According to some authorities the earliest lace made in Flanders was of the kind known as Pillow Guipure. The pattern is made as of tape, in flowing Renaissance style, sometimes connected by brides, and sometimes altogether without brides, when the points of the pattern touch each other. In the specimens of this type of lace in the Victoria and Albert Museum there is apparently little in the laces by which the country of their origin may be identified. Sometimes they have been considered French, sometimes Flemish, and sometimes Italian. [See the specimens of tape-lace in the Catalogue of the lace in the Victoria and Albert Museum, p. 49, by A. S. Cole.] (Plate XXXVIII.) BRUSSELS (BRABANT). "More subtile web Arachne cannot spin."--Spenser. "From Lisle I came to Brussels, where most of the fine laces are made you see worn in England."--Lord Chesterfield, 1741. At what period the manufacture of Brussels lace commenced we are ignorant; but, judging from the earlier patterns, it may be placed at the beginning of the sixteenth century. The ancient churches of Brabant possess, it is said, many precious specimens, the gifts of munificent princes who have at all periods shown a predilection for Brussels lace, and in every way promoted its manufacture. In usage it is termed Point d'Angleterre, an error explained to us by history. PLATE XXXVII. [Illustration: BRUSSELS. POINT D'ANGLETERRE À BRIDES. CROWN OF A CAP.--Last half of seventeenth century. The property of Mr. Arthur Blackborne.] PLATE XXXVIII. [Illustration: FLEMISH. TAPE LACE, BOBBIN-MADE.--Seventeenth century. Photos by A. Dryden.] _To face page 116._ {117}In 1662 the English Parliament, alarmed at the sums of money expended on foreign point, and desirous to protect the English bone-lace manufacture, passed an Act prohibiting the importation of all foreign lace. The English lace-merchants, at a loss how to supply the Brussels point required at the court of Charles II., invited Flemish lace-makers to settle in England and there establish the manufacture. The scheme, however, was unsuccessful. England did not produce the necessary flax, and the lace made was of an inferior quality. The merchants therefore adopted a more simple expedient. Possessed of large capital, they bought up the choicest laces of the Brussels market, and then smuggling them over to England, sold them under the name of point d'Angleterre, or "English Point."[330] This fact is, curiously enough, corroborated in a second memorandum given by the Venetian ambassador to the English Court in 1695, already mentioned by an informant in London, who states that Venetian point is no longer in fashion, but "that called English point, which, you know, is not made here, but in Flanders, and only bears the name of English to distinguish it from the others." "Questo chiamato punto d'Inghilterra, si sappia che non si fa qui, ma in Fiandra, et porta solamente questo nome d'Inghilterra per distintione dagli altri."