This account was based upon information obtained in Nottingham nearly seventy years after the event, the informant, apparently, being the son of Hargreaves’ partner, then in his eighty-third year.[300] The account may be correct, and it is impossible definitely to disprove it, but, from the tone of the notice calling the meeting in Manchester on 2nd October, it seems hardly credible that an offer of the kind mentioned would be made at that time, neither is it likely from the general attitude of the manufacturers to patentees that it would be made at any other time. Some months later, however, another notice appeared calling a meeting of manufacturers of cotton, again at the Bull’s Head Inn, to consider “special affairs” relating to their trade.[301] But, at this meeting, it is extremely probable that the “special affairs” had reference not to Hargreaves but to the famous Thomas Highs, who at this time had left Leigh for Manchester, and who, according to Guest, was the original inventor both of the spinning-jenny and of the method of spinning by rollers patented by Arkwright.[302] [Footnote 300: _Ibid._] [Footnote 301: _Manchester Mercury_, 18th June 1771.] [Footnote 302: Guest, _British Cotton Manufacture_, pp. 94, 198.] In a well-known passage Guest states that in addition to his other achievements Highs “constructed what may be termed a double jenny,” which “was publicly worked in Manchester Exchange in 1772 ... and the manufacturers on that occasion subscribed 200 guineas, and presented them to Highs as a reward for his ingenuity.”[303] As a matter of fact, the exhibition took place in 1771 and was advertised in _The Manchester Mercury_ in the following terms:--“Mr. Hayes’s new invented machine for Spinning Cotton is now fix’d up in the Exchange where all persons concerned in the Manufacturing of Cotton will have an opportunity of viewing it.”[304] [Footnote 303: Guest, _British Cotton Manufacture_, p. 203.] [Footnote 304: _Ibid._, p. 203. It will be noticed that in this reference, as in others of the time, the name of the inventor is given as Hayes. I have used the name Highs in the text as he has become best known to posterity by that name. Guest states that it is written Highs in the parish register (_ibid._, p. 18).]