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HISTORY OF LAOE.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE LACE MANUFACTURES 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 nightLies down secure, her heart and pocket light.”

Cowper.

The bone lace manufactures of England in the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries appear to have extended over a much widerarea than they occupy in the present day. From Cambridge tothe adjacent counties of Northampton and Hertfordshire, byBuckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, and Oxfordshire, the trade spreadover the southern counties of Wiltshire, Somersetshire , 1 Hamp-shire, and Dorset, to the more secluded valleys of Devon—thecounty which still sustains the ancient reputation of “ Englishpoint ”—terminating at Launceston, on the Cornish coast.

Various offsets from these fabrics were established in Wales . 2llipon , 3 an isolated manufactory, represented the lace industry of

1 “ Wells, bone lace and knitting stock-ings.”— Anderson.

2 “ Launceston, where are two schoolsfor forty-eight children of both sexes.The giils are taught to read, sew, andmake bone lace, and they are to havetheir earnings for encouragement.”—Magna Britannia, 1720.

Welsh lace was made at Swansea, I’ont-Avdawe, Llanwrtyd, Dufynoek, andBrecon, but never of any beauty, somenot unlike a coarse Valenciennes. “ Itwas much made and worn,” said an agedWesleyan lady, “ by our ‘ connexion,’ andas a child I had all my frocks and pina-fores trimmed with it. It was made in thecottages; each lacc-maker had her own

pattern, and carried it out for sale in thecountry.”

3 At what period, and by whom, thelace manufactory of Ripon was founded,we have been unable to ascertain. Itwas probably a relic of conventual days,which, after having followed (he fashionof each time, has now gradually died out.Twenty years since, broad trolly laces ofFrench design and fair workmanshipwere fabricated in the old cathedral city;where, in the poorer localities near theBond and Blossomgate, young womenmight be seen working their intricatepatterns, with pillows, bobbins, and pins.Now, one old woman alone, says ourinformant, sustains the memory of the