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114 four quarters, each under an independent rector, and all co-equally regnant in the parish church. The arrangement was not happy—and led to constant ruffles and conflict of opinion. The condition was so unsatisfactory that the late Bishop of Exeter and present Archbishop carried an Act to alter it.

Tiverton is a seat of machine -lace manufacture, introduced by Mr. John Heathcoat in 1816.

Lace is said to have been brought into France by Mary de Medici from Venice; and the making of this beautiful work of art rapidly spread and took root in the Low Countries. Refugees from Flanders brought it into England, when they settled at Cranfield, in Bedfordshire. The lace made was Brussels point; the network was formed by bone bobbins on a pillow, which held the threads, and the sprigs were worked with a needle.

The introduction of machinery told heavily on the commoner and coarser lace-making.

In the reign of George II., or about a hundred and fifty years after the introduction of the first knitting machines, many additions and improvements were made in them, and the so-called "tickler," guided by mere accident, was now applied for the first time to the manufacture of lace. This attempt was succeeded by a "point-net" machine, an invention that was nearly, but not entirely, successful.

In 1768 a watchmaker, named Hammond, applied the stocking-frame to the manufacture of lace, but it worked slowly and without accuracy. Attempts were made in various parts of the kingdom to make fishing-nets by machinery, and a workman