_By permission of the Corporation of the Royal Exchange Assurance, A.D. 1720_ MANCHESTER IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES] It will be noticed that a distinction is made between three general branches of trade, a distinction which an analysis of the first Manchester Directory, compiled twenty years later, shows to have had a sound basis.[95] At this point, however, we are concerned with the development which had taken place during the century which intervened between the two quotations, a development which can be traced in Ogden’s _Description of Manchester_, published in 1783.[96] Unfortunately he gives no definite dates as to the changes to which he refers, but the development of the three general branches of trade carried on in the town is fairly clearly indicated. [Footnote 95: See tables _infra_, pp. 67-68. In 1603, and in 1613, the Town Jury of Manchester dealt with complaints of the keeping of a Friday market in the open street for the sale of “Sackclothe, Incle-points, Garteringe, Threede, Buttons, and other Smallwares” to the prejudice of the Saturday market (_Manchester Court Leet Records_, vol. ii., pp. 189, 287).] [Footnote 96: Republished in 1887 under the title of _Manchester a Hundred Years Ago_, and edited with an introduction by William E. A. Axon. A comparison of the portion of Aikin’s _Manchester_ dealing with the trade of the town will show that this is the “printed account” from which his information was obtained. The references in the above text are to the 1887 reprint.] In addition to the manufacture of such commodities as those mentioned in the 1651 reference, he informs us that bolsters, bed-ticks, linen-girth web, and boot-straps were among the early manufactures, but that the trade in ticks and webs was soon lost to the West of England. This led to those concerned in making them turning to the manufacture of coarse checks, striped hollands, hooping and canvas.[97] As time went on “the manufacturers of check made great advances in trade and introduced new articles.” What they appear to have done was to progress in the direction of making goods consisting entirely of cotton and mainly of cotton.[98] [Footnote 97: Ogden, _ibid._, p. 73.] [Footnote 98: Ogden, _ibid._, p. 78-79.] But there was another line of development pursued by those engaged in the manufacture of laces, inkles, tapes, and filleting. At an early stage these men added “divers kinds of bindings and worsted smallwares,”[99] and later when “it was found that the Dutch enjoyed the manufacture of fine Holland tapes unrivalled: plans were therefore procured, and ingenious mechanics invited over to construct swivel engines, at great expense, but adapted to light work for which they were first intended, on so true a principle, that they have been employed in most branches of smallwares with success.”[100] [Footnote 99: _Ibid._, p. 81.] [Footnote 100: _Ibid._, p. 82.]