CHAPTER XXIX
.
THE LACE MANUFACTURERS OF ENGLAND.
"Yon cottager, who weaves at her own door, Pillow and bobbins all her little store; Content though mean, and cheerful if not gay, Shuffling her threads about the livelong day: Just earns a scanty pittance, and at night Lies down secure, her heart and pocket light."--Cowper.
The bone lace manufactures of England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries appear to have extended over a much wider area than they occupy in the present day. From Cambridge to the adjacent counties of Northampton and Hertfordshire, by Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, and Oxfordshire, the trade spread over the southern counties[1092] of Wiltshire, Somersetshire,[1093] Hampshire, and Dorset, to the more secluded valleys of Devon--the county which still sustains the ancient reputation of "English point"--terminating at Launceston, on the Cornish coast.
Various offsets from these fabrics were established in Wales.[1094] Ripon,[1095] an isolated manufactory, represented the {372}lace industry of York; while the dependent islands of Man,[1096] Wight[1097] and Jersey,[1098] may be supposed to have derived their learning from the smugglers who frequented their coast, rather than from the teaching of the Protestant refugees[1099] who sought an asylum on the shores of Britain.
Many of these fabrics now belong to the past, consigned to oblivion even in the very counties where they once flourished. In describing, therefore, the lace manufactures of the United Kingdom, we shall confine ourselves to those which still remain, alluding only slightly to such as were {373}once of note, and of which the existence is confirmed by the testimony of contemporary writers.
The "women of the mystery of thread-working" would appear to have made lace in London,[1100] and of their complaints and grievances our public records bear goodly evidence. Of the products of their needle we know little or nothing.
Various Flemings and Burgundians established themselves in the City; and though the emigrants, for the most part, betook themselves to the adjoining counties, the craft, till the end of the eighteenth century, may be said to have held fair commerce in the capital.
[Illustration: Fig. 132.
RIPON.]
The London fabric can scarcely be looked upon as a staple trade in itself, mixed up as it was with lace-cleaning and lace-washing--an occupation first established by the ejected nuns.[1101] Much point, too, was made by poor gentlewomen, as the records of the Anti-Gallican Society testify. "A strange infatuation," says a writer of the eighteenth century, "prevailed in the capital for many years among the class called demi-fashionables of sending their daughters to convents in France for education, if that could be so termed which amounted to a learning to work in lace. The Revolution, however, put {374}an end to this practice." It is owing to this French education that the fine needle points were so extensively made in England; though this occupation, however, did not seem to belong to any one county in particular; for the reader who runs his eye over the proceedings of the Anti-Gallican Society will find prizes to have been awarded to gentlewomen from all parts--from the town of Leominster in Herefordshire to Broughton in Leicestershire, or Stourton in Gloucester.[1102] Needle point, in contradistinction to bone lace, was an occupation confined to no special locality.
In 1764 the attention of the nobility seems to have been first directed towards the employment of the indigent poor, and, indeed, the better classes in the metropolis, in the making of bone lace and point;[1103] and in 1775, sanctioned by the patronage of Queen Charlotte, the Princesses, the Princess Amelia, and various members of the aristocracy, an institution was formed in Marylebone Lane, and also in James Street, Westminster, "for employing the female infants of the poor in the blond and black silk lace-making and thread laces." More than 300 girls attended the school. "They gave," says the _Annual Register_, "such a proof of their capacity that many who had not been there more than six months carried home to their parents from 5s. to 7s. a month, with expectation of getting more as they improve."
From this time we hear no more of the making of lace, either point or bone, in the metropolis.
PLATE LXXXV.
[Illustration: ENGLISH, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE. BOBBIN LACE.--First half of nineteenth century. Widths: 3, 3, 3, 4 in. The property of Mrs. Ellis, The Vicarage, Much Wenlock.]
_To face page 374._
{375}