THE HISTORY OF SILK CULTURE. 13. 



perturbed because his hose seemed scarcely to match the rest of 

 his costume, and he greatly longed to see his legs encased in the 

 splendour of silken hose ; but as he had none of his own, he was 

 reduced to the ignominy of begging the loan of a pair from the 

 Earl of Mar, at the same time pathetically appealing to the loyalty 

 of this courtier with the words, " Ye would not, sure, that your 

 king should appear as a scrub before strangers. 3 ' Queen Elizabeth 

 too, it is well known, was particularly pleased with the present of 

 a pair of silk stockings, and with the characteristic Tudor love of 

 dress, found so much pleasure in wearing them that she per- 

 sistently refused ever after to wear any other kind. 



The manufacture of silk was introduced into this country in the 

 reign of Henry VI., but whatever progress it made was due chiefly 

 to acts of religious intolerance on the Continent. The 

 persecutions of the Duke of Alva drove refugees from Flanders to 

 England in 1585, and again a century later, the insane act of 

 the French Government in the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes 

 had a similar effect, and was the means of sending a colony of 

 French Protestants or Huguenots to our shores. Some seventy 

 thousand of these latter entered our country, many of whom, like 

 their Flemish co-religionists were silk-weavers, and these all carried 

 on in the land of their adoption the art in which they were 

 proficient, thus giving a great impetus to the silk manufacture, 

 and rendering a valuable return for the liberality which had 

 welcomed them as refugees from despotism and oppression. One 

 of the most numerous colonies of these exiles settled in the 

 district called Spitalfields, in East London, where many of their 

 descendants still reside. 



Some seventy years before the arrival of the Huguenots, 

 however, James I. had been anxious that silkworm rearing should 

 be carried on in this country, and for that purpose caused 

 thousands of mulberry trees to be brought over from France, and 

 planted throughout the country. Great efforts were made to 

 ensure success, and we read that in the year 1629 Walter Lord 

 Aston was appointed " to the custody of the garden, mulberry 

 trees and silkworms near St. James's in the county of Middlesex." 

 But, notwithstanding the royal patronage, or possibly because of 

 it, the attempt shared the fate of so many of James's schemes, and. 

 turned out a failure; within a few years the mulberry garden 

 became, to use the words of Evelyn the diarist, " the only place of 

 refreshment about the town for persons of the best quality to be 

 exceedingly cheated at," and later on, it disappeared altogether, 

 crushed out of existence by the all-powerful and ever-extending 

 accompaniment of modern civilisation, " bricks and mortar." 



