In 1703, a cloth manufactory was in full operation at Gordon’s Mills, near Aberdeen, under the care of Mr William Black, advocate. Though established but a year ago, it already produced broad cloths, druggets, and stuffs of all sorts, ‘perhaps as good in their kind as any that have been wrought in this kingdom.’ Mr Black had French workmen for the whitening and scouring of his cloths, and boasted that he had created a new trade in supplying the country people with sorted fleece-wool, ‘which is a great improvement in itself.’ Amongst his products were ‘half-silk serges, damasks, and plush made of wool, which looks near as fine as that made of hair.’ Unlike most enterprisers in that age, he desired to breed up young people who might afterwards set up factories of the same kind, ‘which,’ he said, ‘will be the only way to bring our Scots manufactories to reasonable prices.’ But he did not propose to do this upon wholly disinterested principles. He petitioned parliament to make a charge upon the county of Aberdeen, for the support of boys working at his manufactory, during the first five years of their apprenticeships;[190] and his desire was in a modified manner complied with. About the same time, William Hog of Harcarse had a cloth manufactory at his place in Berwickshire, where he ‘did make, dress, and lit as much red cloth as did furnish all the Earl of Hyndford’s regiment of dragoons with red cloaths this last year, and that in a very short space.’[191] It would appear that up to 1703 there was no such thing in Scotland as a work for making earthenware; a want which, of course, occasioned ‘the yearly export of large sums of money out of the kingdom,’ besides causing all articles of that kind to be sold at ‘double charges of what they cost abroad.’ William Montgomery of Macbie-hill, and George Linn, merchant in Edinburgh, now made arrangements for setting up ‘a Pot-house and all conveniences for making of laim, purslane, and earthenware,’ and for bringing home from foreign countries the men required for such a work. As necessary for their encouragement in this undertaking, the parliament gave them an exclusive [Sidenote: 1696.] right of making laim, purslane, and earthenware for fifteen years.[192] [Sidenote: DEC 1.]