The industrial history of the important Lancashire cotton towns, although their modern development covers less than ninety years, dates from the beginning of the fourteenth century. As early as A.D. 1311, temp. Edward II., friezes were manufactured at Colne, but, as elsewhere in the country, they would seem to have been coarse and of little value. "The English at that time," says quaint old Fuller, "knew no more what to do with their wool than the sheep that weare it, as to any artificial curious drapery." The great bulk of the native produce of wool was transmitted to Flanders and the Rhenish provinces, where it was woven, England repurchasing the cloth. Edward III., allowing himself to be guided by the far-reaching sagacity of his wise queen, Philippa, resolved that the manufacture should be kept at home. Parties of the Flemish weavers were easily induced to come over, the more so because wretchedly treated in their own country. Manchester, Bolton, Rochdale, and Warrington, were tenanted almost immediately, and a new character was at once given to the textile productions both of the district and the island in general. Furness Abbey was then in its glory; its fertile pastures supplied the wants of these industrious people: they seem, however, not to have cared to push their establishments so far, keeping in the south and east of the county, over which they gradually spread, carrying, wherever they went, the "merry music of the loom." The same period witnessed the original use of coal--again, it is believed, through the advice of Philippa; the two great sources of Lancashire prosperity being thus in their rise contemporaneous. The numerous little rivers and waterfalls of East Lancashire contributed to the success of the new adventurers. Fulling-mills and dye-works were erected upon the margins: the particular spots are now only conjectural; mementoes of these ancient works are nevertheless preserved in the springing up occasionally, to the present day, on the lower Lancashire river-banks, of plants botanically alien to the neighbourhood. These are specially the fullers' teasel, _Dipsacus fullonum_, and the dyers' weed, _Reseda luteola_, both of which were regularly used, the refuse, with seeds, cast into the stream being carried many miles down and deposited where the plants now renew themselves. The retention of their vitality by seeds properly ripened, when buried too deep for the operation of the atmosphere, sunshine, and moisture, all at once, is well known to naturalists, as well as their germination when brought near enough to the surface of the ground. This ancient woollen manufacture endured for quite 300 years. Cotton then became a competitor, and gradually superseded it; Rochdale and a few other places alone vindicating the old traditions.