Lancashire was long distinguished for its manufacture of silk, though it never acquired the importance held by Macclesfield. In Europe this beautiful art came to the front as one of the results of the later Crusades--enterprises which, though productive of untold suffering, awoke the mind of all the civilised parts of the Continent from its slumber of ages, enlarging the sphere of popular thought, reviving the taste for elegant practices forgotten since the fall of the Western Empire, and extending commerce and knowledge in general. To Lancashire men the history is thus one of special interest. Italy led the way in the manufacture; Spain and France soon followed, the latter acquiring distinction, and at the close of the sixteenth century the English Channel was crossed. Tyranny, as in the case of calico-printing, was the prime cause, the original Spitalfields weavers having been part of the crowd of Protestants who at that period were constrained, like the unhappy and forlorn in more modern times, to seek the refuge always afforded in our sea-girt isle.[24] James I. was so strongly impressed with the importance of the manufacture that, hoping to promote it at home, he procured many thousands of young mulberry-trees, some of which, or their immediate descendants, are still to be found, venerable but not exhausted, in the grounds and gardens of old country houses. The Civil Wars gave a heavy check to further progress. Little more was done till 1718, when a silk-mill, worked by a water-wheel, was built at Derby. This in time had to close its doors awhile, through the refusal of the King of Sardinia to permit the exportation of the raw material, always so difficult to procure in quantity. At last there was recovery; the manufacture crept into Cheshire, and at the commencement of the present century into Lancashire, taking root especially in the ancient villages of Middleton and Eccles, and gradually spreading to the adjacent hamlets. [24] The late greatly respected Mr. E. R. Le Mare, who came to Manchester in 1829, and was long distinguished among the local silk-merchants, belonged by descent to one of these identical old Huguenot families. Died at Clevedon, 4th February 1881, aged eighty-four. [Illustration: MAKING COKE]