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( 355 ) CHAPTER XXXII. DEVONSHIRE. “ Bone lace and Cyder.” Anderson. “ At Axmilister, you may be furnished with fyne flax thread there spunne. At Honyton and Bradninch with bone lace much in request. Westcote. HONITON. Lace-making is said to have been introduced into Devonshire by sundry Flemings who took refuge in England during the persecu tions of the Duke of Alva (1567-73). Whether the art was first made known to the inhabitants of the county at that period, it is impossible now to say. We may rather infer that laces of silk and coarse thread were already manufactured in Devonshire, as elsewhere, and that the Flemings, on their arrival, having introduced the fine thread, spun almost exclusively in their own country, from that period the trade of bone-lace making flourished in the southern as in the midland counties of England. Although the earliest known MS., 1 giving an account of the different towns of Devon, makes no mention of lace, we find from it that Mrs. Minifie, one of the earliest named lace-makers, was an Englishwoman. 2 Towards the latter end of the sixteenth century, various and, indeed, numerous patronymics of Flemish origin appear among the 1 Kcr’s “ Synopsis,” written about tlie 2 “ She was a daughter of John Flay, year 1501. Two copies of this MS. exist, Vicar of Buckrell. near Honiton who by one in the library of Sir Lawrence Balk, will, in 1014, bequeaths certain landsi to at Halden House (Co. Devon), the other Jerom Minify (sic), son of Jerom Minify, in the British Museum. This MS. was of Burwash, Sussex, who married his only never printed, but served as an authority daughter .’’-Prince’s Worthies of Devm, for Westcote and others. 1701. 2 a 2