And the free maids that weave their threads with bone."
"Bone" lace[[796]] constantly appears in the wardrobe accounts, while bobbin lace[[797]] is of less frequent occurrence.
Among the New Year's Gifts presented to Queen Elizabeth, we have from the Lady Paget "a petticoat of cloth of gold stayned black and white, with a bone lace of gold and spangles, like the wayves of the sea"; a most astounding article, with other entries no less remarkable but too numerous to cite.
In the marriage accounts of Prince Charles[[798]] we have charged 150 yards of bone lace[[799]] for six extraordinary ruffs and twelve pairs of cuffs, against the projected Spanish marriage. The lace was at 9s. a yard. Sum total, £67 10s.[[800]] Bone lace is mentioned in the catalogue of King Charles I.'s pictures, drawn up by Vanderdort,[[801]] where James I. is described "without a hat, in a bone lace falling band."[[802]]
Setting aside wardrobe accounts and inventories, the term constantly appears both in the literature and the plays of the seventeenth century.
"Buy some quoifs, handkerchiefs, or very good bone lace, mistress?"
cries the pert sempstress when she enters with her basket of wares, in Green's Tu Quoque,[[803]] showing it to have been at that time the usual designation.
"You taught her to make shirts and bone lace,"
says someone in the City Madam.[[804]]
Again, describing a thrifty wife, Loveless, in The Scornful Lady,[[805]] exclaims—