ting a female figure three inches high, have been found here.'

A great Roman road passes by Honiton. The Fosseway ran from Caithness to
Totnes (according to some authorities, on into Cornwall), and crossed
the country between Exeter or Seaton and Lincolnshire. It is thought
that the Romans, in making their famous roads, usually followed the line
of still older British ways.

In coaching days Honiton was well known as a stage for changing horses.
Gay, who was a Devonshire man, a native of Barnstaple, says in his
_Journey to Exeter, 1716, from London_:

'Now from the steep, 'midst scatter'd farms and groves,
Our eye through Honiton's fair valley roves;
Behind us soon the busy town we leave,
Where finest lace industrious lasses weave.'

Here the poet mentions the one characteristic of the town known to
strangers--the lace-making. When or how it was first started is not
exactly known, but there is a theory that certain Flemings, escaping to
England from the persecutions of the Duke of Alva, settled near Honiton
and introduced the art towards the end of the sixteenth century. The
evidence is too slender to prove that this was so, but there is no doubt
that by the beginning of the next century the industry was well
established, for in the Church of St Michael is a memorial brass plate
recording that

JAMES RODGE of Honiton
in ye County of Devonshire (Bonelace Siller)
Hath given unto the Poore of Honinton P'ishe
The Benefytt of L100 for ever.
Who deceased ye 27 of July A'o. Di. 1617. AEtate suae 50.
Remember ye poore.

So it is obvious that before 1617 there must have been enough lace to
dispose of to make the sale of it profitable.

About forty years later Fuller wrote a spirited defence of lace-making
on economic grounds. It was then 'made in and about Honyton, and weekly
returned to London.' He says: 'Though private persons pay for it, it
stands the state in nothing.... Many lame in their limbs and impotent in
their arms, if able in their fingers, gain a livelyhood thereby, not to
say that it saveth some thousand of pounds yearly, formerly sent over
seas to fetch Lace from Flanders.' At this time the lace trade
flourished greatly, although there was always a difficulty in competing
with Belgium, because of the superiority of its silky flax, finer than
any spun in England. Later the workers fell on evil days, for duri