pted to gain both the Italian workmen, and
succeeded with one. By these two slow poison was supposed, and perhaps
justly, to have been administered to John Lombe, who lingered two or
three years in agony, and departed. The Italian ran away to his own
country; and Madam was interrogated, but nothing transpired, except
what strengthened suspicion." A strange story, if true.

Of the funeral, Hutton says:--"John Lombe's was the most superb ever
known in Derby. A man of peaceable deportment, who had brought a
beneficial manufactory into the place, employed the poor, and at
advanced wages, could not fail meeting with respect, and his melancholy
end with pity. Exclusive of the gentlemen who attended, all the people
concerned in the works were invited. The procession marched in pairs,
and extended the length of Full Street, the market-place, and
Iron-gate; so that when the corpse entered All Saints, at St. Mary's
Gate, the last couple left the house of the deceased, at the corner of
Silk-mill Lane."

Thus John Lombe died and was buried at the early age of twenty-nine;
and Thomas, the capitalist, continued the owner of the Derby silk mill.
Hutton erroneously states that William succeeded, and that he shot
himself. The Lombes had no brother of the name of William, and this
part of Hutton's story is a romance.

The affairs of the Derby silk mill went on prosperously. Enough thrown
silk was manufactured to supply the trade, and the weaving of silk
became a thriving business. Indeed, English silk began to have a
European reputation. In olden times it was said that "the stranger
buys of the Englishman the case of the fox for a groat, and sells him
the tail again for a shilling." But now the matter was reversed, and
the saying was, "The Englishman buys silk of the stranger for twenty
marks, and sells him the same again for one hundred pounds."

But the patent was about to expire. It had been granted for only
fourteen years; and a long time had elapsed before the engine could be
put in operation, and the organzine manufactured. It was the only
engine in the kingdom. Joshua Gee, writing in 1731, says: "As we have
but one Water Engine in the kingdom for throwing silk, if that should
be destroyed by fire or any other accident, it would make the
continuance of throwing fine silk very precarious; and it is very much
to be doubted whether all the men now living in the kingdom could make
another." Gee accordingly recommende