of customs and subsidies for wool transported beyond seas;
and therein is inserted into his patent, searching and sealing; and
subsidy for 80 several stuffs; and among the rest these fustians or
other stuffs of this kind of cotton wool, and subsidy and a fee for
the same, and forfeiture of 20s. 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 stuffs, and seize them till the forfeiture be paid; and
if any resist such search, to forfeit L10 and power thereby given to
the lord treasurer or chancellor of the exchequer, to make new
ordinances or grant commissions for the aid of the duke and his
officers in execution of their office."

Here the date of the appearance of the cotton industry on an appreciable
scale--it is questionable whether any importance should be attached to
the expression "found out"--is given by those who would be speaking of
facts within the memory of themselves or their friends as "about twenty
years past" from 1621, and the annual output of the industry in 1621 is
mentioned. Moreover, it is established by this document that for a time
at least the cotton manufacture was "regulated" like the other textile
trades. The date assigned by the petitioners for the first attraction of
attention by the English cotton industry may be supported on negative
grounds.

Baines assures us that William Camden, who wrote in 1590, devoted not a
sentence to the cotton industry, though Manchester figures among his
descriptions: "This town," he says, "excels the towns immediately around
it in handsomeness, populousness, woollen manufacture, market place,
church and college; but did much more excel them in the last age, as
well by the glory of its woollen cloths (_laneorum pannorum honore_),
which they call Manchester cottons, as by the privilege of sanctuary,
which the authority of parliament under Henry VIII. transferred to
Chester."[7] It is significant too that in the Elizabethan poor law of
1601 (43 Elizabeth), neither cotton-wool nor yarn is included among the
fabrics to be provided by the overseers to set the poor to work upon;
though, of course, it might be argued that so short-stapled a fibre
needed for its working, when machinery was rough, a skill in the
operative which would be above that of the average person unable to find
employment. However, a proposal