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SMUGGLING. 323 Atterbury, 4 when his body was brought over from Calais for interment. One of the greatest frauds on record against the custom-house authorities, however, was perpetrated by a man named John Wilkes, who, on one occasion, as he afterwards boasted, when apprehended on another charge, brought from Calais to Dover 1000?. worth of lace wrapped round the limbs of a corpse! A woman for years made a trade of taking forty or fifty females across from Dover to Calais, who on their return journey wore upon their heads bonnets trimmed with the most elaborate and valuable lace. Of course the custom-house officers could not legally stop her, and after a time she retired upon a fortune. All were not equally successful, however, for in the reign of George II. we read about one Ann Warner being sentenced to ten years’ penal servi tude for smuggling laces, hidden in the insides of Normandy poultry, which she professed to be bringing to the English market. Towards the close of the French war, in the present century, smuggling of lace again became more rife than ever. It was in vain the authorities stopped the travelling carriages on their road from seaport towns to London, rifled the baggage of the unfortunate passengers by the mail at Rochester and Canterbury; they were generally outwitted, though spies in the pay of the customs were ever on the watch. The writer has in her possession a Brussels veil of great beauty, which narrowly escaped seizure. It belonged to a lady who was in the habit of accompanying her husband, for many years member for one of the Cinque Ports. The day after the election she was about to leave for London, somewhat nervous as to the fate of a Brussels veil she had purchased of a smuggler for a hundred guineas; when, at a dinner party, it was announced that Lady Ellenborough, wife of the Lord Chief Justice, had been stopped near Dover, and a large quantity of valuable lace seized concealed in the lining of her carriage. Dismayed at the news, the lady imparted her trouble to a gentleman at her side, who immediately offered to take charge of the lace and convey it to London, remark ing that “no one would suspect him, as he was a bachelor.” Turning round suddenly, she observed one of the hired waiters to 4 The turbulent bishop of Rochester, who was arraigned for his Jacobite intrigues, and died in exile at Paris, 1731. Y 2