The London fabric can scarcely be looked upon as a staple trade in itself, mixed up as it was with lace-cleaning and lace-washing--an occupation first established by the ejected nuns.[1101] Much point, too, was made by poor gentlewomen, as the records of the Anti-Gallican Society testify. "A strange infatuation," says a writer of the eighteenth century, "prevailed in the capital for many years among the class called demi-fashionables of sending their daughters to convents in France for education, if that could be so termed which amounted to a learning to work in lace. The Revolution, however, put {374}an end to this practice." It is owing to this French education that the fine needle points were so extensively made in England; though this occupation, however, did not seem to belong to any one county in particular; for the reader who runs his eye over the proceedings of the Anti-Gallican Society will find prizes to have been awarded to gentlewomen from all parts--from the town of Leominster in Herefordshire to Broughton in Leicestershire, or Stourton in Gloucester.[1102] Needle point, in contradistinction to bone lace, was an occupation confined to no special locality. In 1764 the attention of the nobility seems to have been first directed towards the employment of the indigent poor, and, indeed, the better classes in the metropolis, in the making of bone lace and point;[1103] and in 1775, sanctioned by the patronage of Queen Charlotte, the Princesses, the Princess Amelia, and various members of the aristocracy, an institution was formed in Marylebone Lane, and also in James Street, Westminster, "for employing the female infants of the poor in the blond and black silk lace-making and thread laces." More than 300 girls attended the school. "They gave," says the _Annual Register_, "such a proof of their capacity that many who had not been there more than six months carried home to their parents from 5s. to 7s. a month, with expectation of getting more as they improve." From this time we hear no more of the making of lace, either point or bone, in the metropolis. PLATE LXXXV. [Illustration: ENGLISH, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE. BOBBIN LACE.--First half of nineteenth century. Widths: 3, 3, 3, 4 in. The property of Mrs. Ellis, The Vicarage, Much Wenlock.] _To face page 374._ {375}CHAPTER XXX. BEDFORDSHIRE, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE, AND NORTHAMPTONSHIRE.[1104] ---- BEDFORDSHIRE. "He wears a stuff whose thread is coarse and round But trimmed with curious lace."--Herbert. It would be a difficult matter now to determine when and by whom lace-making was first introduced into the counties of Bedfordshire and Buckingham. Authors, for the most part, have been glad to assign its introduction to the Flemings,[1105] a nation to whose successive emigrations England owes much of her manufacturing greatness. Originally the laces were of old, wavy, graceful Flemish designs.