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CHAPTER XXXII.

DEVONSHIRE.

“ Bone lace and Cyder.”

Anderson.

“ At Axminster, you may be furniahed with fyne flax thread there spunne. AtHonyton and Brndninch with bone lace much in request.”— Westcote.

HONITON.

Lace-making is said to have been introduced into Devonshire bysundry Flemings who took refuge in England during the persecu-tions of the Duke of Alva (1567-73). Whether the art was firstmade known to the inhabitants of the county at that period, it isimpossible now to say.

We may rather infer that laces of silk and coarse threadwere already manufactured in Devonshire, as elsewhere; and thatthe Flemings, on their arrival, having introduced the fine thread,spun almost exclusively in their own country, from that period thetrade of bone-lace making flourished in the southern as in themidland counties of England.

Although the earliest known MS., 1 giving an account of thedifferent towns of Devon, makes no mention of lace, we find fromit that Mrs. Minifie, one of the earliest named lace-makers, was anEnglishwoman. 2

Towards the latter end of the sixteenth century, various and,indeed, numerous patronymics of Flemish origin appear among the

1 lur’s “ Synopsis,” written about theyear 1501. Two copies of this MS. exist,one in tlie library of Sir Lawrence Pulk,at Halden House (Co. Devon), the otherin the British Museum. This MS. wasnever printed, but served as an authorityfor Westcote and others.

* “ She was a daughter of John Flay,Vicar of Buckrell, near Honiton, who bywill, in 1614, bequeaths certain lands toJerom Minify (sic), son of Jerom Minify,of Burwash, Sussex, who married his onlydaughter.”— Frince's Worthies of Devon,1701.

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