Lace had now become an article worthy the attention of the light-fingered gentry. The jewels worn by our great-grandmothers of the eighteenth century, though mounted in the most exquisite taste, were for the most part false--Bristol or Alençon "diamonds," paste, or "Strass." Lace, on the other hand, was a sure commodity and easily disposed of. At the robbery of Lady Anderson's house in Red Lion Square during a fire, in 1700, the family of George Heneage, Esq., on a visit, are recorded to have lost--"A head with fine loopt lace, of very great value; a Flanders lace hood; a pair of double ruffles and tuckers; two laced aprons, one point, the other Flanders lace; and a large black lace scarf embroidered in gold." Again, at an opera row some years later, the number of caps, ruffles, and heads enumerated as stolen by the pickpockets is quite fabulous. So expert had they become, that when first the ladies took to wearing powdered wigs, they dexterously cut open the leather backs of the hack coaches and carried off wig, head and all, before the rifled occupant had the slightest idea of their attack.[1026] To remedy the evil, the police request all ladies for the future to sit with their backs to the horses.[1027] {347}QUEEN ANNE. "PARLEY.--Oh, Sir, there's the prettiest fashion lately come over! so airy, so French, and all that! The Pinners are double ruffled with twelve plaits of a side, and open all from the face; the hair is frizzled up all round head, and stands as stiff as a bodkin. Then the Favourites hang loose upon the temple with a languishing lock in the middle. Then the Caule is extremely wide, and over all is a Cornet rais'd very high and all the Lappets behind."--Farquhar. _Sir Harry Wildair._ Queen Anne, though less extravagant than her sister, was scarcely more patriotic. The point purchased for her coronation,[1028] though it cost but £64 13s. 9d., was of Flanders growth. The bill is made out to the royal laceman of King William's day, now Sir Henry Furnesse, knight and merchant. The Queen, too, in her gratitude, conferred a pension of £100 upon one Mrs. Abrahat, the royal clear-starcher; "because," writes the Duchess of Marlborough, "she had washed the Queen's heads for twenty pounds a year when she was princess." In 1706 Anne again repeals the Acts which prohibit Flanders lace, with the clear understanding that nothing be construed into allowing the importation of lace made in "the dominions of the French King";[1029] an edict in itself sufficient to bring the points of France into the highest fashion.[1030] "France," writes an essayist, "is the wardrobe of the world;" nay, "the English have so great an esteem for the workmanship of the French refugees, that hardly a thing vends without a Gallic name."[1031] To the refugees from Alençon and elsewhere, expelled by the cruel edict of Louis XIV., we owe the visible improvement of our laces in the eighteenth century.