STOCKINGS. 
Stockings. 
Stockings were anciently made of cloth, or of milled sUiff sewed 
together, but since the invention of knitting and weaving stockings of 
silk, wool, cotton, thread, &c. the use of cloth stockings is given up. 
Dr. Howell, in his History of the World, vol. ii. p. 222, relates that 
queen Elizabeth, in 1601, was presented with a pair of black knit 
silk stockings by her silk woman, and thenceforth never w'ore cloth 
ones. He adds, that Henry VI!!, ordinarily wore cloth hose, except 
there came from Spain a pair of silk stockings. Edward VI. was 
presented with a pair of silk stockings by sir Thomas Gresham, and 
the present was then much taken jiotice of. Hence it is said, that 
the invention of knit silk stockings originally came from Spain. 
Others relate that one William Rider, an apprentice on London 
bridge, seeing at the house of an Italian merchant 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, in 1564. 
The modern stockings, woven or knit, are formed of an infinite num- 
ber of little knots, called stitches, loops, or meshes, intermingled. 
Knit stockings are wrought with needles made of polished iron or 
brass wire, which interweave the threads, and form the meshes of 
which the stockings consist. 
Woven stockings are generally very fine; they are manufactured in 
a machine made of polished iron, the structure of which it is needless 
to describe, as it may be seen in almost every considerable town in 
Great Britain. 
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 give the credit of it to a student at 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 inn- 
keeper’s daughter, married her, though she had not a penny, and he 
by his marriage lost a fellow'ship. They soon fell into extreme poverty, 
and their marriage produced the consequences naturallyto be expected 
from it. They 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 support was the knitting 
of stockings, at which the woman was very expert. But sitting con- 
stantly together from morning to night, and the scholar often fixing 
his eyes with stedfast observation on the motion of his wife’s fingers 
in the dexterous management of her needles, be took it into his ima- 
gination, that it was not impossible to contrive a little loom which 
might do the work with much more expedition. This thought he 
communicated to his wife, and, joining his head to her hands, the 
endeavour succeeded to their utmost wish. Thus the ingenious stock- 
ing loom, which is so common now, was first invented ; by which he 
not only made himself and his family happy, but has left his nation 
indebted to him for a benefit which enables us to export silk stock- 
ings in vast quantities, and to a great advantage, to those very 
countries from whence before we used to bring them at a considerable 
loss in balance of traffic.” 
