"What do you lack, ladies fair, Mazzarine hoods, Fontanges, girdles?"[1018] King William himself, early imbued with the Dutch taste for lace, exceeded, we may say, his wife in the extravagance of his lace bills; for though the lace account for 1690 is noted only at £1,603, it increases annually until the year 1695-6, when the entries amount to the astonishing sum of £2,459 19s.[1019] Among the items charged will be found:-- £. s. d. To six point cravats 158 0 0 To eight do. for hunting 85 0 0 54 yds. for 6 barbing cloths 270 0 0 63 yds. for 6 combing cloths 283 10 0 117 yards of "scissæ teniæ" (cut-work) for trimming 12 pockethandfs 485 14 3 78 yds. for 24 cravats, at £8 10s. 663 0 0 {344}In this right royal account of expenditure we find mention of "cockscombe laciniæ," of which the King consumes 344 yards.[1020] What this may be we cannot say, as it is described as "green and white"; otherwise we might have supposed it some kind of Venice point, the little pearl-edged raised patterns of which are designated by Randle Holme as "cockscombs." More coquet than a woman, we find an exchange effected with Henry Furness, "Mercatori," of various laces, purchased for his handkerchiefs and razor cloths, which, laid by during the two years of "lugubris" for his beloved consort, the Queen--during which period he had used razor cloths with broad hems and no lace--had become "obsolete"--quite out of fashion. To effect this exchange the King pays the sum of £178 12s. 6d., the lace purchased for the six new razor cloths amounting to £270. In the same page we find him, now out of mourning, expending £499 10s. for lace to trim his twenty-four new nightshirts, "indusiis nocturnis." With such royal patronage, no wonder the lace trade prospered, and that, within ten years of William's death, Defoe should quote the point lace of Blandford as selling at £30 the yard. PLATE LXXXIII. [Illustration: JAMES, THE OLD PRETENDER, 1688-1766, WITH HIS SISTER PRINCESS LOUISA, 1692-1712. In 1695. By Nicolas de Largillière. National Portrait Gallery. Photo by Walker and Cockerell.] _To face page 344._ {345}We have already told how the fashion of the laced Steinkirk found as much favour in England[1021] as in France. Many people still possess, among their family relics, long oval-shaped brooches of topaz or Bristol stones, and wonder what they were used for. These old-fashioned articles of jewellery were worn to fasten (when not passed through the button-hole) the lace Steinkirk, so prevalent not only among the nobility, but worn by all classes. If the dialogue between Sir Nicholas Dainty and Major-General Blunt, as given in Shadwell's play, be correct, the volunteers of King William's day were not behind the military in elegance:--