THE FARMER AT HOME. 397 



ings is quite discontinued. Dr. Howel, in his History of the World 

 relates, that Q,ueen Elizabeth, in 1501, was presented with a pair of 

 black knit silk stockings by her silk woman, and thenceforth she never 

 wore cloth ones any more. The same author adds, that King Henry 

 VIII.' ordinarily wore cloth hose, except there came from Spain, by 

 great chance, a pair of silk stockings. His son, King Edward VI., 

 was presented with a pair of long Spanish silk stockings by Sir 

 Thomas Gresham, and the present was then much taken notice of. 

 Hence it should seem, that the invention of knit silk stockings origin- 

 ally came from Spain. Others relate, that one William Rider, an 

 apprentice on London Bridge, seeing at the house of an Italian mer- 

 chant a pair of knit worsted stockings from Mantua, took the hint, 

 and made a pair exactly like them, which he presented to William, 

 earl of Pembroke, and that they were the first of that kind worn in 

 England, anno 1564. 



The modern stockings, whether woven or knit, are formed of an 

 infinite number of little knots, called stitches, loops, or meshes, inter- 

 mingled in one another. Knit stockings are wrought with needles 

 made of polished iron, or brass wire, which interweave the threads, 

 and form the meshes the stocking consists of. At what time the art 

 of knitting was invented, it is perhaps impossible to determine, though 

 it has been usually attributed to the Scots, as it is said that the first 

 works of this kind came from Scotland. It is added, that it was on 

 this account that the company of stocking knitters, established at 

 Paris, 1527, took for their patron St. Fiaere, who is said to have been 

 the son of a king of Scotland. But it is most probable that the method 

 of knitting stockings by wires or needles was first brought from Spain. 



Woven stockings are generally very fine ; they are manufactured 

 on a frame or machine made of polished iron. The invention of this 

 machine is by Mr. Anderson attributed to William Lee, M. A., of 

 St. John's College, Cambridge, at a period so early as 1589. Others 

 have given the credit of this invention to a student of Oxford at a 

 much later period, who, it is said by Aaron Hill, was driven to it by 

 dire necessity. This young man, falling in love, with an innkeeper's 

 daughter, married her, though she had not a penny, and he by his 

 marriage lost a fellowship. They soon fell into extreme poverty ; 

 and their marriage producing the consequences naturally to be ex- 

 pected from it, the amorous pair became miserable, not so much on 

 account of their sufferings, as from the melancholy dread of what 

 would become of their yet unborn infant. Their only means of sup- 

 port were the knitting of stockings, at which the woman was very 

 expert. While sitting constantly together from morning to night, 

 and the scholar often fixing his eyes with steadfast observation, on 

 the motion of his wife's fingers in the dexterous management of her 

 needles, he took it into his imagination that it was not impossible to 

 contrive a little loom which might do the work with much more ex- 



