The combination of the worsted smallware weavers was not the only one in the Manchester district in the late fifties of the eighteenth century. As already mentioned, the check-weavers had also combined. So acute had the position become that at the Autumn Assizes held at Lancaster in 1758 Lord Mansfield “had been informed of great disturbances in Lancashire, occasioned by several thousands having left their work and entered into combinations for raising their wages, and appointed meetings at stated times, formed themselves into a committee at such meetings, and established Boxes and fixed stewards in every Township for collecting money for supporting such weavers as should by their Committee be ordered to leave their masters, and made other dangerous and illegal regulations; that they had insulted and abused several weavers who had refused to join in their schemes and continued to work; and had dropt incendiary letters, with threats to masters that had opposed their designs; his Lordship sensible of the pernicious consequences of such illegal proceedings as being not only destructive of Trade and Manufactures, but of the Peace of the Public adapted his charge to the occasion, and strongly urged to the Jury the necessity of suppressing all such combinations and conspiracies on any pretence whatsoever; gave them an account of all the attempts of the like nature that had been made at different times and in different parts of the kingdom, and told them that an active and vigilant execution of the Laws in being, had always been sufficient to suppress such attempts, and, if properly executed, would have the same effect upon the present that it had always met with on similar occasions.” As the judge had spoken without notes, he could not oblige the Grand Jury with this charge in writing, as they requested, but he issued a warrant for the apprehension of nineteen stewards concerned in the combination, and prosecutions were recommended against others as being equally culpable.[157] [Footnote 157: _Manchester Mercury_, 5th September 1758. _Gentleman’s Magazine_, 12th August 1758. Smollett, _ibid._, v. 439-440.]