It is not known when brass wire pins were first made in England, but it must have been before 1543, in which year a Statute was passed (35 Hen. VIII.) entitled, "An Act for the True Making of Pynnes," in which the price is fixed not to exceed 6s. 8d. per 1,000. By an Act of Rich. III. the importation of pins was prohibited. The early pins were of boxwood, bone, bronze or silver. In 1347 (Liber Garderobæ, 12-16 Edw. III. P. R. O.) we have a charge for 12,000 pins for the trousseau of Joanna, daughter of Edward III., betrothed to Peter the Cruel. The young Princess probably escaped a miserable married life by her decease of the black death at Bordeaux when on her way to Castille.
The annual import of pins in the time of Elizabeth amounted to £3,297.—State Papers, Dom., Eliz. Vol. viii. P. R. O.
In Eliz., Q. of Bohemia's Expenses, we find: "Dix mille espingles dans un papier, 4 florins."—Ger. Corr. No. 41. P. R. O.
"In Holland pillow-lace is called Pinwork lace—Gespelde-werkte kant."—Sewell's Eng. and Dutch Dict.
An elderly woman informed the author that she recollects in her youth, when she learned to make Honiton point of an ancient teacher of the parish, bone pins were still employed. They were in use until a recent period, and renounced only on account of their costliness. The author purchased of a Devonshire lace-maker one, bearing date 1829, with the name tatooed into the bone, the gift of some long-forgotten youth to her grandmother. These bone or wood bobbins, some ornamented with glass beads—the more ancient with silver let in—are the calendar of a lace-worker's life. One records her first appearance at a neighbouring fair or May meeting; a second was the first gift of her good man, long cold in his grave; a third the first prize brought home by her child from the dame school, and proudly added to her mother's cushion: one and all, as she sits weaving her threads, are memories of bygone days of hopes and fears, of joys and sorrows; and, though many a sigh it calls forth, she cherishes her well-worn cushion as an old friend, and works away, her present labour lightened by the memory of the past.
Surtees' Wills and Inv.
"Hearing bone lace value 5s. 4d." is mentioned "in ye shoppe of John Johnston, of Darlington, merchant."