In A Word,
Their Reputation Seems Here To Be Better Kept, Guarded By Better
Conduct, And Managed With More Prudence;
And yet the Dorsetshire
ladies, I assure you, are not nuns; they do not go veiled about
streets, or hide
Themselves when visited; but a general freedom of
conversation--agreeable, mannerly, kind, and good--runs through the
whole body of the gentry of both sexes, mixed with the best of
behaviour, and yet governed by prudence and modesty such as I
nowhere see better in all my observation through the whole isle of
Britain. In this little interval also I visited some of the
biggest towns in the north-west part of this county, as Blandford--
a town on the River Stour in the road between Salisbury and
Dorchester--a handsome well-built town, but chiefly famous for
making the finest bone-lace in England, and where they showed me
some so exquisitely fine as I think I never saw better in Flanders,
France, or Italy, and which they said they rated at above 30 pounds
sterling a yard; but I suppose there was not much of this to be
had. But it is most certain that they make exceeding rich lace in
that county, such as no part of England can equal.
From thence I went west to Stourbridge, vulgarly called Strabridge.
The town and the country around is employed in the manufacture of
stockings, and which was once famous for making the finest, best,
and highest-prize knit stocking in England; but that trade now is
much decayed by the increase of the knitting-stocking engine or
frame, which has destroyed the hand-knitting trade for fine
stockings through the whole kingdom, of which I shall speak more in
its place.
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