Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/488

Rh 464 MANCHESTER lated at about 207,000,000 in 1872 and 318,000,000 in 1881. These figures, though to be taken with certain reservations, indicate approximately the extent of the activity of the city. The commercial institutions of Manchester are too numerous for detailed description. Its chamber of commerce has for more than sixty years hold a position of much influence in regard to the trade of the district and of the nation. There are eleven joint-stock banks, seven of which have their head offices in the town ; these banks, besides numerous branches in the surrounding district, have sixteen branches in the town ; and there are several private bankers. Municipality. The affairs of the town are regulated by a council consisting of sixty-four representatives of the fifteen wards into which the city is divided. The body corporate of sixteen aldermen and forty-eight councillors, who are presided over by the mayor, lias shown much enterprise and public spirit in the energy with which it has prosecuted public improvements, and in the business ability with which it has managed the vast undertakings connected with the lighting and w r ater supply of the town. The town council of Salford consists also of sixteen aldermen and forty-eight coun cillors, and there are fourteen wards. History. Very little is known with certainty of the early history of Manchester. It has, indeed, been conjectured, and with some probability, that at Castlefield there was a British fortress, which was afterwards taken possession of by the soldiers of Agricola. It is at all events certain that a Roman station of some importance existed in this locality, and a fragment of the wall still exists. In the last century considerable evidences of Roman occupation were still visible ; and from time to time, in the course of excavation (especially during the making of the Bridgewater Canal), Roman remains have been found. The coins were chiefly those of Vespasian, Antoninus Pius, Trajan, Hadrian, Nero, Domitian, Vitellius, and Constantino. The period succeeding the Roman occupation is for some time legendary. As late as the 17th century there was a floating tradition that Tarquin, an enemy of King Arthur, kept the castle of Manchester, and was killed by Launcelot of the Lake. The mention of the town in authentic annals is very scanty. It was probably one of the scenes of the missionary preaching of Paulinus ; and it is said (though by a chronicler of comparatively late date) to have been the residence of Ina, king of Wessex, and his queen Ethelberga, after he had defeated Ivor, somewhere about the year 689. Nearly the only point of certainty in its history before the Conquest is that it suffered greatly from the devastations of the Danes, and that in 923 Edward, who was then at Thelwall, near Warrington, sent a number of his Mercian troops to repair and garrison it. In Domesday Book Manchester, Salford, Rochdale, and Radcliffe are the only places named in South- East Lancashire, a district now covered by populous towns. Large por tions of it were then forest, wood, and waste lands. Twenty-one thanes held the manor of Salford among them. The church of St Mary and the church of St Michael in Manchester are both named in Domesday, and some difficulty has arisen as to their proper identification. Most antiquaries have considered that the passage refers to the town only, whilst others think it relates to the parish, and that, while St Mary s is the present cathedral, St Michael s would be the present parish church of Ashton-under-Lyne. Man chester and Salford are so closely allied that it is impossible to dis associate their history. Salford received a charter from Ranulph de Blundeville, in the reign of Henry III., constituting it a free borough, and Manchester in 1301 received a similar warrant of municipal liberties and privileges, from its baron, Thomas Gresley, a descendant of one to whom the manor had been given by Roger of Foictou, who was created by William the Conqueror lord of all the land between the rivers Mersey and Ribble. The Gresleys were succeeded by the De la Warres, the last of whom was educated for the priesthood, and became rector of the town. To avoid the evil of a non-resident clergy, he made considerable additions, to the lands of the church, in order that it might be endowed as a collegiate institution. A sacred guild was thus formed, whose members were bound to perform the necessary services at the parish church, and to whom the old baronial hall was granted as a place of residence. The manorial rights passed to Sir Reginald West, the son of Joan Greslet, and he was summoned to parliament as Baron de la Warre. The West family, in 1579, sold the manorial rights for 3000 to John Lacy, who, in 1596, resold them to Sir Nicholas Mosley, whose descend ants enjoyed the emoluments and profits to be derived from them until the middle of the present century (1845), when they were purchased by the present town council of Manchester for a sum of 200,000. The lord of the manor had the right to tax and toll all articles brought for sale into the market of the town. But, though the inhabitants were thus to a large extent taxed for the benefit of one Individual, they had a far greater amount of local self-govern ment than might have been supposed, and the court leet, which was then the governing body of the town, had, though doubtless in a somewhat rudimentary form, nearly all the powers and functions now possessed by municipal corporations. This court had not only control over the watching and watering of the town, the regulation of the water supply, and the cleaning of the streets, but also had power, which at times was used freely, of interfering with what would now be considered the private liberty of their fellow-citizens. Some of the regulations adopted, and presumably enforced, sound grotesquely at the present day. Thus, no single woman was allowed to be a householder ; no person might employ other than the town musicians ; and the amount to be spent at wedding feasts and other festivities was carefully settled. Under the protection of the barons the town appears to have steadily increased in prosperity, and it early became an important seat of the textile manufactures. Full ing mills were at work in the district in the 13th century ; and documentary evidence exists to show that woollen manufactures were carried on in Ancoats at that period. In 1641 we hear of the Manchester people purchasing linen yarn from the Irish, weaving it, and returning it for sale in a finished state. They also brought cotton wool from Smyrna to work into fustians and dimities. An Act passed in the reign of Edward VI. regulates the length of cottons called Manchester, Lancashire, and Cheshire cottons. These, notwithstanding their name, were probably all woollen tex tures. It is thought that some of the Flemish weavers who were introduced into England by Queen Philippa of Hainault were settled at Manchester ; and Fuller has given an exceedingly quaint and picturesque description of the manner in which these artisans were welcomed by the inhabitants of the country they were about to enrich with a new industry, one which in after centuries has become perhaps the most important industry of the country. The Flemish weavers were in all probability reinforced by religious refugees from the Low Countries. Leland, writing in 1638, describes Manchester as the &quot; fairest, best builded, quickest, and most popu lous town of Lancashire. &quot; The right of sanctuary had been granted to the town, but this was found so detrimental to its industrial pur suits that after very brief experience the privilege was taken away. The college of Manchester was dissolved in 1547, but was refounded in Mary s reign. Under her successor the town became the head quarters of the commission for establishing the Reformed religion. In the civil wars, the town was besieged by the Royalists under Lord Strange, but was successfully defended by the inhabitants under the command of a German soldier of fortune, Colonel Ros- worm, who complained with some bitterness of their ingratitude to him. An enrlier affray between the Puritans and some of Lord Strange s followers is said to have occasioned the shedding of the first blood in the disastrous struggle between the king and parlia ment. The year 1689 witnessed that strange episode, the trial of those concerned in the so-called Lancashire plot, which ended in the triumphant acquittal of the supposed Jacobites. That the dis trict really contained many ardent sympathizers with the Stuarts was, however, shown in the rising of 1715, when the clergy ranged themselves to a large extent on the side of the Pretender, and was still more clearly shown in the rebellion of 1745, when the town was taken possession of by Prince Charles Edward Stuart, and a regiment, known afterwards as the Manchester regiment, was formed and placed under the command of Colonel Francis Townley. In the fatal retreat of the Stuart troops the Manchester contingent was left to garrison Carlisle, and surrendered to the duke of Cum berland. The officers were taken to London, where they were tried for high treason and beheaded on Kennington Common. The variations of political action in Manchester had been exceed ingly marked. In the 16th century, although it produced both Catholic and Protestant martyrs, it was earnestly in favour of the Reformed faith, and in the succeeding century it became indeed a stronghold of Puritanism. Yet the descendants of the Roundheads who defeated the army of Charles I. were Jacobite in their sym pathies, and by the latter half of the 18th century had become imbued with the aggressive form of patriotic sentiment known as anti- Jacobinism, which showed itself chiefly in dislike of reform and reformers of every description. A change was, however, immi nent. The distress caused by war and taxation, towards the end of the last and the beginning of the present century, led to bitter dis content, and the anomalies existing in the parliamentary system of representation afforded only too fair an object of attack. While single individuals in some portions of the country had the power to return members of parliament for their pocket boroughs, great towns like Manchester were entirely without representation. The injudicious conduct of the authorities, also, led to an increase in the bitterness with which the working classes regarded the condition of society in which they found themselves compelled to toil with very little profit to themselves. Their expressions of discontent, instead of being wisely regarded as symptoms of disease in the body politic, were looked upon as crimes, and the severest efforts were made to repress all expression of dissatisfaction. This foolish policy of the authorities reached its culmination in the affair of Peterloo, which may be regarded as the starting point of the modern reform agitation. This was in 1819, when an immense crowd assembled on St Peter s Fields (now covered by the Free Trade hall and warehouses) to petition parliament for a redress of their grievances. The authorities had the Riot Act read, but in such a manner as to be quite unheard by the mass of the people ; and drunken yeomanry cavalry were