formerly. It then unquestionably rated among the number of female
accomplishments; and it is certainly rather wonderful, because when the
mechanism is once obtained, it requires no exertion of intellect to
practise it; it may be carried on while sitting, walking, and talking,
or in almost every situation to which ordinary life is called; and
when it is considered that its produce adds to the comfort of the
indigent, to the advantage of the poor,--and that to persons in easy
circumstances habitual industry increases their happiness, these
things considered, it is with wonder and regret we see it fallen into
disuse; particularly as it is an occupation suited to every age and
capacity, which the infant is strong enough to practise; and even in
the infirmity and weakness of age it is practicable. We certainly do
hope and trust these observations may invite the attention of those
meritorious individuals who have the direction and management of our
scholastic establishments, to revive the practice.
Fishing nets are also in use among the most barbarous nations of this
period, as various navigators have satisfactorily proved; frequently
made of rude materials, it is true--some of the bark of trees, and
others of the beards of whales, besides a variety of other articles
which the more refined inhabitants of civilised countries would never
think of using for such a purpose.
The art of making nets, or ornaments of fine yarn, is said not to be a
modern invention, it having been practised for hangings, and articles
of dress and ornament. In the middle ages, it appears, the clergy wore
netting of silk over their clerical robes. Professor Beckmann also
says, he suspects those transparent dresses were used by ladies more
than four hundred years ago, to cover those beauties they still wish to
be visible.
The invention for making coverings for the legs, of this manufacture,
is, we understand, of much later invention. It is well known that the
Romans and the ancient nations had no particular covering for their
legs. Indeed the necessity was not so urgent with the inhabitants of
warm climates, as with those in our northern regions, who, we find,
generally covered not only the feet, but the legs, thighs, and loins,
with the same garment. Such, there is reason to conclude, were the
trews, or trowsers, anciently worn by the Scotch, but not knit hose,
which the following lines, from an old song, will help to prove:
“In days whan gude King Robert rang,
His trews they cost but half a croun:
He said they were a groat o’er dear,
And ca’d the tailor thief and loun.”
A celebrated author on antiquities says, “It is probable the art of
knitting stockings was first found out in the sixteenth century; but
the time of the invention is doubtful.” He continues, “Savary appears
to have been the first person who hazarded a conjecture that this art
is a Scottish invention, because when the French stocking-knitters
became so numerous as to form a guild, they made choice of St. Fiacre,
a native of Scotland, to be their patron; and besides this, there is a
tradition, that the first knit stockings were brought to France from
that country.” This St. Fiacre, it appears, was the son of Eugenius,
said to have been a Scottish king in the seventh century; and Fiacre
lived as a hermit at Meaux, in France; in the Roman calendar, his name
is opposite to the 30th of August.
More probable, however, is the opinion in this country which
respectable writers support among them. We are informed by the author
of the “History of the World,” that Henry VIII., who reigned from 1509
to 1547, and who was fond of show and magnificence, at first wore
woollen stockings; till by a singular occurrence he received a pair of
silk knit stockings from Spain. His son Edward VI., who succeeded him
on the throne, obtained by means of his merchant, Thomas Gresham, a
pair of long Spanish knit silk stockings; this present was at that time
highly prized. Queen Elizabeth, in the third year of her reign, A. D.
1561, received by her silk-woman, named Montague, a pair of knit silk
stockings, and afterwards refused to wear any other kind.
Stowe also relates, in his “General Chronicle of England,” that
the Earl of Pembroke was the first nobleman who wore worsted knit
stockings. In the year 1564, William Ridor, an apprentice of master
Thomas Burdet, having accidentally seen, in the shop of an Italian
merchant, a pair of knit worsted stockings, procured from Mantua,
having borrowed them, made a pair exactly like them; these were the
first stockings that were knit in England, from woollen yarn. From this
it would appear, that knit stockings were first introduced into England
in the reign of Henry VIII., and that they were brought from Spain to
this country; and probability appears to favour the belief that they
were originally the produce of either that country or Italy. Should
this be the case, it has been conceived by Professor Beckmann, that
they came originally from Arabia to Spain.
The investigation with respect to the feigned productions of Rowley,
published by the unfortunate Thomas Chatterton, arose from the mention
of knitting, in a passage of those poems; it being contended that knit
hose were unknown in the days of Rowley. The passage alluded to occurs
in the tragedy of “Ella:”--
“She sayde, as herr whytte hands whytte hosen were knyttinge,
Whatte pleasure ytt ys to be married!”
A like ordeal took place with respect to Macpherson’s Ossian from a
similar reason, the mention of the sun’s reflection setting on a glass
window: now the existence of Ossian being contemporary with that of
Julius Cæsar, it was contended that at that period it was not customary
to glaze windows.
The Johnsonian faction set about that business in a very unsystematic
manner: they should have procured some well qualified Erse scholar to
have gone into those wilds where Macpherson declared he collected his
materials from oral traditionary recitals, and have heard the poems
themselves from the mouths of the aged inhabitants. If the traces of
them could not have been found, they might then have ascribed the
superior honour to Macpherson of writing a work that Greece, or Rome,
in the splendour of literary glory, never surpassed, for many poetical
beauties.
The people of Scotland, in the beginning of the sixteenth century,
had, in the proper sense of the word, breeches; and wore a kind of
stockings, their hose coming only to the knees; their stockings were
made of linen or woollen, and breeches of hemp.
It is supposed that these particular articles of dress were also common
in England, at and after that time, for in the year 1510, Henry VIII.
appeared upon a public occasion, with his attendants, in dresses of the
following description:--“The king and some of the gentlemen had the
upper parts of their hosen, which was of blue and crimson, powdered
with castels and sheafes of arrows of fine ducket gold, and the nether
parts of scarlet, powdered with timbrels,” &c. There may be occasion
to suppose the upper parts of the hose were in separate pieces, as
they were of different colours. Hollinshed, also speaking of another
festival says, “The garments of six of them were of strange cuts, every
cut _knit_ with points of gold, and tassels of the same, their hosen
cut in and tied likewise.”
In A. D. 1530, the word _knit_ appears to have been quite common in
England, for John Palsgrave, a French master to the Princess Mary,
daughter of Henry VIII., published a grammar, in which he stated, that
this word in French was applied to the making of nets as well as of
caps and of stockings.
In the household book of a noble family in the reign of Henry VIII.,
kept during the life of Sir Thomas L’Estrange, Knight of Hunstanton,
Norfolk, by his Lady, Ann, daughter of Lord Vaux, there are the
following entries, whence the price of those articles at that period
are ascertained:--
1533. 25 H. 8. 7 Sept. Peyd for 4 peyr of knytt hose--viii _s._
1538. 30 H. 8. 3 Oct. ---- 2 peyr of knytt hose--i _s._
It is observed that the first four pairs were for Sir Thomas, and the
latter for his children.
Nevertheless, in the reign of Mary, i.e. 1558, many wore cloth hose, as
is evidenced in the following anecdote of Dr. Sands, who was afterwards
Archbishop of York. Being in the Tower, he had permission for a tailor
to come and take an order for a pair of hose. This serves to prove the
veracity of Stowe, that stockings were not an article manufactured in
England generally, we suppose, till six years afterwards. “Dr. Sands,
on his going to bed in Hurleston’s house, he had a paire of hose newlie
made, that were too long for him. For while he was in the Tower, a
tailor was admitted to make him a pair of hose. One came into him whose
name was Beniamin, dwelling in Birchin lane; he might not speak to him
or come to him to take measure of him, but onelie to look upon his
leg; he made the hose, and they were two inches too long. These hose
he praied the good wife of the house to send to some tailor to cut
his hose two inches shorter. The wife required the boy of the house
to carrie them to the next tailor, which was Beniamin that made them.
The boy required him to cut the hose. He said, ‘j am not the maister’s
tailor.’ Saith the boy, ‘Because ye are our next neighbour, and my
maister’s tailor dwelleth far off, j come to you.’ Beniamin took the
hose and looked upon them, he took his handle work in hand, and said,
‘These are not thy maister’s hose, but Doctor Sands, them j made in the
Tower.’”
In a catalogue of the revenues of the Bishop of St. Asaph, it is
stated, “The bishop of that diocese was entitled, as a perquisite,
upon the death of any beneficed clergyman, to his best coat, jerkin,
doublet, and breeches. Item, his hose or nether stockings, shoes, and
garters.”
About 1557, knitting must have become common, for Harrison, in his
description of the indigenous produce of this island, says, the bark
of the alder tree was used by the peasants’ wives for dying stockings
which they had knitted.
Hollinshed also informs us, that about 1579, when Queen Elizabeth was
at Norwich, “upon the stage there stood at one end eight small women
children spinning worsted yarn, and at the other end as many knitting
worsted yarn into hose.”
Silk stockings are said, in consequence of their high price, for a long
time to have been worn only upon grand occasions. Henry II. of France,
wore them for the first time, on the marriage of his sister with the
Duke of Savoy in the year 1559.
In the reign of Henry III. who ascended the throne in 1575, the consort
of Geoffroy Camus de Pontcarre, who held a high office in the state,
would not wear silk stockings given to her by a nurse who lived at
court, because she considered them to be too gay. Anno 1569, when the
privy-councillor Barthold von Mandelsoh, who had been envoy to many
diets and courts, appeared on a week-day with silk stockings, which
he had brought from Italy, the Margrave John of Austria said to him,
“Barthold, I have silk stockings also; but I wear them only on Sundays
and holidays.”
The knitting stockings with wires, called _weaving_, has been thought
to bear a resemblance to the wire work in screens of churches. However,
the invention of the stocking loom is thought more worthy of attention,
because it is alleged to have been the production of a single person,
and perfected at one trial; his name, and the exact period is
ascertained; and, because it is founded upon a similar incident to
that of the beauteous Corinthian maid, elsewhere mentioned, as the
introducer of painting in Greece; we bestow a particular attention
upon this incident which produced the stocking loom, trusting our fair
readers will favour us with their attention, when they are informed it
is ascribed to Love.
It is a complicated piece of machinery, consisting of no fewer than two
thousand pieces; it could not have been discovered accidentally, but
must have been the result of deep combination and profound sagacity.
Under the usurpation of Cromwell, the stocking-knitters of London
presented a petition, requesting permission to establish a guild. In
this petition they gave a circumstantial account of their profession,
of its rise, progress, and importance. No doubt can exist but that in
this document the petitioners rendered the best, and probably a true
account of the origin and progress of their trade, that of stocking
weaving being then scarcely fifty years old. The circumstances they
stated being then within memory, any misrepresentation would have
militated against them, and could have been easily contradicted. In
Deering’s account of Nottingham, this petition is found. In that town
the loom was first employed, where it has given wealth to many.
From this account it appears the inventor’s name was William Lee,
a native of Woodborough, a village about seven miles distant from
Nottingham, in which the following passage occurs: “Which trade is
properly styled frame work-knitting, because it is direct and absolute
knit-work in the stitches thereof, nothing different therein from
the common way of knitting, (not much more anciently for public use
practised in this nation than this,) but only in the number of needles,
at an instant working in this, more than in the other by a hundred for
one, set in an engine or frame composed of above two thousand pieces
of smith’s, joiner’s and turner’s work, after so artificial and exact
a manner that, by the judgment of all beholders, it far excels in the
ingenuity, curiosity, and subtility of the invention and contexture,
all other frames or instruments of manufacture in use in any known part
of the world.”
The inventor of this ingenious machine was heir to a considerable
freehold estate, and a graduate of St. John’s College, Cambridge.
Being, it is said, deeply enamoured of a lovely young country-girl,
who, during his frequent visits, paid more attention to her work, which
was knitting, than to her lover or his proposals, he endeavoured to
find out a machine which might facilitate and forward the operation
of knitting, and by these means afford more leisure to the object of
his affections to converse with him. Love, indeed, is confessed to be
fertile in inventions, and has been the efficient passion which has
perfected many inventions for which the gratitude of the world is due;
but a machine so complex, so wonderful in its effects, would seem to
require a longer time than was probably allowed, and a cooler judgment
than a lover’s to construct such mechanism. But even should the cause
appear problematical, there cannot exist a doubt but the real inventor
was Mr. William Lee, of Woodborough, in Nottinghamshire.
Deering says expressly, that Lee made the first stocking-loom in the
year 1589; this account has also been adopted by various English
writers. In the Stocking-weaver’s Hall, London, is an old painting, in
which Lee is represented pointing out his loom to a female knitter, who
is standing near him; and below is seen an inscription with the date
1589, the period of the invention. “The ingenious William Lee, Master
of Arts of St. John’s College, Cambridge, devised this profitable art
for stockings, (but being despised, went to France,) yet of iron to
himself, but to us and others of gold; in memory of whom this is here
painted.”
Lee set up an establishment at Calverton, a village five miles from
Nottingham, but met with no success. In this situation he showed
his work to Queen Elizabeth; from that princess he requested some
assistance, his work having embarrassed rather than assisted him; but
instead of meeting with that remuneration to which his genius and
invention so well entitled him, he was discouraged and discountenanced.
It need not, therefore, excite surprise that Lee accepted the
invitation of Henry IV. of France, who having heard of the invention,
promised him a magnificent reward if he would carry it to France. He
took nine journeymen, and several looms to Rouen, where he worked with
much approbation; but the king being shortly after assassinated, and
internal commotions taking place, the concern got into difficulties,
and Lee died in poverty at Paris. A knowledge of the machine was
brought back to England by some of the workmen who had emigrated with
Lee, and who established themselves in Nottinghamshire, which still
continues the principal seat of the manufacture.
During the first century after the invention of the stocking-loom, few
improvements were made upon it, and two men were usually employed to
work one frame. But in the course of last century the machine was very
greatly improved. The late ingenious Mr. Jedediah Strut, of Belper,
Derbyshire, was the first individual who succeeded in adapting it to
the manufacture of _ribbed_ stockings. Estimating the population of
Great Britain, say sixteen millions, and the average annual expenditure
of each individual upon stockings and knit gloves at five shillings,
the total value of the manufacture will be £4,000,000, and we consider
this rather to be under than over the mark.
The effect of this invention was very late in making its appearance in
Scotland. Till far on in the eighteenth century, the use of knitted
stockings was universal. Mittens, or woollen gloves for the hands,
and boot-hose, for drawing over the legs in riding, were also quite
common, and all were wrought by the hand. The manufacture was carried
on solely by women, the wives and daughters of farmers, generally, and
the produce was sold as the means of bringing in a small revenue. The
introduction of the stocking-loom to Hawick, in 1771, and the change
of manners which took place about this period, soon put an end to
this traffic; but still the greater part of the stockings worn by the
country people on ordinary occasions are knitted at home. The art is
also still in use in Shetland, where knitting forms the only amusement
to relieve the tedium of a long winter, and where the articles produced
are exceedingly fine in the texture: the Shetland hose bring the
highest price of any woollen stocking.
COACHES.
Coach is said to be derived from _caroche_, Italian; a term first used
in the eleventh century, and invented to designate a military machine,
so called.
We intend the word coaches to stand for the generic name of all those
machines used for the carriage of persons, on business or pleasure,
(except, indeed, those for the conveyance of the dead,) from the state
carriage of the sovereign down to the humble gig. The original inventor
of this species of carriage is said to have been an Athenian monarch,
1489 years before Christ, who being afflicted with lameness in his
feet, first invented a coach for his convenience, and with a view to
conceal his debility. This may be regarded as the first original, of
the kind, of Grecian invention.
The ancient historian, Diodorus Siculus, makes mention of a carriage
in which Sesostris was wont to be drawn; and also, he says when he
entered the city, or went out to the sacrifice, had four of his captive
kings yoked to his chariot; but it is conjectured this carriage, to
which that historian alludes, was a warrior’s car. There is, most
assuredly, ample room to believe that this was the first species of
carriage which was introduced; if so, those existed long before the
Athenian king above-named; because all the Homeric heroes, Greeks as
well as Trojans, and their auxiliaries, rode in these machines, called
chariots, or warriors’ cars, which are also known to have existed long
antecedent to that period. We remain assured that war chariots were
used in the first ages of the world, by all the great monarchs who
possessed dominion.
That species of carriage before said to have been invented by the
Athenian monarch, we therefore presume, was a covered carriage, similar
to that species designated in the twelve tables of the Roman law,
and by them called _arcera_, which was said to be a carriage of the
last presumed description, and mentioned as being intended for the
conveyance of the infirm. To this species of carriage succeeded the
soft _lectica_. But we will leave this part of our subject, and proceed
towards our own times.
After the subversion of the Roman power, the northern sovereigns,
who had become the barbarous and ignorant oppressors of our species,
introduced and established, among other political regulations, the
feudal system, as it was called, by which all property in land was held
by certain fiefs, whereby the king, or, as termed, lord of the soil,
let certain portions of the land to his nobles, military officers,
and other great persons, generally often on condition of certain
services required to be performed, called knights’ service, and other
military tenures; by which custom those tenants of the sovereign had to
provide certain men and horses to serve him in his wars.--These first
tenants, or vassals, afterwards underlet those lands to villains, so
named, in contradistinction to the present recognised term, from their
living in villages or hamlets, and other tenants, from whom, in their
turn, similar services and certain provisions were required.--Thus
the European world, which had become the prey of effeminacy and
luxury, had, by this single important circumstance, their character so
radically changed, that, like the mysterious power of the Cadmæan wand
of Harlequin, wrought so uncommon a change in the morals of European
society, that those who had formerly kept carriages, and wallowed in
all the soft luxurious delicacy of Asiatic effeminacy, suddenly, or, at
least, progressively, became a society of hardy equestrian veterans.
Insomuch, that masters and servants, husbands and wives, clergy and
laity, all rode upon horses, mules, or asses, which latter animals
were chiefly used by women, monks, and other religious professors.
The minister rode to court; the horse, without a conductor, returned
to the stable, till a servant, regulated by the horologe, took him
back to the court for his master. In this manner, we are assured, the
magistrates of the imperial cities rode to council, till as late as the
beginning of the sixteenth century; so that in the year 1502, steps
to assist in mounting were erected by the Roman gate at Frankfort.
The members of the council who, at the diet and other occasions, were
employed as ambassadors, were, on this account, called _rittmeister_ in
the language of the country; at present the expression riding-servant
is preserved in some of the imperial cities. The entry of great lords
in public into any place, or their departure from it, was never in
a carriage, but always on horseback; in all the pontifical records,
speaking of ceremonials, no mention is made either of a state coach, or
body coachman, but of state horses and state mules. In the following
regulation, it is found that the horse which his Holiness rode “was
necessary to be of an iron-grey colour; not mettlesome, but a quiet,
tractable nag. That a stool of three steps should be provided for the
assistance of his Holiness in mounting: that the emperor, or kings, if
present, were obliged to hold his stirrup, and lead the horse.”
Bishops made their public entry, on induction, on horses or asses
richly caparisoned. At the coronation of the emperor, the electors and
principal officers of the empire were ordered to make their entry on
horseback.--It was formerly requisite, that those who received a fief,
or other investiture, should make their appearance on horseback. The
vassal was obliged to ride with two attendants to the court of his
lord, where, after he had dismounted his horse, he received his fief.