An Irish smock wrought with silk and gold was considered an object worthy of a king's wardrobe, as the inventory of King Edward IV.[1221] attests:--"Item, one Irishe smocke wrought with gold and silke." The Rebellion at an end, a friendly intercourse, as regards fashion, was kept up between the English and the Irish. The ruff of geometric design, falling band, and cravat of Flanders lace, all appeared in due succession. The Irish, always lovers of pomp and show, early used lace at the interments of the great, as appears from an anecdote related in a letter of Mr. O'Halloran:--"The late Lord Glandore told me," he writes, "that when a boy, under a spacious tomb in the ruined monastery at his seat, Ardfert Abbey (Co. Kerry), he perceived something white. He drew it forth, and it proved to be a shroud of Flanders lace, the covering of some person long deceased." In the beginning of the eighteenth century a patriotic feeling arose among the Irish, who joined hand in hand to encourage the productions of their own country. Swift was among the first to support the movement, and in a prologue he composed, in 1721, to a play acted for the benefit of the Irish weavers, he says:-- "Since waiting-women, like exacting jades, Hold up the prices of their old brocades, We'll dress in manufactures made at home." PLATE XC. [Illustration: IRISH, YOUGHAL.--Needle-point fan mount, made at the Presentation Convent, Youghal, for H.R.H. Princess Maud of Wales on her marriage, 1896. Width in centre 8½ in. Photo in Victoria and Albert Museum.] _To face page 436._ {437}Shortly afterwards, at a meeting, he proposed the following resolution:-- "That the ladies wear Irish manufactures. There is brought annually into this kingdom near £90,000 worth of silk, whereof the greater part is manufactured; £30,000 more is expended in muslin, holland, cambric, and calico. What the price of lace amounts to is not easy to be collected from the Custom-house book, being a kind of goods that, taking up little room, is easily run; but, considering the prodigious price of a woman's head-dress at ten, twelve, twenty pounds a yard, it must be very great."