Up to the days of Elizabeth all mention of lace is scanty, but suddenly in the Privy Expenses, and the inventories of New Year's gifts, notices of passaments, drawn-work, cut-work, crown lace, bone lace for ruffs, Spanish chain, byas, parchment, hollow, billament, and diamond lace, crowd upon us with astounding rapidity. It was sold in the general shops or stores of provincial towns, together with pepper, hornbooks, sugar-candy, and spangles.

The wardrobe accounts of Elizabeth are drawn up in Latin, which is not without its charm, if not precisely Ciceronian; a very little will suffice for a purist in that language. Here is a specimen :

'Eidem pro 6 caulis alb' nodat' opat' cu' le chainestich et legat' cu' tape de filo soror ad 148., 47. 48.

Which means, being interpreted,—

Ditto for six caules of white knot-work worked with the chainstitch bound with tape of sister's (nun's) thread at 14s., 41. 48.

A lady who left 3000 gowns behind her was not likely to be very economical in lace; and cut-work, elegantly called opus scissum, by the keeper of the Great Wardrobe, was used by Elizabeth without stint. She wore it on her ruffs, with lilies of the like, set with small seed pearl, on her doublets, 'flourished with squares of silver owes,' on her forepart of lawn, 'flourished with silver and spangles,' on her cushion cloths, her veils, her tooth-cloths, her smocks, and her night-caps. Elizabeth, in one of these night-caps at the window, it was the good fortune of young Gilbert Talbot, son of Lord Shrewsbury, to see while he was walking in the tilt-yard. The Queen gave him a slap on the forehead that evening, and told her chamberlain that the young man had seen her unready, and in her night stuff,' and how ashamed she was thereof.

The Queen had a great passion for foreign articles of wear. The new purchases of Mary Queen of Scots were overhauled on their way to her prison, and Elizabeth purloined whatever she had a fancy for. Cecil penned a wary letter to Sir Henry Norris, saying that the Queen's Majesty would fain have a tailor that has skill to make her apparel both after the French and Italian manner,' and his lady wife is to get one private without the knowledge coming to the ears of Catherine de Medicis, as she does not want to be beholden to her.'

6

Laced handkerchiefs now first came into fashion. 'Maydes and gentlewomen,' writes Stowe, gave to their favourites as tokens of their love, little handkerchiefs of about three or four inches square, wrought round about,' and with a button at each

corner. They cost sixpence, twelvepence, and sixteenpence, and gentlemen wore them on their hats as favours of their mistresses.

The laces of Flanders and Italy now easily held their own for nearly two centuries. On the death of Elizabeth, however, Queen Anne, the wife of James I., seems to have done what she could for the fabrics of the country. Nevertheless, her first appearance in England was somewhat humiliating. She had to make her entrée into public life in Elizabeth's old clothes. The Scotch wardrobe was too scanty and poor for the sudden demand upon it. James wisely enough communicated the fact to the Privy Council, who forthwith forwarded to the Queen by the hands of her newly-made ladies a quantity of Elizabeth's old gowns and ruffs wherewith to make a creditable appearance. But the young Queen was furious at thus being made to wear the secondhand clothes of the parchment-face, wrinkled queen who had just died, and she refused to appoint any of the ladies sent to her, with the exception of Lady Bedford.

Ruffs, single, double, three-piled, and 'Dædalian,' as a satirist calls them, went out with James I., though Judges continued to wear them until the peruke came in. The falling-band' usurped the dignity of the ruff; and a fine clean fall,' says the Malcontent, if you should chance to fall asleep in the afternoon,' had no need of a 'poking-stick to recover it.' Lord Keeper Finch is said to have been the first legal dignitary who had the strength of mind to adopt the falling-band.' And Whitelock, in 1635, in addressing the Quarter Sessions in a clean fall,' found it necessary to assert that one may speak as good sense in a falling-band as in a ruff.' The falling-bands,' however, were not a whit less expensive, and the quantity of needlework purl expended on the King's hunting collars, 'colares pro venatione,' is astounding.

In the wardrobe accounts, 994 yards are proportioned to 12 collars and 24 pairs of cuffs; and the bills for the King's lace and linen arose from 10007. in 1625, to 15007. in 1633, when, in the State papers, a project may be found for reducing the charge for the King's lace and bone lace for his body' back to 10007., for which sum it may be very well done.'

The art of lace making was now flourishing in England, so that Henrietta Maria made constant presents of ribbon, lace, and other English feminine finery to her sister-in-law, Anne of Austria.

Scarfs, feathers, fans, masks, muffs, laces, cauls',

of

of the court of King Charles were soon to be scattered into space by the hurricane passions of civil and religious discord. Already lace, in its delicate susceptibility, had shown prophetic sympathies with coming events; for towards the end of James I.'s reign, a strange custom had been introduced by Puritan ladies of representing religious subjects, both in lace, cut-work, and embroidery on their vestments. Thus, in Jasper Mayne's City Match,' we have

'She works religious petticoats; for flowers,

She'll make church histories. Her needle doth
So sanctify my cushionets, besides,

My smock sleeves have such holy embroideries,
And are so learned, that I fear in time

All my apparel will be quoted by

Some pious instructor.'

The Scotch went to bed in sheets of holy work, for we find in a Scotch inventory of the seventeenth century, Of Holland scheittes ii pair, quhareof 1 pair schewit (sewed) with holie work.’

Ladies, under the tyranny of Puritan severity, must lay aside their whisks, or gorget collars, and no longer hie to Saint Martin's for lace. Their smocks of three pounds a piece must be suppressed, and

'Sempsters with ruffs and cuffs, and quoifs and cauls,

And falls'

must be content to turn the use of their needles to more godly fashions. 'Lace to her smocks-broad seaming laces,' groans a Puritan writer, it is horrible to think of.'

The lace makers consequently had a melancholy existence, when the Maypole was suppressed and the hobby-horse was forgot.' Village festivals and love-locks and gay attire had the same fate as bear-baiting; nevertheless it was principally the middle and lower classes who submitted to the tyranny of Puritan austerity. These sober-suited people thought, with Sir Toby Belch, that it was 'not for gravity to play at cherry-pit with Satan;' but the great ladies of the Puritan party loved not the Roundhead fashions any more than the wives of the Cavaliers. Even the mother of Cromwell wore a handkerchief of which the broad point lace alone could be seen, and her green velvet cardinal was edged with broad gold lace; and the body of the great Protectoraustere as he was in life in dress-was arrayed after death in purple velvet, ermine and the richest Flanders lace, and his effigy, carved by Symonds, had a plentiful adornment of point. In a political jeu d'esprit of the disbursements of the Committee of Public Safety, we have Lady Lambert put down for

Item, seven new whisks lin'd with Flanders lace of the last edition, each whisk is valued at fifty pound, 350.'

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With the Restoration, the age of

The dangling knee fringe and the bib-cravat,'

lace once more had one of its sunniest epochs in the eyes of fashion; and Pepys, in 1662, could put on his 'new lace band' and say, so neat it is that I am resolved my great expenses shall be lacebands, and it will set off anything else the more.' Charles II. in the last year of his reign spent 207. 12s. for a new cravat to be worn on the birthday of his dear brother;' and James expended 297. upon one of Venice point to appear in on that of his queen. When the last Stuart king died at Saint Germain, he died according to French etiquette, and, to please Louis XIV., in a laced nightcap. This cap was called a toquet. It was the Court etiquette,' writes Madame in her Memoirs, for all the Royals to die with a nightcap on.' This toquet of King James is now in the Museum of Dunkirk. Mary of Modena died also in like fashion, coiffée with the toquet.

William III., in spite of his grim phlegmatic character, had a genuine Dutch taste for lace, so that his bills for that article in 1695 reached the immense sum of 24597. 19s.; thus almost doubling the lace extravagance of Charles I. Among the more astonishing items we have

"117 yards of "scissæ tenim," cut-work for trimming 12 pocket handkerchiefs

And 78 yards for 24 cravats at 81. 10s.

£. s. d.

485 14 3 663 0 0

Lace expended for six new razor-cloths, amounted to 2707., and 4997. 10s. worth of lace was bestowed on twenty-four new nightshirts, indusiis nocturnis.' The queen Mary approached but did not reach the King in lace expenditure; her lace bill for 1694 amounted to 1918/.

With respect to this age of heavy wigs and the laced Steenkerk cravat many people possess among their family relics, Mrs. Palliser says, and as we have seen, long oval-shaped broaches of topaz or Bristol stone, and wonder what they were used for. These were for fastening the lace Steenkerk on one side of the breast when it was not passed through the buttonhole. Under such royal patronage the lace trade necessarily prospered, and Defoe quotes Blandford lace as selling ten years after William's death at 307. the yard.

These were the days when young military heroes went to war in all the bravery of toilette they could muster; so that later, in the time of Louis XV., the young nobles of France sat for hours

under

under the operations of their valets and perruquiers in front of their tents preparing their toilette de guerre with greater pains than the Graces ever bestowed upon Venus. Even Volunteers must go to camp properly equipped, as in Shadwell's play of the "Volunteers or the Stockjobbers':

'Major-General Blunt.-What say'st young fellow? Points and laces for camps?

'Sir Nicholas Danby.-Yes, points and laces. Why I carry two laundresses on purpose. Would you have a gentleman go undress'd in a camp? Do you think I would see a camp if there were no dressing? Why I have two campaign suits, one trimmed with Flanders lace and the other with net point.

'Major-General Blunt.-Camping suits with lace and point!'

'The hairpowder of the army,' an indignant writer observes at this period, 'would feed 600,000 persons per annum.' The 'World' regarded this expenditure of finery on men about to be food for powder in the same light as the silver plates and ornaments on a coffin. The gay young fellows 'would not sure be frightful when one's dead':

'To war the troops advance,

Adorn'd and trimm'd like females for the dance.'

Some years previous to this epoch in 1664, the Turkish Vizier, Achmet Kiuprili Ogli, seeing the young French noblesse defile on the plains of Hungary in order of battle, in all the bravery of satin, with their white perruques, and all their ribbons and lace fringes fluttering like fine feathers in the wind, exclaimed, Who are these young girls?' Soon after, in one irresistible charge, the young ladies broke up the ranks of his terrible Janissaries, and changed disaster into victory.

Even in Sheridan's time the hearts of young ladies at home, like that of the Justice's daughter in 'St. Patrick's Day,' melted at imagination of the hardships of young warriors in their gay attire:

'Dear, to think how the sweet fellows sleep upon the ground and fight in silk stockings and lace ruffles.'

Queen Anne's reign appears to have been illustrated principally by the invention of 'Pinners double-ruffled, with twelve plaits of a side: the hair being frizzled all round the head, and standing as stiff as a bodkin.' "The prettiest fashion lately come over! so easy, so French, and all that,' as Parley says in Farquhar's 'Sir Harry Wildair.' The commode 'or Fontange's coiffure, too, met with a fall under her dynasty, sinking all of a sudden like the funds in time of revolution. These had, indeed, shot up to such a height that the wits declared the ladies carried

Bow