e, though it is said there are 4,000 different patterns of the
article.

_Swords_.--Some writers aver that Birmingham was the centre of the metal
works of the ancient Britons, where the swords and the scythe blades
were made to meet Julius Caesar. During the Commonwealth, over 15,000
swords were said to have been made in Birmingham for the Parliamentary
soldiers, but if they thus helped to overthrow the Stuarts at that
period, the Brummagem boys in 1745 were willing to make out for it by
supplying Prince Charlie with as many as ever he could pay for, and the
basket-hilts were at a premium. Disloyalty did not always prosper
though, for on one occasion over 2,000 Cutlasses intended for the
Prince, were seized _en route_ and found their way into the hands of his
enemies. Not many swords are made in Birmingham at the present time,
unless matchets and case knives used in the plantations can be included
under that head.

_Thimbles_, or thumbells, from being originally worn on the thumb, are
said by the Dutch to have been the invention of Mynheer van Banschoten
for the protection of his lady-love's fingers when employed at the
embroidery-frame; but though the good people of Amsterdam last year
(1884) celebrated the bicentenary of their gallant thimble-making
goldsmith, it is more than probable that he filched the idea from a
Birmingham man, for Shakespeare had been dead sixty-eight years prior to
1684, and he made mention of thimbles as quite a common possession of
all ladies in his time:

"For your own ladies, and pale-visag'd maids,
Like Amazons, come tripping after drums,
Their thimbles into armed gauntlets change;
Their neelds to lances."

_King John_, Act v. sc. 3.

"Thou liest, thou thread, thou thimble."
"And that I'll prove upon thee, though thy
little finger be armed in a thimble,"

_Taming of the Shrew_, Act iv., sc. 3.

The earliest note we really have of thimbles being manufactured in
Birmingham dates as 1695. A very large trade is now done in steel,
brass, gold, and silver.

_Thread_.--Strange are the mutations of trade. The first thread of
cotton spun by rollers, long before Arkwright's time, was made near this
town in the year 1700, and a little factory was at work in the Upper
Priory (the motive power being two donkeys), in 1740, under the
ingenious John Wyatt, with whom were other two well-remembered local
worthies--Lewis Paul and Thomas Warren. Many improvements were made in