As early as the reign of Edward III.,[753] the excessive luxury of veils, worn even by servant girls, excited the indignation of the Government, who, in an Act, dated 1363, forbade them to be worn of silk, or of any other material, "mes soulement de fil fait deinz le Roialme," for which veils no one was to pay more than the sum of tenpence. Of what stuff these thread veils were composed we have no record; probably they were a sort of network, similar to the caul of Queen Philippa, as we see represented on her tomb.[754] That a sort of crochet decoration used for edging was already made, we may infer from the monumental effigies of the day.[755] The purse of the carpenter is described, too, in Chaucer, as "purled with latoun," a kind of metal or wire lace, similar to that found at Herculaneum, and made in some parts of Europe to a recent period. M. Aubry refers to a commercial treaty of 1390, between England and the city of Bruges, as the earliest mention of lace. This said treaty we cannot find in Rymer, Dumont, {286}or anywhere else. We have, as before alluded to, constant edicts concerning the gold wires and threads of "Cipre, Venys, Luk, and Jeane," of embroideries and suchlike, but no distinct allusion to "lace."[756] According to Anderson, the first intimation of such an occupation being known in England is the complaint, made in 1454, by the women of the mystery of thread-working in London, in consequence of the importation of six foreign women, by which the manufacture of needlework[757] of thread and silk, not as yet understood, was introduced. These six women, probably Flemings, had brought over to England the cut-work or darning of the time, a work then unknown in this country. All authors, up to the present period, refer to the well-known Act of Edward IV.,[758] 1463, in which the entry of "laces, corses, ribans, fringes, de soie and de file, laces de file soie enfile," etc., are prohibited, as the first mention of "lace" in the public records.