Christening Caps, Needle-made Brussels.—Eighteenth century.
Aprons, too, of lace appeared in this reign. The Queen, as we have mentioned, wears one in her portrait at Gripsholm.[[873]]
"Those aprons white, of finest thread,
So choicelie tied, so dearly bought;
So finely fringed, so nicely spread;
So quaintly cut, so richly wrought,"
writes the author of Pleasant Quippes for Upstart Gentlewomen, in 1596. The fashion continued to the end of the eighteenth century.
Laced handkerchiefs now 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," with a button at each corner.[[874]] The best were edged with a small gold lace. Gentlemen wore them in their hats as favours of their mistresses. Some cost sixpence, some twelvepence, and the richest sixteenpence.
Of the difference between purles and true lace it is difficult now to decide. The former word is of frequent occurrence among the New Year's Gifts, where we have "sleeves covered all over with purle,"[[875]] and, in one case, the sleeves are offered unmade, with "a piece of purle upon a paper to edge them."[[876]] It was yet an article of great value and worthy almost of entail, for, in 1573, Elizabeth Sedgwicke, of Wathrape, widow, bequeaths to her daughter Lassells, of Walbron, "an edge of perlle for a remembrance, desirying her to give it to one of her daughters."[[877]]
We now turn, before quitting the sixteenth century, to that most portentous of all fabrications—Queen Elizabeth's ruff.