A HISTORY OF STAFFORDSHIRE Dr. Plot, writing in 1686, says : 'The greatest pottery they have in this county is carried on at Burslem, . . . where for making their several sorts of pots they have as many different sorts of clay, which they dig round about the towne . . . the best being found nearest the coale.' 9S One of the chief articles made at Burslem was the long cylindrical butter-pot, made of coarse material and unglazed, which one may regard as the link between the industrial and the agricultural workers of Staffordshire, and symbolical of the dependence of the one upon the other. Dr. Plot mentions this butter-pot incidentally in his description of the dairy industry in the limestone district and on the banks of the Dove, from which limestone hills and rich pastures and meadow the great Dairies are main- tained in this part of Staffordshire, that supply Uttoxeter Market with such vast quantities- of good butter and cheese that the cheesemongers of London have thought it worth their while to set up a Factorage here for these commodities. . . The butter they buy by the Pot of a long and cylindrical form made at Burslem in this County of a certain size. 94 The main feature of the industrial revolution in England at the end of the eighteenth century was the widespread change from a system of domestic industry to one in which large numbers of wage-earners worked in large factories belonging to capitalist landowners, a change which brought with it a vast increase in the population of this country and a redistribution of popu- lation. It was made possible by the discovery and working of the great coalfields of northern and midland England, accompanied by a succession of important mechanical inventions, and completed by the application of steam to machinery as a motive power, in place of water, which had been used in the new factories that sprang up all over the country in the latter part of the eighteenth century. In 1750 Staffordshire was still one of the thinly populated counties, though since 1700 it had probably increased its population by 30 per cent. 95 Toynbee estimated its population in 1750 as 140 to the square mile compared with 862 in 1881. The inventions we are accustomed to connect most nearly with the industrial revolution are those associated with the textile industries ; these only indirectly affected Staffordshire by increasing the demand for coal and also for machinery, both needed in increasing quantities by the growth of the factory system made possible by these inventions. There were new cotton factories started at the end of the eighteenth century on the banks of the Dove and Trent, at Fazeley, Tarn- worth, Rocester, Tutbury, and Burton. 96 But it was the inventions in con- nexion with the mining and iron industries that made the industrial expansion of Staffordshire possible at this date, and especially the introduction of the new steam-engine of Watt and Boulton, first used at the engineering works- at Soho, whence so much of the machinery of the factories was supplied. For though the coal had always been there, in Staffordshire, the mines had only been worked to a very slight extent ; hence neither the coal nor the iron industry could make much progress. The new engine was used not only to pump water out of the mines, but also to sink shafts to bring the coal up from the pits. 93 Rob. Plot, The Nat. Hist, of Staff. (1686), 122. 94 Ibid. 108-9. An Act f '66 1 regulated the size of this butter-pot ; it was to hold 14 Ib. of butter and to be made of material hard enough not to imbibe moisture ; it was, moreover, to be 14 Jin. high and. 6 A in. in diameter. B Toynbee, Indwtrlal Revolution, 34-5. * Pitt, Agrlc. Surf. (1796), 171. 290
