[Illustration: ELIZABETH, PRINCESS PALATINE, GRANDDAUGHTER OF JAMES I., 1618-1680.--Probably about 1638. By Gerard Honthorst. National Portrait Gallery. Photo by Walker and Cockerell.] _To face page 326._ {327}[Illustration: Fig. 128. FALLING COLLAR OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.--(After Abraham Bosse.)] Even loyal Oxford, conscientious to a hair's-breadth--always behind the rest of the world--when Whitelock, in 1635, addresses the Quarter Sessions arrayed in the new fashion, owned "one may speak as good sense in a falling band as in a ruff." The change did not, however, diminish the extravagance of the age. The bills for the King's lace and linen, which in the year 1625 amounted to £1,000, in course of time rose to £1,500.[950] Falling bands of Flanders bone lace and cut-work appear constantly in the accounts.[951] As the foreign materials are carefully specified (it was one of these articles, then a novelty, that Queen Anne of Denmark "bought of the French Mann"), we may infer much of the bobbin or bone lace to have been of home produce. As Ben Jonson says, "Rich apparel has strong virtues." It is, he adds, "the birdlime of fools." There was, indeed, no article of toilet at this period which was not encircled with lace--towels, sheets, shirts, caps, cushions, boots (Fig. 129), cuffs (Fig. 130)--and, as too often occurs in the case of excessive luxury, when the bills came in money was wanting to {328}discharge them, Julian Elliott, the royal lace merchant, seldom receiving more than half her account, and in 1630--nothing.[952] There were, as Shakespeare says, "Bonds entered into For gay apparel against the triumph day."[953] The quantity of needlework purl consumed on the king's hunting collars, "colares pro venatione," scarcely appears credible. One entry alone makes 994 yards for 12 collars and 24 pairs of cuffs.[954] Again, 600 yards of fine bone lace is charged for trimming the ruffs of the King's night-clothes.[955] [Illustration: Fig. 129. From an Engraving of Abraham Bosse.] [Illustration: Fig. 130. From an Engraving of Abraham Bosse.]