fulling mill turned by the river Irke," of the worth of 8s. 4d. The trade was greatly injured by the severe wars of the reigns of Edward the First and Second, and still it is evident that some descriptions of broad cloth were then made in England, but yet the Netherlands was the favourite country of the manufacture.

The dawn of manufactures had, however, already begun to open in Lancashire, and Fuller, in his Church History of this period, says, " that many of the manufacturers of the Netherlands bemoaning their own slavish condition, and their indifferent wages, determined to bring over their mystery to England. At home they were sorely oppressed by the severities of the government, their fare was coarse, and their accommodation wretched, but here they expected to feed on fat beef and mutton, till nothing but their fulness should stint their stomachs, that they should enjoy a proportionable profit of their pains to themselves, and that their beds would be good, and their bedfellows better, seeing the richest yeomen in England would not disdain to marry their daughters unto them." These glowing expectations were pretty well realised under the fostering hand of Edward the Third, 1327-1377. The workers in wool were encouraged and spread over the country. The trade, therefore, took deeper root in Manchester, than it had hitherto done, and spread over the district, rising above the Yorkshire hills to the east, and the mountainous region of Rossendale and Pendle on the north. In 1331 seventy families of Walloons, from- Flanders, settled in England in order to extend the trade; and, in 1336, "Willielmus de Brabant, and Hankeinus de Brabant, textores," established themselves at York, to carry on the art of cloth making. From Hankeinus it is supposed the name of hank was derived, which gives name to this day to skeins of worsted or other thread. In the course of a few subsequent years, the manufacturers of Flanders repaired in great numbers to England, so that prior to 1414, the woollen

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