Cafaggiuolo was not much frequented by the Medici after the time of Ferdinando I, and only occasional references to it are found in the archives. The family of Lorraine preferred the villas nearer Florence, though they sometimes passed a night there on their way to Austria, but when Ferdinando III returned to Tuscany in 1814 after the fall of Napoleon, the Florentine nobility rode out to Cafaggiuolo to meet him and the whole of the Mugello was illuminated in his honour. Before leaving “the old den among the hills” its majolica ware must be mentioned, over which such bitter controversy has raged; some writers, like the late M. Jacquemart, over-estimating its antiquity and importance, others, like Dr Malagola and Professor Argnani, asserting that it never existed and that the pieces signed _Cafaggiuolo_ (more or less ill-spelt) were made by a family of Faenza, the Cà Fagioli (House of Fagioli). Some documents, printed also in the _Athenæum_ (Dec. 1899, p. 872) prove that as early as 1485 several kilns for common pottery, _stoviglie_, and for bricks were in existence near and at Cafaggiuolo itself. Signor Baccini[18] cites others in a list of the possessions of Cosimo I, drawn up in 1566, which show that either some of these _stovigliai_ had become _vasellai_, _i.e._ makers of vases and decorative ware, or that the kilns were then tenanted by artistic potters. Two of the kilns, with a house and _botega_, stood near the villa, where now are the stables, and both were rented by a Jacopo di Stefano. Mr Drury E. Fortnum, in his magnificent work on majolica published by the Clarendon Press, gives a long list of Cafaggiuolo ware from the earliest dated piece known of 1507, and the marks on the most characteristic pieces, such as the letters P. and S. with a paraph, or a plain or barred P., while others have a monogram of J. P. C. These marks have apparently not been explained, but Signor Baccini gives good reasons for supposing them to be the initials of a family who went from Montelupo to Cafaggiuolo to manufacture the famous _bocali_ or measuring jugs, beginning with a certain Piero; his son was Stefano di Piero and his grandson the Jacopo di Stefano who in 1566 tenanted the house, shop and kilns of Cafaggiuolo. [Illustration: (Drawing of a tower on a hill over orchards.)] FOOTNOTES: [9] The name Cafaggio, or Cafaggiuolo (Cafagium), meaning a wooded estate surrounded with a fence or ditch, is often met with in Tuscany, and dates from old Lombard times. [10] Bosco a’ Frati is a monastery said to have been founded in the time of St Francis of Assisi by the Ubaldini family. It was here that St Bonaventura received the cardinal’s hat sent to him by Gregory X. in 1273. The messengers found him with his sleeves rolled up washing dishes in the scullery; turning round he pointed to a tree near by and bid them hang the hat on a bough until he had finished his work.