So long as all that was wanted was clay and firewood, almost any place would do. In England, it was about the year 1600 that the time arrived when brushwood became rare and costly; clay and coal were then found to be the necessaries of a “potteries.” North Staffordshire had both. Burslem, and it is Burslem alone which one need consider in this problem of the first cause, had something more than clay and coal. The land was split up into a great number of small copyhold owners, and immediately after 1600 the copyholds were enfranchised. There were no demesne lands. The people were independent, both of big farmers and of great landlords. There was security of tenure, and every opportunity for initiative—initiative which could not then take the shape of intensive cultivation. So we find in Burslem and Tunstall at the beginning of the seventeenth century clay, coal and the opportunity. By the end of that century the next requisite was to hand—skilled workmen. By the end of the next century the last requisite of trade was in place—the cheap water transport of the Trent and Mersey Canal. It is well known that the safest way to test the presence in early days of particular trades or forms of employment is to study any local lists of the surnames of common people of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. We find our first such list for the Manor of Tunstall (which included Burslem) in 1299.[1] Not a single name that one can associate with potting is to be found. A similar list for Audley of the same date shows a Robert le Pottere, Thomas Potinger and Richard le Throware. Probably most similar lists for that date would provide some such solitary reference to so common a trade, and I do not jump from this to the conclusion that Audley was the real mother of the Potteries. There are Subsidy Rolls giving Tunstall taxpayers in 1327 and 1333; still no _Potter_ is to be found. We have also now available a varied selection of the Tunstall Court Rolls. The earliest, 1326, has nothing that one can twist into a reference to potting; but then we can collect in subsequent years the following:— 1348. William the Pottere gives 6_d._ for licence to make earthern pots (_facere ollas terreas_). 1353. Thomas the Throgher is amerced for a default at Chatterley. 1363. John Pottere is presented for an affray in Borewaslym (Burslem). 1369. Robert le Potter gives 12_d._ for licence to get earth for making pots until the following Michaelmas. 1372. Thomas le Thrower takes up land in Thursfield. 1405. Robert Potter is recently dead in Burslem. 1448. Richard Adams and William his brother are amerced for digging clay (_argillium_) in the common road between Sneyd and Burslem.