In England, as we shall see, glass was made during the Roman occupation. Under the Saxons, glass-workers were imported from the Continent, but to judge from the number and variety of the specimens found in Anglo-Saxon tombs, it is probable that it was also manufactured to an equal extent at home. During the Middle Ages the art appears to have fallen into abeyance, save in a few isolated instances to be noted later, but in the sixteenth century the custom of using glass vessels was introduced from France and the Low Countries, most of the pieces being imported from Venice. To prevent the money thus expended from leaving the country, efforts were made about the middle of the century to establish the art by the aid of workmen from Murano, and the history of glass manufactured in England may be said to have fairly begun. It was undoubtedly stimulated by the religious persecutions on the Continent, particularly the Spanish Terror in the Netherlands, for the Low Countries were seriously endeavouring to rival Murano in the art, and the craftsmen who fled for refuge to England undoubtedly did much to develop their trade in the country of their adoption, as did the Huguenot refugees at a later period. [Illustration: _Strawberry Cutting_ _Hob-nail Cutting_ _Diamond Cutting_ _Fleur-de-lis Cutting_ _Fan Cutting_ _Herring-bone Cutting_ FIG. 39.] In the seventeenth century the whole process was revolutionised by the introduction of a large proportion of oxide of lead, making what is technically known as “flint” glass--a glass much more brilliant than any other, a quality due partly to its transparency and partly to its increased refractive power, which renders it specially fitted for “cutting”--a process which enhances its beauty by increasing the number of ways in which the light rays falling on the glass are dispersed. The discovery has given English glass a well-deserved pre-eminence for beauty of metal--a pre-eminence which the glass-cutters of the eighteenth century admirably sustained by the excellence of their work.