It was not till we read of bone[14] lace that it may be taken to mean pillow lace, made either with fish bones as pins or sheep’s trotters as bobbins. That bones were used as bobbins is stated by Fuller;[15] but the fish bone theory is also possible; pins were very high priced at that time, and it would have been perfectly possible to use fish bones fine enough for the geometrical laces of the sixteenth century. ----- Footnote 14: The term _bone_ lace is wrongly interpreted as representing the raised Venetian points, which have been likened to carved ivory or bone. Footnote 15: _Worthies_, 1662. ----- Queen Elizabeth was much addicted to the collecting and wearing of beautiful clothes, but no definite mention of English lace seems to occur in the Royal Wardrobe Accounts. The earliest mention of Honiton lace is by Westcote—“At Axminster you may be furnished with fine flax thread there spun. At Honiton and Bradnidge with bone lace much in request”;[16] and, referring again to Honiton—“Here is made abundance of bone-lace, a pretty toye now greatly in request”; and therefore the town may say with merry Martial— In praise for toyes such as this, Honiton second to none is. ----- Footnote 16: _View of Devon._ ----- The famous inscription on a tombstone in Honiton Churchyard, together with Westcote, proves the industry to have been well established in the reign of James I. The inscription runs:— Here lyeth ye body of James Rodge, of Honinton in ye County of Devonshire, (Bonelace Siller, hath given unto the poore of Honinton P’ishe the benyfitt of £100 for ever) who deceased ye 27 of July A^o D^i 1617 ÆTATÆ SVAE 50. Remember the Poore. There have been traditions that Rodge was a valet who accompanied his master abroad and there, learning the fine Flemish stitches, taught some Devonshire women on his return home, and was enabled to make a comfortable competence by their work. Rodge was not the only benefactor to the town connected with the industry; there are two others recorded in the seventeenth century. “Although the earliest known MS., Ker’s _Synopsis_, 1561, giving an account of the different towns in Devonshire, makes no mention of lace, we find from it that Mrs. Minifie, one of the earliest named lace-makers, was an Englishwoman.”[17] “She was a daughter of John Flay, Vicar of Buckrell, near Honiton.”[18] She died in 1617, and left money for the indigent townspeople, as did Thomas Humphrey, of Honiton, lace-maker, in 1658. ----- Footnote 17: _History of Lace._ Mrs. Palliser, 1901. Footnote 18: _Worthies of Devon._ Prince, 1701. ----- The advantages of the lace trade were realized by the time of the Commonwealth. Fuller,[19] writing during that period, says of bone lace:—