In Pennant's Journey from Chester to London (in 1782), he notices in Towcester that, "this town is supported by the great concourse of passengers, and by a manufacture of lace, and a small one of silk stockings. The first was imported from Flanders, and carried on with much success in this place, and still more in the neighbouring county" (Buckinghamshire).
Fig. 135.
Buckinghamshire "Point."
At the end of the eighteenth century, the Revolution again drove many of the poorer French to seek refuge on our shores, as they had done a century before; and we find stated in the Annual Register of 1794: "A number of ingenious French emigrants have found employment in Bucks, Bedfordshire, and the adjacent counties, in the manufacturing of lace, and it is expected, through the means of these artificers, considerable improvements will be introduced into the method of making English lace."
Figs. 134 and 135 represent the "point" ground, which won the laces of the midland counties their reputation. (See Northamptonshire for additional matter.)
NORTHAMPTONSHIRE.
The laces of Northampton do not appear to have attracted the notice of the writers of the eighteenth century so much as those of the sister counties.
Anderson mentions that Kettering has "a considerable trade in lace"; and Lysons, later, observes that lace is made at Cheney. Certainly, the productions of this county a century back were of exquisite beauty, as we can bear testimony from the specimens in a pattern-book inherited by Mr. Cardwell, the well-known lace merchant of Northampton, from his predecessor in the trade, which we have had an opportunity of examining. We have also received examples from various localities in Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, and as there is much similarity in the products of the three counties, we shall, perhaps, better describe them by treating of them all collectively.
The earliest English lace was naturally the old Flemish, the pattern wavy and graceful, the ground well executed. Fig. 136, which we select as an example, is a specimen we received, with many others, of old Newport-Pagnel lace, given by Mrs. Bell, of that town, where her family has been established from time immemorial. Mrs. Bell could carry these laces back to the year 1780, when they were bequeathed to her father by an aged relative who had long been in the lace trade. The packets remain for the most part entire. The custom of "storing" lace was common among the country-people.