FIRST SILK STOCKINGS.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 134, 8 June 1929, Page 10 (Supplement)

FIRST SILK STOCKINGS.

HOW THEY WERE MADE,

In 15G1 a lady of Queen Elizabeth's court knitted her a pair of black silk hose as a New Year's gift. Better than all the gorgeous presents she received the Queen liked her new silk stockings— her iirst pair. "Can you get me any more?" she asked Mistress Montague. "Surely," answered the other. "Since they please Your Majesty so well I will at once begin another pair. "Do so," commanded Elizabeth. "The silk stockings are so pleasant, fine and delicate that henceforth I will wear no more stockings of cloth." Previous to the introduction of silk knitted hose, leg coverings were made of velvet, satin or taffeta. Different colours had their periods of popularity. Ladies, because of their long dresses, were less influenced by the changing fashions in colours and materials than the men, who wore knee breeches.

Knitting of any kind was a comparatively new art in the time of Elizabeth. The first recorded was in 1488, and there were few that knew how to convert even yarn into cap or stocking. Among those few, however, was the wife of the Rev. William Lee, a poor curate at Calverton, in Nottinghamshire. During the long summer evenings she would sit, like many a .woman of later years, patiently knitting the family stockings. Her husband, watching the flying needles, wearied more than she herself of the monotony of the task and set his wits to work to relieve her. The result was the first knitting .machine, on which, in 1589, he reversed the usual order and knit his wife a pair of stockings. Lee dreamed of reyolutionising the world of dress by introducing cheap, shapely knitted stockings, instead of the clumsy cloth hose or costly hand-knitted ones. He went to the Queen for help, but in spite of her own dislike for stockings of cloth she refused her aid.

Lee crossed the Channel into France, and there found quite a different atmosphere at the court. ' King Henry TV., the dashing Henry of Navarre, patronised him and. his machine, and he prospered until an assassin's dagger cut short the King's life and the Englishman's prospects. Nobody else cared for his silk stocking invention, and under a Catholic regime the unfortunate Protestant minister was thrown into prison and died of a broken heart.