Speaking of Bedfordshire, Defoe writes: "Thro' the whole south part of this country, as far as the borders of Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire, the people are taken up with the manufacture of bone lace, in which they are wonderfully exercised and improved within these few years past"[[1111]]—probably since the arrival of the French settlers after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. At the same period the author of the Magna Britannia[[1112]] states that at Woburn "lace of a high price is made in considerable quantities." Savary and Peuchet both declare the town of Bedford alone to have contained 500 lace-workers.
In 1863, as Mrs. Palliser wrote: "The lace schools of Bedfordshire are far more considerable than those in Devonshire. Four or five may frequently be found in the same village, numbering from twenty to thirty children each, and they are considered sufficiently important to be visited by Government inspectors. Their work is mostly purchased by large dealers, who make their arrangements with the instructress: the children are not bound for a term, as in the southern counties. Boys formerly attended the lace schools, but now they go at an early age to the fields."
These lace-schools are now things of the past. In some cases, however, in the lace counties, the County Council Technical Education Committee have supplemented private efforts with grants for classes to teach the lace industry.
The wages of a lace-worker average a shilling a day; under press of business, caused by the demand for some fashionable article, they sometimes rise to one shilling and sixpence.
BUCKINGHAMSHIRE.
Though the first establishment of the fabric may have been in the sister county, the workers of Buckingham appear early to have gained the lion's share of public estimation for the produce of their pillows, and the manufacture flourished, till, suffering from the monopolies of James I., we read how—In the year 1623, April 8th, a petition was addressed from Great Marlow to the High Sheriff of Bucks, representing the distress of the people from "the bone-lace making being much decayed."[[1113]]
Three years later, 1626, Sir Henry Borlase founds and endows the free school of Great Marlow for twenty-four boys to read, write, and cast accounts; and for twenty-four girls "to knit, spin, and make bone lace"; and here at Great Marlow the trade flourished, all English, and even French authors[[1114]] citing its "manufactures de dentelles au fuseau" as the staple produce of the town, and its surrounding villages, which sold lace, however, they pronounce as "inférieure à celle de Flandres."
During the seventeenth century the trade continued to advance, and Fuller testifies to its once more prosperous condition in Bucks, towards the year 1640. "No handicrafts of note," he writes, "(save what are common to other countries) are used therein, except any will instance in bone lace, much thereof being made about Owldney, in this county, though more, I believe, in Devonshire, where we shall meet more properly therewith."[[1115]] Olney, as it is now written, a small market town, for many years the residence of Cowper, known by its twenty-four-arched bridge, now no more, "of wearisome but needful length" spanning the Ouse—Olney, together with the fellow towns of Newport-Pagnel and Aylesbury, are much quoted by the authorities of the last century, though, as is too often the case in books of travels and statistics, one writer copies from another the information derived from a preceding author. Defoe, however, who visited each county in detail, quotes "Ouldney as possessing a considerable manufacture of bone lace"; while a letter from the poet Cowper to the Rev. John Newton, in 1780, enclosing a petition to Lord Dartmouth in favour of the lace-makers, declares that "hundreds in this little town are upon the point of starving, and that the most unremitting industry is barely sufficient to keep them from it." A distress caused, we may infer, by some caprice of fashion.
"The lace manufacture is still carried on," says Lysons,[[1116]] "to a great extent in and about Olney, where veils and other lace of the finer sorts are made, and great fortunes are said to be acquired by the factors. Lace-making is in no part of the country so general as at Hanslape and in its immediate vicinity; but it prevails from fifteen to twenty miles round in every direction. At Hanslape not fewer than 800 out of a population of 1275 were employed in it in the year 1801. Children are put to the lace-schools at, or soon after, five years of age. At eleven or twelve years of age they are all able to maintain themselves without any assistance; both girls and boys are taught to make it, and some men when grown up follow no other employment; others, when out of work, find it a good resource, and can earn as much as the generality of day labourers. The lace made in Hanslape is from sixpence to two guineas a yard in value. It is calculated that from £8000 to £9000 net profit is annually brought into the parish by the lace manufacture."
The bone lace of Stoney Stratford[[1117]] and Aylesbury are both quoted by Defoe, and the produce of the latter city is mentioned with praise. He writes: "Many of the poor here are employed in making lace for edgings, not much inferior to those from Flanders; but it is some pleasure to us to observe that the English are not the only nation in the world which admires foreign manufactures above its own, since the French, who gave fashions to most nations, buy and sell the finest laces at Paris under the name of 'dentelles d'Angleterre' or 'English laces.'"[[1118]]