STOCKING, that part of the clothing of the leg and foot which immediately covers and screens them from the rigour of the cold. Anciently, the only stockings in use were made of cloth, or of milled stuffs sewed together; but since the invention of knitting and weaving stockings of silk, wool, cotton, thread, &c. the use of cloth stockings is quite discontinued. Dr Howell, in his History of the World, vol. ii. p. 222, relates, that Queen Elizabeth, in 1501, was presented with a pair of black knit silk stockings by her silk woman, and thenceforth she never wore cloth ones any more. The same author adds, that King Henry VIII. ordinarily wore cloth hose, except there came from Spain,· by great chance, a pair of silk stockings. His son, King Edward VI., was presented with a pair of long Spanish silk stockings by Sir Thomas Gresham, and the present was[7:20:735] then much taken notice of. Hence it should seem that the invention of silk knit stockings originally came from Spain. Others relate, that one William Rider, an apprentice on London Bridge, seeing at the house of an Italian merchant a pair of knit worsted stockings from Mantua, took the hint, and made a pair exactly like them, which he presented to William earl of Pembroke, and that they were the first of that kind worn in England, anno 1564.

The modern stockings, whether woven or knit, are formed of an infinite number of little knots, called stitches, loops, or meshes, intermingled in one another. Knit stockings are wrought with needles made of polished iron or brass wire, which interweave the threads and form the meshes of which the stocking consists. At what time the art of knitting was invented, it is perhaps impossible to determine, though it has been usually attributed to the Scots, as it is said that the first works of this kind came from Scotland. It is added, that it was on this account that the company of stocking-knitters established at Paris in 1527 took for their patron St Fiacre, who is said to have been the son of a king of Scotland. But it is most probable that the method of knitting stockings by wires or needles was first brought from Spain.

Woven stockings are generally very fine. They are manufactured on a frame or machine made of polished iron, the structure of which it is needless to describe, as it may be seen in almost every considerable town in Great Britain. The invention of this machine is, by Mr Anderson, attributed to William Lee, Μ. A. of St John’s College, Cambridge, at a period so early as 1589. Others have given the credit of the invention to a student of Oxford at a much later period, who, it is said by Aaron Hill,^[1. See an Account of the Rise and Progress of the Beech Oil Invention, &c. 8vo, 1715. ] was driven to it by dire necessity. This young man falling in love with an innkeeper’s daughter, married her though she had not a penny, and he by his marriage Jost a fellowship. They soon fell into extreme poverty; and their marriage producing the consequences naturally to be expected from it, the amorous pair became miserable, not so much on account of their sufferings, as from the melancholy dread of what would become of their yet unborn infant. Their only means of support was the knitting of stockings, at which the woman was very expert. “But sitting constantly together from morning to night, and the scholar often fixing his eyes, with stedfast observation, on the motion of his wife’s fingers in the dexterous management of her needles, he took it into his imagination that it was not impossible to contrive a little loom which might do the work with much more expedition. This thought he communicated to his wife, and joining his head to her hands, the endeavour succeeded to their wish. Thus the ingenious stocking-loom, which is so common now, was first invented; by which he did not only make himself and his family happy, but has left his nation indebted to him for a benefit which enables us to export silk stockings in great quantities, and to a vast advantage, to those very countries from whence before we used to bring them at considerable loss in the balance of our traffic.”