The reign of Charles I. was marked by profligate extravagance in the use of lace. In the king's wardrobe accounts, one entry alone calls for 994 Yd. for 12 collars and 24 pairs of cuffs, and again 600 yd. are required for trimming the ruffs of the king's night clothes. While lace was still imported in large quantities, in the first quarter of the 17th century, the English industry developed rapidly and in 162o the exportation of a large quantity of gold and silver lace to India for the king of Golconda, recorded by an English company, indicates marked commercial activity. In order to encourage English workers, Charles I., in 1635, issued an edict prohibiting the importation of foreign "purles, cutworks and bone laces." It was at this time that the term point d'Angle terre came into use. Whether the lace bearing this name was an English fabric or whether it was a Flemish lace smuggled across the Channel to be sold as an English lace is a point that has caused much controversy.
A portrait of Catherine of Braganza painted by a Dutch artist illustrates the type of lace worn in court circles at the time of the accession of Charles II. The lace in this portrait corresponds closely to that illustrated in Plate V. fig. 2, an important docu ment in English lace history. This lace which was found among some household linens in an old Devonshire shop, has a field of oak branches and acorns that serve as a background to a feather motive surmounted by the royal crown of England variously inscribed as follows: Carolus Rex, C. 1661 B., Vive le Roi and C. B. Baronet. Similar acorn branches are found in an old Bucks parchment dating from about 170o illustrated by Wright; also the technique is the close bobbin stitch of the early Devonshire lace. While Dutch in type, there is no reason why a work of this importance should not have been made in England, bearing as it does the initials of Catherine of Braganza and the date 1661, which is not only the year of Charles's coronation and of his betrothal to Catherine, but also the year in which the king issued a proclamation enforcing his father's act prohibiting the importa tion of Continental lace.
During the reign of James II., England's lace-making popu lation was again augmented by the immigration of refugees from France at the time of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685; many of these were from the districts of Chantilly, Paris, Alencon and Argentan, who brought with them the technique in which each of these centres specialized.
The court still retained its interest in Flemish laces throughout the reign of William and Mary, during which period the tower ing lace head-dress, the fontange of the French court, like the enormous neck-ruff of earlier days, proved a stimulus to the lace trade. From this time, the lace history of England reflects the
popular trend of continental fashion until the early years of the i9th century, when hand industry everywhere was forced to give way to the increasing demand for machine-made fabrics, and in this field England took the lead, for it was an Englishman who built the first machine capable of producing fine Brussels net.
There was a revival of the Honiton industry under William IV. when a petition was addressed to Queen Adelaide in behalf of the distressed lace-makers. At that time the centre of the Devon shire lace industry was at Beer, a little fishing hamlet on the Devon coast between Seaton and Exmouth. Here the workers were furnished with new patterns, and it was here that the wedding lace of Queen Victoria was made, the dress costing LI,000. Honiton lace retained its popularity throughout the Vic torian era; schools were established in various districts and every attempt was made by public and private enterprise to per petuate the art, but these efforts met with little encouragement in the face of increasing interest in the less expensive machine product. (Honiton lace of the Victorian era is considered by some to be a decadent form of 18th century point d'Angleterre which such writers claim to have been of Devon rather than Flemish man ufacture.) By the beginning of the loth century lace was no longer fashionable, the prosperity of the native industry receiving a desperate set-back when the World War flooded the country with refugee lace-makers and Belgian relief work.
Of Irish lace to-day there are three distinct types. In date the earliest of these is the Carrickmacross guipure and app/iqué which has been made in that neighbourhood since 182o. In this the pattern is cut from fine cambric embellished with needle point stitches; in making the applied type the same process is employed, the finished work be ing afterwards applied on machine net. What is known as Limerick lace is the same as the Belgian tulle brode, tambour work on ma chine-made net, a chain stitch worked with a crochet hook. Irish point, or Youghal lace, orig inated in the Convent of the Presentation of that town in County Cork. It is a flat needle point lace and its technique is based on Italian models. All these industries originated as famine relief measures.