William, Prince of Orange, Father of William III., 1627-1650. School of Van Dyck.
The collar is edged with Dutch lace. National Portrait Gallery.
Photo by Walker and Cockerell.
To face page 258.
A few years later, another Huguenot, Zacharie Châtelain,[[694]] introduced into Holland the industry, at that time so important, of making gold and silver lace.
The Dutch possessed one advantage over most other nations, especially over England, in her far-famed Haarlem[[695]] thread, once considered the best adapted for lace in the world. "No place bleaches flax," says a writer of the day,[[696]] "like the meer of Haarlem."[[697]]
Still the points of Holland made little noise in the world. The Dutch strenuously forbade the entry of all foreign lace, and what they did not consume themselves they exported to Italy, where the market was often deficient.[[698]] Once alone in England we hear tell of a considerable parcel of Dutch lace seized between Deptford and London from the Rotterdam hoy. England, however, according to Anderson, in 1764, received in return for her products from Holland "fine lace, but the balance was in England's favour."
In 1770 the Empress Queen (Marie Theresa) published a declaration prohibiting the importation of Dutch lace into any of her Imperial Majesty's hereditary dominions in Germany.[[699]]
As in other matters, the Dutch carried their love of lace to the extreme, tying up their knockers with rich point to announce the birth of an infant. A traveller who visited France in 1691, remarks of his hotel: "The warming-pans and brasses were not here muffled up in point and cut-work, after the manner of Holland, for there were no such things to be seen."[[700]]