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flourished, all English, and even French authors, 9 citing its“ manufactures de dentelles au fuseau ” as the staple produce ofthe town and its surrounding villages, which said lace, however,they pronounce as “ inferieure a celle de Flandre.”

During the seventeenth century the trade continued to advance,and Fuller testifies to its once more prosperous condition in Bucks,towards the year 1640. “No handicrafts of note,” he writes,“(save what are common to other countries), are used therein,except any will instance in bone lace, much thereof being madeabout Owldney, in this county, though more, I believe, in Devon-shire, where we shall meet more properly therewith.” 10 Olney, asit is now written, a small market town, for many years the resi-dence of Cowper, known by its twenty-four-arched bridge, now nomore, “ of wearisome but needful length,” spanning the Ouse—Olney, together with its fellow towns of Newport Pagnel andAylesbury, are much quoted by the authorities of the last century,though, as is too often the case in books of travels and statistics,one writer copies from another the information derived from apreceding author. Defoe, however, who really did solace thepains of pillory and ear-cropping by visiting each county indetail, quotes “ Ouldney as possessing a considerable manufactureof bone lacewhile a letter from the poet Cowper to the Rev.John Newton, in 1780, enclosing a petition to Lord Dartmouth infavour of the lace-makers, declares that “ hundreds in this littletown are upon the point of starving, and that the most unre-mitting industry is barely sufficient to keep them from it.” Adistress caused, we may infer, by some caprice of fashion.

“ The lace manufacture is still carried on,” says Lvsons, 11 “ toa great extent in and about Olney, where veils and other lace ofthe finer soit are made, and great fortunes are said to be acquiredby the factors. Lace-making is in no part of the country sogeneral as at Hanslape and in its immediate vicinity; but itprevails from fifteen to twenty miles round in every direction.At Hanslape not fewer than 800, out of a population of 12 <5,were employed in it in the year 1801. Children are there putto the lace schools at, or soon after, five years of age. At elevenor twelve years of age they are all able to maintain themselveswithout any assistance: both girls and boys are taught to make

“ Savary and Peuchet. 11 “ Magna Britannia,” Daniel and

10 “ Worthies,” vol. i. p. 134. Samuel Lysons, 1800-22.

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