numbers of sheep, and some of the principal inhabitants were extensive proprietors of the fleecy tribes, and as a consequence, large dealers in wool, whilst others became woollen manufacturers. The labouring classes, under such circumstances, were principally composed of shepherds and woollen weavers. The name of Sheepwashes is an indication of the ancient state of the district, and the eminence of Counthill was the spot where the flocks of sheep brought from the hills were usually counted by their owners, previous to being disposed of, either in the locality or at the adjacent markets. The abundance of wool, doubtless, suggested, at a remote period, the formation of a covering for the head, hence the conversion of wool into the form of caps, and by an almost imperceptible progression the manufacture of felt hats.

Oldham has been for many ages pre-eminently distinguished for the manufacture of hats. Caps and hats of low, round, and square forms were of ordinary use in the reign of Henry the Sixth, 1422-1461. They were then formed entirely by manual labour; but it appears from a petition presented to parliament in the last year of the reign of Edward the Fourth, 1482, that a method had been devised for thickening and fulling hats and bonnets by mills. This abridgment of labour gave so much dissatisfaction in the south-eastern part of Lancashire, to those engaged in the old method of fulling, by the action of the hands and feet, that they petitioned parliament to prohibit the use of the mills, which they alleged fulled and thicked more caps, bonnets and hats in one day, than could be fulled and thicked by the hands and feet of twenty men in one day, but they added that by such mills the hats, &c., were bruised, broken, and deceivably wrought, and therefore unable to be truly made in such manner; the petitioners consequently complained of their employment being injured bysuch mills. The parliament indulged the petitioners so far as to forbid the use of the mills for

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