "cotton manufacturer," proved at
Chester in 1578.[4] It may plausibly be contended that James Billston
was a worker in the vegetable fibre, since otherwise "manufacturer of
cottons" would have been a more natural designation. But the proof of
the will of one cotton manufacturer establishes very little.

The next earliest known reference to the cotton industry proper occurs
in a petition to the earl of Salisbury, made presumably in 1610, asking
for the continuance of a grant for reforming frauds committed in the
manufacture of "bambazine cotton such as groweth in the land of Persia
being no kind of wool."[5] But a far more valuable piece of evidence,
discovered by W. H. Price, is a petition of "Merchants and citizens of
London that use buying and selling of fustians made in England, as of
the makers of the same fustians."[6] Its probable date is 1621, and it
contains the following important passages:--

"About twenty years past, divers people in this kingdom, but chiefly
in the county of Lancaster, have found out the trade of making of
other 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, Cyprus, Acra and Sydon,
but commonly called cotton wool; and also of linen yarn most part
brought out of Scotland, and othersome made in England, and no part of
the same fustians of any wool at all, for which said bombast and yarn
imported, his majesty has a great yearly sum of money for the custom
and subsidy thereof.

"There is at the least 40 thousand pieces of fustian of this kind
yearly made in England, the subsidy to his majesty of the materials
for making of every piece coming to between 8d. and 10d. the piece;
and thousands of poor people set on working of these fustians.

"The right honourable duke of Lennox in 11 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