STOCKINGS. "Troth, Master Inkpen, thou hast put thy foot WHEN the old trunkhose was found to fray the sacred epidermis of Christian kings and queens, the first fruits of a remedial discovery were presented for the benefit of the illustrious sufferers. Thus we hear that when stockings were first known in Europe, a Spanish grandee manifested his loyalty and love for his Queen, by presenting a pair to the Prime Minister, with a request that that official would place them at, if not on, the feet of his sovereign lady. The Minister was shocked at the grandee's assurance and lack of modesty. "Take back thy stockings," said he, "and name the thing not again; for know, foolish Sir Duke, that the Queen of Spain has no legs!" Our Henry III., less nice with regard to his own sister the Princess Isabella, did not scruple to present her with a pair of stockings of cloth, embroidered with gold. These cloth hose went out of fashion in the reign of Elizabeth. Her silk-woman, Montague, had presented her Majesty with a pair of black knit silk stockings; and these were so pleasant to the legs of "England," that her Majesty discarded hot cloth for ever. She found double comfort in the first; namely, to herself, and further comfort that by adopting them she was encouraging a home-made article. The first pair of English-knit worsted stockings were worn by Elizabeth's Peer, "proud Pembroke." They had been imitated from an Italian knit pair by William Rider, apprentice to Thomas Burdett, at the Bridge foot, opposite St. Magnus' Church; and their presentation to Pembroke was, doubtless, profitable to the apprentice. Disappointed love has been the cause of various dire effects, but I do not know that it ever caused effect so singular as when it invented a stocking-frame. This too was in Elizabeth's time. In those golden days, Will Lee, of Woodborough, in Norfolk, was a student at Cambridge; somewhat given to maidens as well as to mathematics, but not so utterly wasting his time with the former pleasant trifles but that he found both learning and leisure to achieve an M.A. degree, and obtain a Fellowship. Master Lee was especially addicted to talk agreeable nonsense to an honest lass in the town, who gained her living, and increased the smiles on her pretty face, by knitting stockings, to her very great profit. Now this Cambridge damsel did not care the value of a dropped stitch for such love as rich Will Lee brought her at sundown every coming eve; and she told him as much. Ay, marry!" said the vindictive lover, "then thou shalt rue thy words and thy contempt."" Marry scenteth of Rome," said the orthodox knitter; "and thou art as false in love as in faith." 66 Master Lee however was a "fellow" who was true to his word. He was piqued at being rejected,―he, a gentleman, by a pert knitter of stockings; and he took but a base way of revenging his pique. He had sat knitting his brow in vain, when all at once the thought struck him that he would knit stockings too, and that by a process which should ruin the poor damsel, who, poor as she was, despised an unworthy gentleman and scholar. Thereupon he actually invented and set up the stocking-frame. He first worked at it himself, and then taught his squire-brothers, and his gentle relations; and finally he opened a manufactory at Calverton in Nottinghamshire, and made stockings for the Maiden Queen. All the hand-knitters were in despair, and they left no means untried to bring the new invention into disrepute. Nor did they try in vain, for Will Lee was driven out of England by the force of the coalition against him. He set up his frames at Rouen, and drove a "roaring trade" there, which was however interrupted by the confusion which followed upon the assassination of Henri IV.; and the inventor of the stocking-frame ultimately died at Paris, poorer than the humble knitting-maiden whom he tried to ruin in two ways, and failed in both. And a double moral may be drawn upon this story as neatly as two stockings upon a pair of becoming legs. Swains too lightly given of phrase in honest maidens' ears may reflect, as they pull on their hose, that treachery, as in the case of Will Lee, brought that gentlemanly knave to want even a foot to the stockings he had made at his own frame. Maidens, on the other hand, may as profitably reflect, when similarly engaged, that they had better knit stockings than lend ear to the wicked words of a fool; and that if once a hole be made in the stocking of their reputation, the most skilful darning will hardly repair, and can never conceal, the permanent injury. And à propos of darning, though it be not at all so to the above story, Shuter was one day reproached by a brother actor that he had a hole in his stocking, and the friend advised inimitable Ned to have it darned. "I will not be such an ass," exclaimed the original Sir Anthony Absolute; "a hole in the stocking is an accident that may happen to any gentleman, but a darn is premeditated poverty." King James I. was willing to do what would have shocked even Shuter, namely, wear borrowed stockings. There is a letter extant in which that monarch asks a noble to lend him the "scarlet hose with the gold clocks," on a particular day on which he was desirous of giving the French Ambassador "an extraordinary idea of his magnificence!" This idea would never have entered the head of his great predecessor Henry VIII., of whom Stowe, the tailor, says : “You shall understand that Henry VIII. did only wear cloth hose, or hose cut out of ell-broad taffeta, unless by great chance there came a pair of silk stockings from Spain. King Edward VI.," he adds, "had a pair of Spanish silk stockings sent him as a great present." While upon these times I may add, that when Elizabeth made Knights of the Garter those great noblemen, the Duc de Montmorenci, and the Lords Burleigh, Chandos, Essex, and Grey of Wilton, the Queen distinguished her favourite Burleigh from the rest, by buckling the garter about his knee herself; and this is said to have been the first occasion on which this personal favour was conferred by the hands of a female sovereign, and to have given rise to the exclamation, first uttered by the offended prudes, of "'Ods Stars and Garters!" I have read somewhere of stockings made out of the human hair, and how the pretty conceit was adopted by lovers who were willing to entangle their legs, as well as heart, in their mistresses' tresses. To be once more statistical and useful, I have to add for your information, that although we no longer export anything but cotton yarns, instead of the manufactured article, to Saxony, our general export is still large; saving of silk stockings, of which we send abroad annually only some 60,000 pairs. Two hundred and fifty thousand dozen pairs of cotton stockings go abroad annually to deck foreign legs, and about half that amount of worsted, the latter being generally sold by weight. Finally, I conclude with the remarkably interesting statistical fact, that a lady always takes off her left stocking last! The possibility that this bit of statistical darning may excite a blush on susceptible cheeks, reminds me of another fashion to which I will now advert, under the title at the head of the following chapter. Having got down to the feet, and shoes having been already incidentally noticed, we will again mount upward. "Il faut ôter les masques des choses aussi bien que des personnes." MONTAIGNE. FRANCIS BACON somewhere remarks that politeness veils vice just as dress masks wrinkles. Perhaps this saying of his was founded on the circumstance, that Queen Elizabeth not only wore dresses of increasing splendour with increasing age, but that she also used occasionally to appear masked on great gala occasions. The mode thus royally given, was not however very speedily or generally followed. The introduction of masks as a fashion appears to have "obtained," as old authors call it, only about the year 1660. Pepys, in 1663, says that he went to the Royal Theatre, and there saw Howard's comedy of 'The Committee' (known to us in its new form and changed name of 'The Honest Thieves'). He designates it as "a merry but indifferent play, only Lacy's part, an Irish footman, is beyond imagination." Among the company were Viscount Falkenberg, or Falconbridge, with his wife, the third daughter of Cromwell. "My Lady Mary Cromwell," he goes on to say, "looks as well as I have known her, and well clad; but when the house began to fill, she put on her vizard, and so kept it on all the play; which of late is become a great fashion among the ladies, which hides their whole face. So," he adds, and it shows, does that sighed-forth "So!" the melancholy consequence of leading wives into temptation,-"So to the Exchange, to buy things, with my wife; among others a vizard for herself.” Certainly that pretty precisian, Mary Cromwell, in a |