ENGLAND TO QUEEN ELIZABETH.
"We weare most fantastical fashions than any nation under the sun doth, the French only excepted."—Coryat's Crudities. 1611.
It would be a difficult matter for antiquaries to decide at what precise time lace, as we now define the word, first appears as an article of commerce in the annals of our country.
As early as the reign of Edward III.,[[753]] the excessive luxury of veils, worn even by servant girls, excited the indignation of the Government, who, in an Act, dated 1363, forbade them to be worn of silk, or of any other material, "mes soulement de fil fait deinz le Roialme," for which veils no one was to pay more than the sum of tenpence. Of what stuff these thread veils were composed we have no record; probably they were a sort of network, similar to the caul of Queen Philippa, as we see represented on her tomb.[[754]] That a sort of crochet decoration used for edging was already made, we may infer from the monumental effigies of the day.[[755]] The purse of the carpenter is described, too, in Chaucer, as "purled with latoun," a kind of metal or wire lace, similar to that found at Herculaneum, and made in some parts of Europe to a recent period.
M. Aubry refers to a commercial treaty of 1390, between England and the city of Bruges, as the earliest mention of lace. This said treaty we cannot find in Rymer, Dumont, or anywhere else. We have, as before alluded to, constant edicts concerning the gold wires and threads of "Cipre, Venys, Luk, and Jeane," of embroideries and suchlike, but no distinct allusion to "lace."[[756]]
According to Anderson, the first intimation of such an occupation being known in England is the complaint, made in 1454, by the women of the mystery of thread-working in London, in consequence of the importation of six foreign women, by which the manufacture of needlework[[757]] of thread and silk, not as yet understood, was introduced. These six women, probably Flemings, had brought over to England the cut-work or darning of the time, a work then unknown in this country.
All authors, up to the present period, refer to the well-known Act of Edward IV.,[[758]] 1463, in which the entry of "laces, corses, ribans, fringes, de soie and de file, laces de file soie enfile," etc., are prohibited, as the first mention of "lace" in the public records.
The English edition of the Fœdera, as well as the statutes at large, freely translate these words as laces of thread, silk twined, laces of gold, etc.; and the various writers on commerce and manufactures have accepted the definition as "lace," without troubling themselves to examine the question.[[759]] Some even go so far as to refer to a MS. in the Harleian Library,[[760]] giving "directions for making many sorts of laces,[[761]] which were in fashion in the times of King Henry VI. and Edward IV.," as a proof that lace was already well known, and formed the occupation of the "handcraftry"—as those who gained their livelihood by manual occupation were then termed—of the country. Now, the author has carefully examined this already quoted MS., in the principal letter of which is a damaged figure of a woman sitting and "making of lace," which is made by means of "bowys."[[762]] As regards the given directions, we defy anyone, save the most inveterate lover of crochet-work, to understand one word of its contents, beyond that it relates to some sort of twisted thread-work, and perhaps we might, in utter confusion of mind, have accepted the definition as given, had not another MS. of similar tenor, bearing date 1651, been also preserved in the British Museum.[[763]]
This second MS. gives specimens of the laces, such as they were, stitched side by side with the directions, which at once establishes the fact that the laces of silk and gold, laces of thread, were nothing more than braids or cords—the laces used with tags, commonly called "poynts" (the "ferrets" of Anne of Austria)—for fastening the dresses, as well as for ornament, previous to the introduction of pins.
In the Wardrobe Accounts of the time we have frequent notice of these "laces" and corses. "Laces de quir" (cuir) also appear in the Statutes,[[764]] which can only mean what we now term bootlaces, or something similar.