trade had not only become established in the parish of Halifax, but had extended to the adjacent districts, on the east and on the west. Till a recent period there was a remarkable similarity betwixt the dialect of some of the labouring classes in the upper parts of Oldham parish and Halifax and Saddleworth parishes, to that of the people of the Low Counties, particularly Friesland.

There can be little doubt that the woollen business was introduced into Oldham in the early part of the
fifteenth century, if not at a remoter period; and it is not improbable to suppose the increase of population resulting from it to have been one of the principal causes for the re-erection of the church in 1476. There is reason to believe the families of Lees, Milne, Hope, Smith, Mellor, and Neild, were cloth workers and dealers in the age of the Plantagenets. The goods chiefly made were white and coloured coarse cloths. According to an inquisition of the property of George Booth, Esq., taken 1534, it appears there was a mill then on the Clarksfield estate, and as this is not likely to have been a corn mill belonging to the manor of Ashton, the inference is that it was a woollen mill, leased and worked by the Leeses, of Clarksfield, who are known to have been engaged in the woollen trade at an early period. The ancient mill, whence Mill·end, in Oldham, derived its name, was most probably a corn mill; but there was also a mill at Glodwick, or its vicinity, in 1540, which seems to have been a woollen mill. Although there were a few small carding, spinning, and fulling concerns, the manufacture was chiefly confined to the weaving department, principally for the Manchester, Rochdale, and Halifax markets.

The coarse woollens of Manchester were called "Cottons" in the reign of Henry the Eighth, 1538, and for a long time afterwards, so as to pass them off more successfully as imitations of the foreign cotton

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