Other firms, conducted with like
spirit, were established by members of the same family at Burnley,
Foxhill bank, and Altham, in Lancashire; Salley Abbey, in
Yorkshire; and afterwards at Burton-on-Trent, in Staffordshire;
these various establishments, whilst they brought wealth to their
proprietors, setting an example to the whole cotton trade, and
training up many of the most successful printers and manufacturers
in Lancashire.
Among other distinguished founders of industry, the Rev. William
Lee, inventor of the Stocking Frame, and John Heathcoat, inventor
of the Bobbin-net Machine, are worthy of notice, as men of great
mechanical skill and perseverance, through whose labours a vast
amount of remunerative employment has been provided for the
labouring population of Nottingham and the adjacent districts. The
accounts which have been preserved of the circumstances connected
with the invention of the Stocking Frame are very confused, and in
many respects contradictory, though there is no doubt as to the
name of the inventor. This was William Lee, born at Woodborough, a
village some seven miles from Nottingham, about the year 1563.
According to some accounts, he was the heir to a small freehold,
while according to others he was a poor scholar, {6} and had to
struggle with poverty from his earliest years.
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