4d.]."--Hunter, 'History of Hallamshire,' 141.
{7} 'History of the Framework Knitters.'
{8} There are, however, other and different accounts. One is to
the effect that Lee set about studying the contrivance of the
stocking-loom for the purpose of lessening the labour of a young
country-girl to whom he was attached, whose occupation was
knitting; another, that being married and poor, his wife was under
the necessity of contributing to their joint support by knitting;
and that Lee, while watching the motion of his wife's fingers,
conceived the idea of imitating their movements by a machine. The
latter story seems to have been invented by Aaron Hill, Esq., in
his 'Account of the Rise and Progress of the Beech Oil
manufacture,' London, 1715; but his statement is altogether
unreliable. Thus he makes Lee to have been a Fellow of a college
at Oxford, from which he was expelled for marrying an innkeeper's
daughter; whilst Lee neither studied at Oxford, nor married there,
nor was a Fellow of any college; and he concludes by alleging that
the result of his invention was to "make Lee and his family happy;"
whereas the invention brought him only a heritage of misery, and he
died abroad destitute.
{9} Blackner, 'History of Nottingham.' The author adds, "We have
information, handed down in direct succession from father to son,
that it was not till late in the seventeenth century that one man
could manage the working of a frame.
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