Ascendancy
From the 1670s until the 1770s the woollen
textile industries of the West Riding grew at a dramatic pace.
Textiles made in the northern woollen towns were in great demand, "utilized everywhere for clothing ordinary people who could not go to the price
of fine cloths made in the West of England or in East Anglia". See act for the regulation of narrow cloth production opposite.
This extraordinary expansion of output propelled
the region into a position of commercial pre-eminence.
By developing a manufacturing potential beyond
the capability of either the West of England and East Anglia,
Yorkshire became the heartland for the production of woollen
cloth of all types.
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