CHAPTER XXVI.

GEORGE I. AND II.

GEORGE I.

The accession of the House of Hanover brought but little change either in the fashions or the fabrics. In 1717 the King published an edict regarding the hawking of lace, but the world was too much taken up with the Old Pretender and the court of St. Germains; the King, too, was often absent, preferring greatly his German dominions.

We now hear a great deal of lace ruffles; they were worn long and falling. Lord Bolingbroke, who enraged Queen Anne by his untidy dress—"she supposed, forsooth, he would some day come to court in his nightcap"—is described as having his cravat of point lace, and his hands hidden by exaggerated ruffles of the same material. In good old Jacobite times, these weeping ruffles served as well to conceal notes—"poulets"—passed from one wary politician to another, as they did the French sharpers to juggle and cheat at cards.

Lace continued the mania of the day. "Since your fantastical geers came in with wires, ribbons, and laces, and your furbelows with three hundred yards in a gown and petticoat, there has not been a good housewife in the nation,"^[1044] writes an indignant dramatist. The lover was made to bribe the Abigail of his mistress with a piece of Flanders lace^[1045]—an offering not to be resisted. Lace appeared at baptisms,^[1046] at marriages, as well as at burials, of which more hereafter—even at the Old Bailey, where one Miss Margaret Caroline Rudd, a beauty of the day, tried for forgery, quite moved her jurors to tears, and nigh gained her acquittal by the taste of her elegantly-laced stomacher, the lace robings of her dress, and single lace flounce, her long pendulous ruffles, hanging from the elbow, heard, fluttering in her agitation, by the court; but, in spite of these allurements, Margaret Caroline Rudd was hanged.

Every woman, writes Swift,^[1047] is

Together, they

Again, he says:—

"And when you are among yourselves, how naturally, after the first compliments, do you entertain yourselves with the price and choice of lace, apply your hands to each other's lappets and ruffles, as if the whole business of your life and the public concern depended on the cut of your petticoats."^[1048]

Even wise Mrs. Elizabeth Montague, who wrote epistles about the ancients, and instead of going to a ball, sat at home and read Sophocles, exclaims to her sister—"Surely your heroic spirit will prefer a beau's hand in Brussels lace to a stubborn Scævola without an arm."

In the middle of the nineteenth century it was the fashion that no young lady should wear lace previous to her marriage. In the reign of George II. etiquette was different, for we find the Duchess of Portland presenting Mrs. Montague, then a girl, with a lace head and ruffles.

Wrathfully do the satirists of the day rail against the expense of

and the consequent distress of the lace merchants, to whom ladies are indebted for thousands. After a drawing-room, in which the fair population appeared in "borrowed," i.e., unpaid lace,^[1050] one of the chief lacemen became well-nigh bankrupt. Duns besieged the houses of the great:—

The Connoisseur, describing the reckless extravagance of one of these ladies, writes:—"The lady played till all her ready money was gone, staked her cap and lost it, afterwards her handkerchief. He then staked both cap and handkerchief against her tucker, which, to his pique, she gained." When enumerating the various causes of suicide, he proposes "that an annual bill or report should be made out, giving the different causes which have led to the act." Among others, in his proposed "Bill of Suicide," he gives French claret, French lace, French cooks, etc.

The men, though scarcely coming up to the standard of Sir Courtly Nice,^[1052] who has all his bands and linen made in Holland and washed at Haarlem, were just as extravagant as the ladies.

GEORGE II.

For court and state occasions Brussels lace still held its sway.

In the reign of George II. we read how, at the drawing-room of 1735, fine escalloped Brussels laced heads, triple ditto laced ruffles,^[1053] lappets hooked up with diamond solitaires, found favour. At the next the ladies wore heads dressed English, i.e., bow of fine Brussels lace of exceeding rich patterns, with the same amount of laced ruffles and lappets. Gold flounces were also worn.

Speaking of the passion for Brussels lace, Postlethwait indignantly observes:—"'Tis but a few years since England expended upon foreign lace and linen not less than two millions yearly. As lace in particular is the manufacture of nuns, our British ladies may as well endow monasteries as wear Flanders lace, for these Popish nuns are maintained by Protestant contributions."^[1054]

Patriotism, it would appear, did come into vogue in the year 1736, when at the marriage of Frederick, Prince of Wales, the bride is described as wearing a night-dress of superb lace, the bridegroom a cap of similar material. All the laces worn by the court on this occasion are announced to have been of English manufacture, with the exception of that of the Duke of Marlborough, who appeared in point d'Espagne. The bride, however, does not profit by this high example, for shortly after we read, in the Memoirs of Madame Palatine, of the secretary of Sir Luke Schaub being drugged at Paris by an impostor, and robbed of some money sent to defray the purchase of some French lace ruffles for the Princess of Wales.

It was of native-made laces, we may infer, Mrs. Delany writes in the same year:—"Thanks for your apron. Brussels nor Mechlin ever produced anything prettier."

It appears somewhat strange that patriotism, as regards native manufactures, should have received an impulse during the reign of that most uninteresting though gallant little monarch, the second George of Brunswick.^[1055] But patriotism has its evils, for, writes an essayist, "some ladies now squander away all their money in fine laces, because it sets a great many poor people to work."^[1056]

Ten years previous to the death of King George II. was founded, with a view to correct the prevalent taste for foreign manufactures,^[1057] the Society of Anti-Gallicans, who held their quarterly meetings, and distributed prizes for bone, point lace, and other articles of English manufacture.^[1058]

This society, which continued in great activity for many years, proved most beneficial to the lace-making trade. It excited also a spirit of emulation among gentlewomen of the middle class, who were glad in the course of the year to add to a small income by making the finer kinds of needle-point, which, on account of their elaborate workmanship, could be produced only in foreign convents or by persons whose maintenance did not entirely depend upon the work of their hands.

Towards the year 1756 certain changes in the fashion of the day now again mark the period, for—

"Long lappets, the horse-shoe cap, the Brussels head, and the prudish mob pinned under the chin, have all had their day," says the Connoisseur in 1754. Now we have first mention of lace cardinals; trollopies or slammerkins^[1059] come in at the same period, with treble ruffles to the cuffs; writers talk, too, of a "gentle dame in blonde lace," blonde being as yet a newly-introduced manufacture.

Though history may only be all false,^[1060] as Sir Robert Walpole said to that "cynic in lace ruffles," his son Horace, yet the newspapers are to be depended upon for the fashion of the day, or, as Lady Mary would say, "for what new whim adorns the ruffle."^[1061]

The lace apron,^[1062] worn since the days of Queen Elizabeth, continued to hold its own till the end of the eighteenth century, though some considered it an appendage scarcely consistent with the dignity of polite society. The anecdote of Beau Nash, who held these articles in the strongest aversion, has been often related. "He absolutely excluded," says his biographer, "all who ventured to appear at the Assembly Room at Bath so attired. I have known him at a ball night strip the Duchess of Queensberry, and throw her apron on one of the hinder benches among the ladies' women, observing that none but Abigails appeared in white aprons; though that apron was of the costliest point, and cost two hundred guineas."^[1063]

George II. did his best to promote the fabrics of his country, but at this period smuggling increased with fearful rapidity. It was a war to the knife between the revenue officer and society at large: all classes combined, town ladies of high degree with waiting-maids and the common sailor, to avoid the obnoxious duties and cheat the Government. To this subject we devote the following chapter.

CHAPTER XXVII.

SMUGGLING.

We have had occasional mention of this kindly-looked-upon offence, in the carrying out of which many a reckless seaman paid the penalty of his life in the latter part of the eighteenth century.

From 1700 downwards, though the edicts prohibiting the entry of Flanders lace were repealed, the points of France, Spain and Venice, with other fabrics of note, were still excluded from our ports. "England," writes Anderson,^[1064] "brings home in a smuggling way from France much fine lace and other prohibited fopperies." Prohibition went for nothing; foreign lace ladies would have, and if they could not smuggle it themselves, the smuggler brought it to them. It was not till 1751 that the Customs appear to have used undue severity as regards the entries, prying into people's houses, and exercising a surveillance of so strict a nature as to render the chance to evade their watchfulness a very madness on the part of all degrees. In short, there was not a female within ten miles of a seaport, writes an essayist, that was in possession of a Mechlin lace cap or pinner but they examined her title to it.

Lord Chesterfield, whose opinion that "dress is a very silly thing, but it is much more silly not to be dressed according to your station," was more than acted up to, referring to the strictness of the Customs, writes to his son in 1751, when coming over on a short visit: "Bring only two or three of your laced shirts, and the rest plain ones."

The revenue officers made frequent visits to the tailors' shops, and confiscated whatever articles they found of foreign manufacture.

On January 19th, 1752, a considerable quantity of foreign lace, gold and silver, seized at a tailor's, who paid the penalty of £100, was publicly burnt.^[1065]

George III., who really from his coming to the throne endeavoured to protect English manufactures, ordered, in 1764, all the stuffs and laces worn at the marriage of his sister, the Princess Augusta, to the Duke of Brunswick, to be of English manufacture. To this decree the nobility paid little attention. Three days previous to the marriage a descent was made by the Customs on the court milliner of the day, and nearly the whole of the clothes, silver, gold stuffs and lace, carried off, to the dismay of the modiste, as well as of the ladies deprived of their finery. The disgusted French milliner retired with a fortune of £11,000 to Versailles, where she purchased a villa, which, in base ingratitude to the English court, she called "La Folie des Dames Anglaises." In May of the same year three wedding garments, together with a large seizure of French lace, weighing nearly 100 lbs., were burnt at Mr. Coxe's refinery, conformably to the Act of Parliament. The following birthday, warned by the foregoing mischances, the nobility appeared in clothes and laces entirely of British manufacture.

Every paper tells how lace and ruffles of great value, sold on the previous day, had been seized in a hackney coach, between St. Paul's and Covent Garden; how a lady of rank was stopped in her chair and relieved of French lace to a large amount; or how a poor woman, carelessly picking a quartern loaf as she walked along, was arrested, and the loaf found to contain £200 worth of lace. Even ladies when walking had their black lace mittens cut off their hands, the officers supposing them to be of French manufacture; and lastly, a Turk's turban, of most Mameluke dimensions, was found, containing a stuffing of £90 worth of lace. Books, bottles, babies, false-bottomed boxes, umbrellas, daily poured out their treasures to the lynx-eyed officers.

In May, 1765, the lace-makers joined the procession of the silk-workers of Spitalfields to Westminster, bearing flags and banners, to which were attached long floating pieces of French lace, demanding of the Lords redress, and the total exclusion of foreign goods. On receiving an answer that it was too late, they must wait till next Session, the assemblage declared that they would not be put off by promises; they broke the Duke of Bedford's palings on their way home, and threatened to burn the premises of Mr. Carr, an obnoxious draper. At the next levée they once more assembled before St. James's, but, finding the dresses of the nobility to be all of right English stuff, retired satisfied, without further clamour.

The papers of the year 1764 teem with accounts of seizures made by the Customs. Among the confiscated effects of a person of the highest quality are enumerated: "16 black à-la-mode cloaks, trimmed with lace; 44 French lace caps; 11 black laced handkerchiefs; 6 lace hats; 6 ditto aprons; 10 pairs of ruffles; 6 pairs of ladies' blonde ditto, and 25 gentlemen's." Eleven yards of edging and 6 pairs of ruffles are extracted from the pocket of the footman. Everybody smuggled. A gentleman attached to the Spanish Embassy is unloaded of 36 dozen shirts, with fine Dresden ruffles and jabots, and endless lace, in pieces, for ladies' wear. These articles had escaped the vigilance of the officers at Dover, but were seized on his arrival by the coach at Southwark. Though Prime Ministers in those days accepted bribes, the Custom-house officers seem to have done their duty.^[1066]

When the body of his Grace the Duke of Devonshire was brought over from France, where he died, the officers, to the anger of his servants, not content with opening and searching the coffin, poked the corpse with a stick to ascertain if it was a real body; but the trick of smuggling in coffins was too old to be attempted. Forty years before, when a deceased clergyman was conveyed from the Low Countries for interment, the body of the corpse was found to have disappeared, and to have been replaced by Flanders lace of immense value—the head and hands and feet alone remaining. This discovery did not, however, prevent the High Sheriff of Westminster from running—and that successfully—£6,000 worth of French lace in the coffin of Bishop Atterbury,^[1067] when his body was brought over from Calais for interment.

Towards the close of the French war, in the nineteenth century, smuggling of lace again became more rife than ever. It was in vain the authorities stopped the travelling carriages on their road from seaport towns to London, rifled the baggage of the unfortunate passengers by the mail at Rochester and Canterbury; they were generally outwitted, though spies in the pay of the Customs were ever on the watch.

Mrs. Palliser had in her possession a Brussels veil of great beauty, which narrowly escaped seizure. It belonged to a lady who was in the habit of accompanying her husband, for many years member for one of the Cinque Ports. The day after the election she was about to leave for London, somewhat nervous as to the fate of a Brussels veil she had purchased of a smuggler for a hundred guineas; when, at a dinner-party, it was announced that Lady Ellenborough, wife of the Lord Chief Justice, had been stopped near Dover, and a large quantity of valuable lace seized concealed in the lining of her carriage. Dismayed at the news, the lady imparted her trouble to a gentleman at her side, who immediately offered to take charge of the lace and convey it to London, remarking that "no one would suspect him, as he was a bachelor." Turning round suddenly, she observed one of the hired waiters to smile, and at once settling him to be a spy, she loudly accepted the offer; but that night, before going to bed, secretly caused the veil to be sewn up in the waistcoat of the newly-elected M.P., in such a manner that it filled the hollow of his back. Next morning they started, and reached London in safety, while her friend, who remained two days later, was stopped, and underwent a rigorous but unsuccessful examination from the Customhouse officers.

The free trade principles of the nineteenth century put a more effectual stop to smuggling than all the activity of revenue officers, spies, and informers, or even laws framed for the punishment of the offenders.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

GEORGE III.

In 1760 commences the reign of George III. The King was patriotic, and did his best to encourage the fabrics of his country.

From the year 1761 various Acts were passed for the benefit of the lace-makers: the last, that of 1806, "increases the duties on foreign laces."^[1068]

Queen Charlotte, on her first landing in England, wore, in compliment to the subjects of her royal consort, a fly cap richly trimmed, with lappets of British lace, and a dress of similar manufacture.

The Englishman, however, regardless of the Anti-Gallicans, preferred his "Macklin" and his Brussels to all the finest productions of Devonshire or Newport-Pagnel.

Ruffles,^[1069] according to the fashion of Tavistock Street and St. James's, in May, 1773, still continued long, dipped in the sauce alike by clown and cavalier.^[1070]

A man was known by his "points"; he collected lace, as, in these more athletic days, a gentleman prides himself on his pointers or his horses. We read in the journals of the time how, on the day after Lord George Gordon's riots, a report ran through London that the Earl of Effingham, having joined the rioters, had been mortally wounded, and his body thrown into the Thames. He had been recognised, folks declared, by his point lace ruffles.^[1071]

Mr. Damer, less known than his wife, the talented sculptor and friend of Horace Walpole, appeared three times a day in a new suit, and at his death^[1072] left a wardrobe which sold for £15,000.^[1073] Well might it have been said of him—

There was "no difference between the nobleman and city 'prentice, except that the latter was sometimes the greater beau," writes the Female Spectator.^[1075]

Painters of the eighteenth century loved to adorn their portraits with the finest fabrics of Venice and Flanders; modern artists consider such decorations as far too much trouble. "Over the chimney-piece," writes one of the essayists, describing a citizen's country box, "was my friend's portrait, which was drawn bolt upright in a full-bottomed periwig, a laced cravat, with the fringed ends appearing through the button-hole (Steinkirk fashion). Indeed, one would almost wonder how and where people managed to afford so rich a selection of laces in their days, did it not call to mind the demand of the Vicaress of Wakefield 'to have as many pearls and diamonds put into her picture as could be given for the money.'"

Ruffles were equally worn by the ladies:—^[1077]

Indeed, if we may judge by the intellectual conversation overheard and accurately noted down by Miss Burney,^[1079] at Miss Monckton's (Lady Cork) party, court ruffles were inconvenient to wear:—

"'You can't think how I am encumbered with these nasty ruffles,' said Mrs. Hampden.

"'And I dined in them,' says the other. 'Only think!'

"'Oh!' answered Mrs. Hampden, 'it really puts me out of spirits.'"

Both ladies were dressed for a party at Cumberland House, and ill at ease in the costume prescribed by etiquette.

About 1770 the sleeves of the ladies' dresses were tight on the upper arm, where they suddenly became very large, and, drooping at the elbow, they terminated in rich fringes of lace ruffles. A few years later the sleeves expanded from the shoulders till they became a succession of constantly enlarging ruffles and lappets, and again, before 1780, they became tight throughout, with small cuffs and no lace at the elbows, when they were worn with long gloves.

Our history of English lace is now drawing to a close; but, before quitting the subject, we must, however, make some allusion to the custom prevalent here, as in all countries, of using lace as a decoration to grave-clothes. In the chapter devoted to Greece, we have mentioned how much lace is still taken from the tombs of the Ionian Islands, washed, mended, or, more often, as a proof of its authenticity, sold in a most disgusting state to the purchaser. The custom was prevalent at Malta, as the lines of Beaumont and Fletcher testify:—

At Palermo you may see the mummies thus adorned in the celebrated catacombs of the Capuchin convent.^[1081]

In Denmark,^[1082] Sweden, and the north of Europe^[1083] the custom was general. The mass of lace in the tomb of the once fair Aurora Königsmarck, at Quedlenburg, would in itself be a fortune. She sleeps clad in the richest point d'Angleterre, Malines, and guipure. Setting aside the jewels which still glitter around her parchment form, no daughter of Pharaoh was ever so richly swathed.^[1084]

In Spain it is related as the privilege of a grandee: all people of a lower rank are interred in the habit of some religious order.^[1085]

Taking the grave-clothes of St. Cuthbert as an example, we believe the same custom to have prevailed in England from the earliest times.^[1086]

Mrs. Oldfield, the celebrated actress, who died in 1730, caused herself to be thus interred. The lines of Pope have long since immortalised the story:—

"She was laid in her coffin," says her maid, "in a very fine Brussels lace head, a Holland shift with a tucker of double ruffles, and a pair of new kid gloves." Previous to her interment in Westminster Abbey she lay in state in the Jerusalem Chamber.^[1087] For Mrs. Oldfield in her lifetime was a great judge of lace, and treasured a statuette of the Earl of Stratford, finely carved in ivory by Grinling Gibbons, more, it is supposed, for the beauty of its lace Vandyke collar^[1088] than any other sentiment.

In 1763 another instance is recorded in the London Magazine of a young lady buried in her wedding clothes, point lace tucker, handkerchief, ruffles and apron; also a fine point lappet head. From this period we happily hear no more of such extravagances.

Passing from interments and shrouds to more lively matters, we must quote the opinion of that Colossus of the eighteenth century, Dr. Johnson, who was too apt to talk on matters of taste and art, of which he was no competent judge. "A Brussels trimming," he declaims to Mrs. Piozzi, "is like bread sauce; it takes away the glow of colour from the gown, and gives you nothing instead of it: but sauce was invented to heighten the flavour of our food, and trimming is an ornament to the manteau or it is nothing."^[1089] A man whose culinary ideas did not soar higher than bread sauce could scarcely pronounce on the relative effect and beauty of point lace.

If England had leant towards the products of France, in 1788, an Anglomania ran riot at Paris. Ladies wore a cap of mixed lace, English and French, which they styled the "Union of France and England." On the appearance of the French Revolution, the classic style of dress—its India muslins and transparent gauzes—caused the ancient points to fall into neglect. From this time dates the decline of the lace fabric throughout Europe.

Point still appeared at court and on state occasions, such as on the marriage of the Princess Caroline of Wales, 1795, but as an article of daily use it gradually disappeared from the wardrobes of all classes. A scrupulous feeling also arose in ladies' minds as to the propriety of wearing articles of so costly a nature, forgetting how many thousands of women gained a livelihood by its manufacture. Mrs. Hannah More, among the first, in her Cœlebs in Search of a Wife, alludes to the frivolity of the taste, when the little child exclaiming "at the beautiful lace with which the frock of another was trimmed, and which she was sure her mamma had given her for being good," remarks, "A profitable and, doubtless, lasting and inseparable association was thus formed in the child's mind between lace and goodness."

Whether in consequence of the French Revolution, or from the caprice of fashion, "real" lace—worse off than the passements and points of 1634, when in revolt—now underwent the most degrading vicissitudes. Indeed, so thoroughly was the taste for lace at this epoch gone by, that in many families collections of great value were, at the death of their respective owners, handed over as rubbish to the waiting maid.^[1090] Many ladies recollect in their youth to have tricked out their dolls in the finest Alençon point, which would now sell at a price far beyond their purses. Among the few who, in England, unseduced by frippery blonde, never neglected to preserve their collections entire, was the Duchess of Gloucester, whose lace was esteemed among the most magnificent in Europe.

When the taste of the age again turned towards the rich fabrics of the preceding centuries, much lace, both black and white, was found in the country farm-houses, preserved as remembrances of deceased patrons by old family dependants. Sometimes the hoard had been forgotten, and was again routed out from old wardrobes and chests, where it had lain unheeded for years. Much was recovered from theatrical wardrobes and the masquerade shops, and the Church, no longer in its temporal glory, both in Italy, Spain and Germany, gladly parted with what, to them, was of small value compared with the high price given for it by amateurs. In Italy perhaps the finest fabrics of Milan, Genoa, and Venice had fared best, from the custom which prevailed of sewing up family lace in rolls of linen to ensure its preservation.

After years of neglect lace became a "mania." In England the literary ladies were the first to take it up. Sydney Lady Morgan and Lady Stepney quarrelled weekly on the respective value and richness of their points. The former at one time commenced a history of the lace fabric, though what was the ultimate fate of the MS. the author is unable to state. The Countess of Blessington, at her death, left several chests filled with the finest antique lace of all descriptions.

The "dames du grand monde," both in England and France, now began to wear lace. But, strange as it may seem, never at any period did they appear to so little advantage as during the counter-revolution of the lace period. Lace was the fashion, and wear it somehow they would, though that somehow often gave them an appearance, as the French say, du dernier ridicule, simply from an ignorance displayed in the manner of arranging it. That lace was old seemed sufficient to satisfy all parties. They covered their dresses with odds and ends of all fabrics, without attention either to date or texture. One English lady appeared at a ball given by the French Embassy at Rome, boasting that she wore on the tablier of her dress every description of lace, from point coupé of the fifteenth to Alençon of the eighteenth century. The Count of Syracuse was accustomed to say: "The English ladies buy a scrap of lace as a souvenir of every town they pass through, till they reach Naples, then sew it on their dresses, and make one grande toilette of the whole to honour our first ball at the Academia Nobile."

The taste for lace has again become universal, and the quality now produced renders it within the reach of all classes of society; and though by some the taste may be condemned, it gives employment to thousands and ten thousands of women, who find it more profitable and better adapted to their strength than the field labour which forms the occupation of the women in agricultural districts. To these last, in a general point of view, the lace-maker of our southern counties, who works at home in her own cottage, is superior, both in education, refinement, and morality:—

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE LACE MANUFACTURERS OF ENGLAND.

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 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 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.

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 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.