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( 351 ) CHAPTER XXXI. WILTSHIRE AND DORSETSHIRE. From Wiltshire and Dorset, counties in the last 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 Charmoutk, 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 War do nr 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 ” 1 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 M arlborough 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. 2 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. Dorset, on the other hand, holds high her head in the annals 1 “ The Conversion and Experience of the Rev. — Hughes, of that town.” Mary Hurll’, or Hurdle, of Marlborough, 2 Waylem’s “History of Marlborough, a maker of bone lace in this town, by