Suffolk has produced bobbin-made laces of little artistic value. The patterns in most of the specimens in the Victoria and Albert Museum collection are derived from simple Mechlin, Lille, and Valenciennes patterns. "The make of the lace resembles that of Buckinghamshire laces, and that of the Norman laces of the present time. The entire collection displays varied combinations of six ways of twisting and plaiting thread."[1129] PLATE LXXXVII. [Illustration: ENGLISH, SUFFOLK. BOBBIN LACE.--Nineteenth century. Resembling inferior Buckinghamshire, also Normandy and Saxony laces. Victoria and Albert Museum.] _To face page 394._ {395}CHAPTER XXXI. WILTSHIRE AND DORSETSHIRE. From Wiltshire and Dorset, counties in the eighteenth century renowned for their lace, the trade has now passed away; a few workers may yet be found in the retired sea-side village of Charmouth, and these are diminishing fast. Of the Wiltshire manufactures we know but little, even from tradition, save that the art did once prevail. Peuchet alludes to it. When Sir Edward Hungerford attacked Wardour Castle in Wiltshire, Lady Arundel, describing the destruction of the leaden pipes by the soldiers, says, "They cut up the pipe and sold it, as these men's wives in North Wiltshire do bone lace, at sixpence a yard." One Mary Hurdle, of Marlborough, in the time of Charles II., tells us in her "Memoirs"[1130] that, being left an orphan, she was apprenticed by the chief magistrate to a maker of bone lace for eight years, and after that period of servitude she apprenticed herself for five years more. Again, at the time of the Great Plague, cautions are issued by the Mayor of Marlborough to all parents and masters how they send their children and servants to school or abroad in making bone lace or otherwise, in any public house, place, or school used for that purpose.[1131] In the proceedings of the Anti-Gallican Society it is recorded that the second prize for needle point ruffles was, in 1751, awarded to Mrs. Elizabeth Waterman, of the episcopal city of Salisbury. Such are the scanty notices we have been able to glean of the once flourishing lace trade in Wiltshire. {396}Dorset, on the other hand, holds a high place in the annals of lace-making, three separate towns, in their day--Blandford, Sherborne, and Lyme Regis--disputing the palm of excellence for their productions. Of Blandford the earliest mention we find is in Owen's _Magna Britannica_ of 1720, where he states: "The manufacture of this town was heretofore 'band-strings,' which were once risen to a good price, but now times hath brought both bands themselves and their strings out of use, and so the inhabitants have turned their hands to making straw works and bone lace, which perhaps may come to nothing, if the fickle humour of fashionmongers take to wearing Flanders lace."