"At one o'clock this morning two expresses arrived--one from Wigan and another from Blackburn--entreating immediate assistance, both declaring the violence of the insurgents, and the shocking depredations yesterday at Bolton. It is thought they will be at Blackburn this morning, and at Preston by four this afternoon. Sir George ordered the drums to beat to arms at half after one, when he consulted with the military and magistrates in town, and set off at the head of three companies soon after two o'clock for Chorley, that being centrical to this place, Blackburn and Wigan. Captain Brown, of the 24th Regiment, with 70 invalids--pensioners, presumably--and Captain Thorburn, of Colonel White's Regiment, with about 100 recruits, remained at Preston; and for its further security, Sir George Saville offered the justices to arm 300 of the respectable house-keepers, if they would turn out to defend the town, which was immediately accepted. In consequence of these proceedings, the mob did not think it prudent to proceed to any further violence." These riots, which were pretty general in the district where machinery was used, arose from a temporary depression of trade, which the spinners mistook for the effects of the introduction of the recent inventions. At Bolton £10,000 worth of mill property was destroyed. This dread of machinery was not entirely confined to the operatives, for some of the middle and upper classes connived at these appeals to brute force, if they did not actually encourage them.[232] Arkwright for many years suffered from attempts to infringe upon his patents, and his name often appeared in the law courts as plaintiff or defendant; but the details are of too complicated and technical a character to find a place in these pages, beyond stating that, notwithstanding that in 1785 his patents were declared by the Court of King's Bench to be null and void, he amassed a large fortune, in the year following was knighted, and in 1787 was made High Sheriff of Derbyshire. He died on August 3, 1792, leaving property estimated at half a million sterling.