At the close of the 12th and during the 13th century there was a considerable advance in the importance of the towns; in 1199 Lancaster became a borough, in 1207 Liverpool, in 1230 Salford, in 1246 Wigan, and in 1301 Manchester. The Scottish wars drained the county of some of its best blood. In 1349 the county was visited by the Black Death and in ten parishes between September 1349 and January 1350, 13,180 persons perished. From the effects of this plague Lancashire was apparently slow to re cover; its boroughs ceased to return members early in the 14th century and trade had not yet made any great advance. The drain of the Wars of the Roses on the county must also have been heavy. Its poverty is shown by the fact that out of £40,000 granted in 1504 by parliament to the king, Lancashire's share was only £318. Under the Tudors the county prospered.
In the assessment of ship money in 1636 the county was put down for Li,000, towards which Wigan was to raise £50, Preston £40, Lancaster £30 and Liverpool £25 (cf. Hull £140 and Leeds £200). On the eve of the Great Rebellion in 1641, parliament resolved to take command of the militia, and Lord Strange, Lord Derby's eldest son, was removed from the lord lieutenancy. On the whole, the county was royalist, and the mov ing spirit among the Royalists was Lord Strange, who became Lord Derby in 1642. Manchester was the headquarters of the Parliamentarians, and was besieged by Lord Derby in September 1642 for seven days, but not taken. Lord Derby took up his head quarters at Warrington and garrisoned Wigan. At the opening of 1643 Sir Thomas Fairfax made Manchester his headquarters. Early in this year the parliamentarians from Manchester suc cessfully assaulted Preston, and then captured Hoghton Tower and Lancaster. Lord Derby made an unsuccessful attack on Bolton from Wigan. In March Lord Derby captured the town of Lan caster but not the castle, and marching to Preston regained it for the king, but was repulsed in an attack on Bolton. In April, Wigan, one of the chief Royalist strongholds in the county, was taken by the parliament forces, who also again captured Lancaster, and Warrington fell after a week's siege. Lord Derby also failed in an attempt on Liverpool, and the tide of war had clearly turned against the Royalists in Lancashire. In June Lord Derby went to the Isle of Man, which was threatened by the king's ene mies. Soon after, the parliamentarians captured Hornby castle and later Thurland castle. In February 1644 the parliamentarians besieged Lathom house, the one refuge left to the Royalists, which was bravely defended by Lord Derby's wife, Charlotte de la Tre moille. The siege lasted nearly four months and was raised on the approach of Prince Rupert, who marched to Bolton and was joined outside the town by Lord Derby. Bolton was carried by storm; Rupert ordered that no quarter should be given. He ad vanced without delay to Liverpool and took it after a siege of three weeks. After Marston Moor, Prince Rupert again appeared in Lancashire and small engagements took place at Ormskirk, Up holland and Preston; in November Liverpool surrendered to the parliamentarians. Lathom house, again the only strong place in Lancashire left to the Royalists, in December 1645 surrendered after a five months' siege, and was almost entirely destroyed. For
the moment the war in Lancashire was over. In 1648, however, the Royalist forces under the duke of Hamilton and Sir Marma duke Langdale marched through Lancaster to Preston, hoping to reach Manchester; but near Preston were defeated by Cromwell in person. The remnant retreated through Wigan towards War rington where they surrendered. In 1651 Charles II. advanced through Lancaster, Preston and Chorley on his southward march.
During the Rebellion of 1715 Manchester was the chief centre of Roman Catholic and High Church Toryism. On Nov. 7 the Scottish army entered Lancaster, where the Pretender was pro claimed king, and advanced to Preston, at which place a con siderable body of Roman Catholics joined it. The rebels remained at Preston a few days, apparently unaware of the advance of the government troops, until Gen. Wills from Manchester and Gen. Carpenter from Lancaster surrounded the town, and on Nov. 13 the town surrendered. In 1745 Prince Charles Edward passed through the county and was joined by about 200 adherents called the Manchester regiment and placed under the command of Col. Townley, who was afterwards executed.
The first industry established in Lan cashire was that of wool, and with the founding of Furness abbey in 1127 wool farming on a large scale began here, but the bulk of the wool was exported not worked up in England. In 1282, however, there was a mill for fulling or bleaching wool in Man chester, and by the middle of the 16th century there was quite a flourishing trade in worsted goods. In an act of 1552, Manchester "rugs and frizes" are specially mentioned, and in 1566 another act regulated the fees of the aulnager who was to have his depu ties at Manchester, Rochdale, Bolton, Blackburn and Bury; the duty of the aulnagers was to prevent "cottons, frizes and rugs" from being sold unsealed, and it must be noted that by cottons is meant woollen-goods. The 17th century saw the birth of the class of clothiers, who purchased the wool in large quantities or kept their own sheep, and delivered it to weavers who worked it up into cloth in their houses and returned it to the employers. The earliest mention of the manufacture of real cotton goods is in 1641, but the industry did not develop to any extent until after the invention of the fly shuttle by John Kay in 1733, of the spinning jenny by James Hargreaves of Blackburn in 1765, of the water frame throstle by Richard Arkwright of Bolton in 1769 and of the mule by Samuel Crompton of Hall-in-the-Wood, near Bol ton, in 1779. So rapid was the development of the cotton manu facture that in i 787 there were over 4o cotton mills in Lancashire, all worked by water power. In 1789 steam power was applied to the industry. The increase of the import of raw cotton from 3,870,000 lb. in 1769 to 1,083,600,000 in 186o shows the growth of the industry. The rapid growth was accompanied with inter mittent periods of depression, which in 1819 in particular led to the formation of various political societies and to the Blanketeer's meeting and the Peterloo massacre. During the American Civil War the five years' cotton famine caused untold misery.