says an old poem. Even Spenser speaks of ‘garment of line,’ and in ‘Cocke Lorelle’s Bote’ allusion is made to ‘lyne-webbers’ and ‘lyne-drapers.’[328] We need not be surprised, therefore, to meet with such names as ‘Elias Lyndraper,’ or ‘Henry le Lindraper,’ or ‘John le Lyner.’ Only this last, however, has survived the changes of intervening centuries, and still holds a precarious existence as ‘Liner.’ ‘Weaver’ was more common. A more Norman equivalent is found in such a sobriquet as ‘John le Teler,’ or ‘Henry le Telere,’ or ‘Ida la Teleress,’ a name which is not necessarily of modern French refugee origin, as Mr. Lower would lead us to suppose. Indeed, a special part of the ladies’ head-dress had early obtained the name of a ‘teler,’ from the fine texture of the linen of which it was composed.[329] It is but too probable that this name has become lost, like ‘Taylzer,’ in the more common ‘Taylor.’ This process of absorption we shall find to be not unfrequent. Nor are we without a memorial of the bleaching of linen. ‘Whiter,’ if not ‘Whitster,’ still lives in our directories. It seems strange that our ‘Blackers’ should denote but the same occupation; but so it is—they, like our old ‘Walter le Blakesters’ or ‘Richard le Bleckesters,’ being but the harder and more antique form of our present ‘bleacher.’[330] Our term ‘bleak,’ preserving as it does the earlier pronunciation, is but the same word, being formerly used to denote pallor, or wanness, or absence of colour. From this, by a natural change, it came to signify anything cheerless or desolate. With perfect honesty in this case, at any rate, we may ‘swear that black is white.’ With regard to silk, we had but little to do. The manufacture of this important cloth was barely carried on in Western Europe during the period of the establishment of surnames. It was nigh the close of the fifteenth century before it appeared in France. All our silks were imported from the East by Venetian and Genoese merchants. Of the latter an old poem says, they come— Into this londe wyth dyverse merchaundysses, In grete karrekis arrayde wythouten lack, Wyth clothes of golde, silke, and pepir black. Still we find a company of silkwomen settled in London at an early period. In the records of this city occur such names as ‘Johanna Taylour, Silkwyfe,’ in 1348, and ‘Agatha Fowere, Silkewoman,’ in 1417.[331] In 1455 a complaint was raised by ‘the women of the mystery and trade of silk and threadworkers in London, that divers Lombards and other foreigners enriched themselves by ruining the said mystery.’ I think, however, we shall find that all these were engaged less in the manufacture of fabrics than of threads for the embroiderers to use. Thus, as connected with the throwing or winding of these silken tissues, we come across such names as ‘Thrower’ and ‘Throwster,’ the former having been further corrupted into ‘Trower.’[332]