In view of such abuses as these, the London Company was given very exclusive powers, one of which was “to search for and destroy bad or defective skins, leather or gloves.” The name of the first Master of the Glovers’ Company has come down to us in certain parish registers of the seventeenth century, in which he is mentioned as “William Smart, of the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate, _Glover_.” In his parish the trade seems to have been especially flourishing. Perhaps the London industry labored under greater difficulties, on the whole, than glove-making elsewhere. It had constantly to contend against the secret importation of French gloves into the capital city, and also to maintain its superiority over the imitations of the country manufacturers; for, in England, as in France, competition between the various glove centres was intense. Many London manufacturers, because they could not make their ventures pay, actually became importers and dealers in French gloves—either underhandedly, or openly, as the laws of the land would permit. Invariably they found this greatly to their advantage, since the price of French gloves was low, and the manner in which the duty could be evaded, at that date, ridiculously simple. Despite the feelings and the best efforts of those Englishmen who sought to foster and strengthen the home glove trade, the prohibitory laws remained always more or less lax—chiefly because the aristocracy and gentry preferred the French glove, and, for the most part, were not interested in the welfare of English glovers and artisans—until, in 1825, the ban on imported gloves was officially removed. The effect upon France was electrical. The British ports were flung open to her at a time when Grenoble, Paris and her other glove cities were swinging back on the crest of the new wave of industrial prosperity and progress which had received its momentum in the days of the Empire—a period which witnessed the revival of much of the former elegance of France, so lately eclipsed by the Revolution. In 1832, the legal importation of French gloves into England was 1,516,663 pairs. As many more, in that same year, we may believe, were also smuggled into the country by the old methods. To France—and particularly to Grenoble—the English change of policy was one of the greatest boons which could have befallen a commercially ambitious people. To English glovers, on the contrary, the results were anything but fortunate. A brief survey of the vicissitudes of the English glove towns may serve to show how dearly the glove industry was forced to pay for the new national system of Free Trade.