shoe buckle  n. a fastening for a shoe, in the form of a buckle, also an ornamental buckle worn on the front of a shoe.

1482   in York Myst. Introd. 40   [Those that] maketh ffisshe-hukes or shobakilles.

1847   Thackeray Vanity Fair (1848) xxxix. 359   A large pair of paste shoe-buckles.

http://0-www.oed.com.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/view/Entry/178435?redirectedFrom=shoe+buckle#eid22961370

Shoe Buckles in Literature

Montagu's "The Reasons that Induced Dr. S - to write a Poem called the Lady's Dressing Room"

Richardson's "Pamela"

Cleland's "Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure"

Sterne's "Tristram Shandy"

"One, Two Buckle my Shoe" - Henry Bolton, collector of counting rhymes in 1885 said the rhyme was used in Wrentham, Massachusetts as early as 1780

Criminality

Variety in values of shoe buckles - Old Bailey Records show a range in stolen shoe buckles ranging in value from 1d (27p) http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t17730908-14-defend187&div=t17730908-14&terms=shoe|buckle#highlight to 2l (£149.58) http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t17681207-9-defend109&div=t17681207-9&terms=shoe|buckle#highlight

Popularity

Popularity began to decline in the late 1780s and the early 1790s. An appeal was made to Prince George, the Prince of Wales by shoe buckle manufacturers in an attempt to maintain the popularity of the shoe buckle. (document) Holland and Hunt (Hutton) documented the events. (Treatise on the Progressive Improvement and Present State of the Manufactures in Metal 1834)  

https://historicaltexts.jisc.ac.uk/results?terms=shoe%20buckle&date=1693-1810&undated=exclude&variant=variant (show table) 

Not just in UK

Design and Production