In the effort to refute the claim of Arkwright as the inventor, the important witnesses were Thomas Highs and John Kay. The story has been often told and need not be repeated at length. Briefly stated, Highs was put forward as the real inventor, and Kay as the person from whom Arkwright obtained information of the invention, which he patented in 1769. For some years before 1766 Highs and Kay had lived at Leigh as neighbours, and, according to Guest, in 1763 or 1764 the latter assisted the former in his efforts, already referred to, to construct the spinning-jenny.[345] About 1766 apparently, Highs conceived the idea of spinning by rollers, at any rate, in his evidence, he claimed to have made them in the following year. Kay, by this time, had gone to live at Warrington, where he followed the trade of clockmaking, and Highs employed him to make the wheels necessary to give different velocities to the rollers, and also a model.[346] Another remarkable claim of Highs was that, at this time, he used the rollers not only to spin but to rove as well, which Arkwright did not publicly claim to do until 1775. According to his own statement, however, he did not proceed with the rollers beyond the experimental stage, owing, as he said, to his inability through poverty, nor did he mention the invention for fear of losing it. [Footnote 345: Guest, _History of Cotton Manufacture_, pp. 13, 53. The question of the jenny was not dealt with at the trial, of course.] [Footnote 346: _Trial_, 25th June 1785, Highs’ evidence.] In the meantime, Arkwright, who lived at Bolton, is supposed to have heard of Highs’ experiments and to have sought out Kay with the object of obtaining knowledge of them. In his evidence, Kay stated that Arkwright visited him at Warrington in 1767, and that he made two models of Highs’ method of rollers for Arkwright, who took them away. Shortly afterwards he accompanied Arkwright to Preston (where the machinery was brought to a practicable stage), then to Nottingham, remaining in Arkwright’s employment some four or five years. At the end of this time trouble arose between them and they parted more or less as enemies.[347] [Footnote 347: _Ibid._, Kay’s evidence.]