ties of carrying
on their industry only by royal authority, really taught new and
higher industries to the native population and eventually were
absorbed into it as a more gifted and trained component.

There were also some inventions of new processes or devices for
manufacture. The "stocking frame," or machine knitting, was invented
in the time of Queen Elizabeth, but did not get into actual use until
the next century. It then became for the future an extensive industry,
especially in London and Nottingham and their vicinity. The weaving of
cotton goods was introduced and spread especially in the northwest, in
the neighborhood of Manchester and Bolton. A machine for preparing
silk thread was invented in 1719. The printing of imported white
cotton goods, as calicoes and lawns, was begun, but prohibited by
Parliament in the interest of woven goods manufacturers, though the
printing of linens was still allowed. Stoneware was also improved.
These and other new industries introduced by foreigners or developed
by English inventors or enterprising artisans added to the variety and
total amount of English manufacture. The old established industries,
like the old coarser woollen goods and linen manufacture, increased
but slowly in amount and went through no great changes of method.

[Illustration: Hand-loom Weaving. (Hogarth: _The Industrious and the
Lazy Apprentice_.)]

These industries old and new were in some cases regulated and
supervised as to the quality of ware and methods of manufacture, by
the remaining gilds or companies, with the authority which they
possessed from the national government. Indeed, there were within the
later sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries some new companies
organized or old ones renewed especially for this oversight, and to
guard the monopoly of their members over certain industries in certain
towns. In other cases rules were established for the carrying on of a
certain industry, and a patent or monopoly was then granted by the
king by which the person or company was given the sole right to carry
on a certain industry according to those rules, or to enforce the
rules when it was carried on by other people. In still other
industries a government official had the oversight and control of
quality and method of manufacture. Much production, however,
especially such as went on in the country, was not supervised at all.

[Illustration: Old Cloth-hall at Halifax.]

Far the greater part of man