Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 2.djvu/51

Rh the exports of the East India and Turkey companies appears to have been generally overlooked; the earliest notice either of the English cotton manufacture or of the import of the raw material being commonly stated to be that found in his subsequent work, "The Treasure of Traffic," published in 1641, where it is said, "The town of Manchester, in Lancashire, must be also herein remembered, and worthily for their encouragement commended, who buy the yarn of the Irish in great quantity, and, weaving it, return the same again into Ireland to sell. Neither doth their industry rest here; for they buy cotton-wool in London that comes first from Cyprus and Smyrna, and at home work the same, and perfect it into fustians, vermillions, dimities, and other such stuffs, and then return it to London, where the same is vented and sold, and not seldom sent into foreign parts, who have means at far easier terms to provide themselves of the said first materials." This account implies that the cotton manufacture had already reached a point of considerable advancement, so that it must have been established for some years at the time when the "Treasure of Traffic" was written. Various old acts of parliament and other authorities, it may be observed, make mention of Manchester cottons and cotton-velvets before the seventeenth century; but it is certain that the fabrics so denominated were all really composed of sheep's wool. The manufacture of cottons, properly so called, in England cannot be traced farther back than to the period with which we are now engaged, the early part of the reign of Charles I.

The Ancient Company of the Merchant Adventurers is the third in Roberts's list. They are described as furnishing the cities of Hamburgh, Rotterdam, and others in the Netherlands with English cloth of sundry shires, and some other commodities, monthly, and as bringing back thence to England tapestries, diaper, cambrics, Hollands, lawns, hops, mather, (madder), steel, Rhenish wines, and many other manufactures, as blades, stuffs, soap, latten, wire, plates, &c. In 1634 the Company of Merchant Adventurers, whose exclusive