One like the other....
This hand-made lace, this open-work,
Is all produced by her, this herring-bone,
Which in the midst holds down a little cord,
Was also made by her; all wrought by her."
Henry VIII. granted to two Florentines the privilege of importing for three years' time all "manner of fringys and passements wrought with gold and silver or otherwise,"[[208]] an account of which will be found in the notice of that monarch's reign.
Beyond this, and the statute already mentioned, passed at the "Sute of the Browderers" on account of the "deceyptful waight of the gold of Luk, Florence, Jeane, and Venice,"[[209]] there is no allusion to the lace of Florence in our English records.
In France, as early as 1545, the sister of Francis I. purchases "soixante aulnes fine dantelle de Florence"[[210]] for her own use, and some years afterwards, 1582, the Queen of Navarre pays 17 écus 30 sols for 10 aulnes et demye of the same passement "faict à l'esguille à haulte dantelle pour mettre à des fraizes."[[211]] On the marriage of Elizabeth de France with Philip II. in 1559, purchases were made of "passements et de bisette, en fil blanc de Florence."
Seeing the early date of these French accounts, it may be inferred that Catherine de Médicis first introduced, on her arrival as a bride, the Italian points of her own native city.[[212]]
In Florence, in the fifteenth century, Savonarola, in his sermons (1484-1491), reproached the nuns with "devoting their time to the vain fabrication of gold laces with which to adorn the houses and persons of the rich."