Antiquity Of Knives

[RichardB]

From an era not now to be ascertained, down to the time of Queen Elizabeth,

England was supplied with knives from the continent; and, "the knives of

Almagne, knives of France, knives of Collogne," are among the articles

enumerated in the custom-house rate books of the time of Henry VIII.

At what period our native manufacture of knives was introduced, it is

impossible to say. In Stow's Chronicle occurs the following passage:

"*Richard Matthews, *on Flete Bridge, was the first Englishman who attained

the perfection of making fine knives and knife hafts; and in the fifth year

of Queen Elizabeth, he obtained a prohibition against all strangers, and

others, for bringing any knives into England from beyond the seas, which

until that time were brought into this land by ships laden from Flanders and

other places. Albeit at that time was for many hundred years before, there

were made, in divers parts of this kingdom, many coarse and uncomely knives;

and at this day the best and finest knives in the world are made in

London."

Against this assertion, besides the testimonies of Stow, and the common

tradition of the Hallamshire cutlers, has to be set the undoubted fact,

that, so early as the year 1417, the cutlers of the metropolis sought and

obtained a charter of incorporation from Henry V. That knives were made at

Sheffield, at least a century earlier than the proceeding date, appears

indisputable, from the incidental testimony of the poet Chaucer, who in his

"Reve's Tales, " states of the miller of Trompington, that among other

accoutrements-

"A Sheffield twytel bare he in his hose."

A twytel, or whittle, was a knife carried by a person who was not entitled

to carry a sword. We find "a case of Hallamshire Whittles," mentioned by

Earl of Shrewsbury, in a letter to *Lord Burleigh, *in the year 1575; and

"Whittell" is, among the Sheffield manufacturers to this day, the name of a

common kind of knife.