The next step was the customary one of applying for a charter of incorporation in order to exploit the invention. Consequently two months later (October, 1691) we find Mr. Barkstead and five other London merchants, including one of the assistants in the silk-winding company, pointing out that the “said Barkstead has found out an invention for making calicoes and muslins, etc., out of Cotton wool for which he has a patent for 14 years, but that the undertaking requiring at least £100,000 stock to carry on and manage the said invention, the petitioners humbly pray to be incorporated with the Earl of Nottingham as their first governor.” The petition was referred to the Attorney or Solicitor-General, but fortunately the scheme does not appear to have come to anything.[74] [Footnote 74: _S.P.D._, Petition Entry Book, i., p. 198. It is apparent that it was much the same set of men who were interested in all Barkstead’s schemes. Another assistant in the silk-winding company appeared with Barkstead as assistant in the copper mines company. I have been unable to find any trace of the cotton company, and Professor W. R. Scott informs me that he does not think the company was actually floated even if a charter was granted. By those acquainted with the exhaustive character of Professor Scott’s work his statement will be regarded as conclusive.] As a matter of fact, although this incident is interesting, like the majority of schemes of a similar character relating to other industries, it cannot be regarded as of any importance in the development of the cotton industry in this country. The idea of supplanting the fine cotton fabrics of the East by home productions was, no doubt, an attractive one--doubly so because in 1691 the existing East India Company was being vigorously opposed by a rival syndicate. In the same month as the above charter was applied for, a petition was presented to the House of Commons, in the name of the London merchants, attacking the existing company, and less than five months later an address was presented to the King praying that he would dissolve it and incorporate a new one.[75] It may well have been that Mr. Barkstead’s scheme was a part of, or at any rate a symptom of, the opposition then prevailing, and had very little substantial foundation. His application for a patent stands altogether on a different footing from those of the next century, when the machinery to which they referred did actually attain the end which he claimed to have in view. In the seventeenth century this was impossible: at that time, it is questionable whether any fabrics consisting entirely of cotton were produced in the country at all. In any case it is certain that the chief products of the English cotton manufacture were the hybrid fustians consisting of a linen warp and cotton weft. [Footnote 75: Scott, _ibid._, ii., p. 152.]