Hexham furnished a peculiar glove—so long-established that we may regard it as having descended unbrokenly from the old Saxon _gluf_—called the “Hexham tan glove,” made from native sheep skins. The gauntlets attached to suits of armor were made in the same style; and many centuries ago it was an important trade in that place. But even its modern substitute fell into disuse about 1830. York “tans” were popular in the days of protection. Beaver gloves occupied 3,000 persons in Hereford, until the sudden industrial collapse of that town in 1825. Ludlow turned out 70,000 dozen pairs of gloves annually, and employed one-fifth of its population in that trade, collecting the skins from Scotland. In 1832, “not six men,” we read, were employed in glove-making there. Kington was another glove centre which failed before the middle of the nineteenth century. The glove workmen of Leominster numbered 900 in 1825; and on the eve of legal re-importation its factories were among the busiest in the kingdom. In 1831, its shops were deserted by all but 163 artisans. A community whose associations with gloves are particularly interesting, was Yeovil, where the craft was established as early as the middle of the sixteenth century, giving employment for hundreds of years to peasant workmen and workwomen living over an area of some twenty miles. At one period the number of its masters, cutters and sewers was 20,000, and about 300,000 dozens of gloves of all kinds were produced annually. An ancient folk song of the Yeovil glove-women has recently been revived by the Fuller sisters, to simple harp accompaniment, just as it used to be sung, as a “round” or “part song,” by the diligent sewers as they drew their triangular needles in and out of their work. It is very quaint and tuneful, marking the time of the motions in sewing; and its rhythm, no doubt, facilitated the speed and ease with which the women plied their task. Yeovil was famous for its military gloves for many years. Later, a fine imitation of kid gloves was made there; but these were crushed out by the return of the genuine foreign product. An idyllic industrial community was transformed almost over night into a desperate and dangerous populace, demanding by force the means of bread-winning which so suddenly had been denied it. Hull tells us that to quell these disturbances, two troops of dragoons were kept continually in the town, where, a few years before, “a horse-soldier would have been looked upon as a sort of centaur by the lower orders of the people.”