The initial reactions of local communities to royal manufactures were generally unfavourable. ‘Que de récriminations contre ces manufactures nouvelles, mieux outillées, qui … viennent s'ajouter aux anciens! Que d'intérêts ligués contre elles!’ Philippe Sagnac writes.

This hostility was occasioned by a number of relatively predictable factors. There was first an inevitable feeling of jealousy towards any member of the local community favoured by the grant of a special privilege and the donation of financial support. Quite suddenly such an individual might find himself presented with exceptional and unprecedented economic opportunities denied to all others. In addition, a local cloth industry would be likely to suffer from the competition of a new manufacture's cloth and it would certainly suffer, as would all other industrial and agricultural employers of labour, from the sudden extra demands placed on the local labour market. Local food prices might rise, at least temporarily.