[Footnote 24: Outside the area mentioned, Glasgow and neighbourhood is the only centre in the United Kingdom where the industry is carried on to a considerable extent (_Report of Committee on Textile Trades_ (1918), pp. 45, 49. (Cd. 9070)).] At what date cotton was first used in the manufacture of cloth in England is somewhat obscure. When Baines wrote his _History of the Cotton Manufacture_ he had found only two references to the import of cotton-wool from the end of the thirteenth to the beginning of the sixteenth centuries,[25] and it has generally been assumed that, during this period, it was imported only in small quantities, and used for minor purposes, such as candle-wicks. It has recently been shown, however, that, throughout the intervening centuries, cotton was a common article of import, figuring in the customs at many English ports,[26] and while as yet there is little evidence as to its uses, the knowledge of its regular import suggests that it may have been put to more important uses than that just mentioned. [Footnote 25: Published in 1835, p. 96.] [Footnote 26: Gras, _The Early English Customs System_ (1918), pp. 119, 161, 167, 193, 222, 271, 452, 503, 554-555, 635, 647, 696. In 1507 there is an entry of cotton wolle “spowne.” In a _Chronological History of Bolton to 1873_, compiled for _The Bolton Chronicle_, it is stated that cotton yarns were spun at Horwich in 1510.] Cotton cloth, or cloth partly made of cotton, had been imported long before the sixteenth century, and, in the early years of that century, there is ample evidence of its import, as well as an increasing amount of evidence of the import of the raw material.[27] About the same time the word “cottons” as the name of a cloth manufactured in Lancashire becomes conspicuous. In 1514, in a statute regulating the manufacture of cloth, cottons are mentioned, but are excluded from its provisions, as they are from the provisions of a similar statute twenty years later.[28] Also Hakluyt records the fact that, between the years 1511 and 1534, cottons were included among the cloth exports of the country,[29] and about the year 1538 we get Leland’s reference: “Bolton upon Moore Market stondith most by cottons and cowrse yarne. Divers villages in the Mores about Bolton do make cottons.”[30] [Footnote 27: Fustians were imported into Lynn at the end of the fourteenth century, and there are many references to the import of cotton-russet in 1509 (Gras, _ibid._, pp. 436, 581 _et seq._). In the inventory of the goods of Alexander Staney (1477) “12 yards of white osborner fustian” are mentioned (_Lancashire and Cheshire Wills_, Chetham Society, vol. iii., N.S.).]