In earlier times, as at present, silks had various names, distinguishing either their kind of texture, their colour, the design woven on them, the country from which they were brought, or the use for which, on particular occasions, they happened to be especially set apart. All these designations are of foreign growth; some sprang up in the seventh and following centuries at Byzantium; some are half Greek, half Latin, jumbled together; others, borrowed from the east, are so shortened, so badly and variously spelt, that their Arabic or Persian derivation can be hardly recognized at present. Yet without some slight knowledge of them we hardly understand a great deal belonging to trade, and the manners of the times glanced at by old writers; much less can we see the true meaning of many passages in our medi?val English poetry.
Among the terms significative of the kind of web, or mode of getting up some sorts of silk, we have Holosericum, the texture of which is warp and woof wholly pure silk. From a passage in Lampridius we learn that so early as the reign of Alexander Severus the difference between “vestes holoseric?” and “subseric?” was strongly marked, and that subsericum implied that the texture was not entirely but in part, probably the woof, of silk.
Examitum, xamitum, or, as it is called in old English documents, samit, is made up of two Greek words, ?ξ, “six,” and μ?τοι,25 “threads;” the number of the strings in the warp of the texture. It is evident that stuffs woven so thick must have been of the best quality. Hence, to say of any silken tissue that it was “examitum” or “samit” meant that it was six-threaded, and therefore costly and splendid. At the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth centuries “examitum” was much used for vestments in Evesham abbey, as we gather from the chronicle of that house, published lately for the Master of the Rolls. About the same period among the best copes, chasubles, and vestments in St. Paul’s, London, many were made of samit. So, again among the nine gorgeous chasubles bequeathed to Durham cathedral by its bishop in 1195, the chief was of red samit superbly embroidered. And, to name no more, we find in the valuable inventory, lately published, of the rich vestments belonging to Exeter cathedral in 1277 that the best of its numerous chasubles, dalmatics, and copes, were made of samit. In a later document, A. D. 1327, this precious silk is termed “samicta.”
The poets did not forget to array their knights and ladies in this gay attire. When Sir Lancelot of the lake brought back Gawain to king Arthur:
Launcelot and the queen were cledde
In robes of a rich wede,
Of samyte white, with silver shredde:
* * * * *
The other knights everichone,
In samyte green of heathen land,
And their kirtles, ride alone.
In his ‘Romaunt of the rose,’ Chaucer describes the dress of Mirth thus:
Full yong he was, and merry of thought
And in samette, with birdes wrought,
And with gold beaten full fetously,
His bodie was clad full richely.
Many of the beautifully figured damasks in the South Kensington26 collection are what anciently were known as “samits;” and if they really be not six-thread, according to the etymology of their name, it is because at a very early period the stuffs so called ceased to be woven of such a thickness.
The strong silks of the present day with the thick thread called “organzine” for the woof, and a slightly thinner thread known by the technical name of “tram” for the warp, may be taken to represent the old “examits.”
No less remarkable for the lightness of its texture than was the samit on account of the thick substance of its web, and quite as much sought after, was another kind of thin glossy silken stuff “wrought in the orient,” and here called first by the Persian name which came with it, ciclatoun, that is, bright and shining; but afterwards sicklatoun, siglaton, cyclas. Sometimes a woof of golden thread lent it still more glitter; and it was used both for ecclesiastical vestments and for secular articles of stately dress. In the inventory of St. Paul’s cathedral, 1295, there was a cope made of cloth of gold, called ciclatoun: “capa de panno aureo qui vocatur ciclatoun.” Among the booty carried off by the English when they sacked the camp of Saladin,
King Richard took the pavillouns
Of sendal, and of cyclatoun.
In his ‘Rime of Sire Thopas,’ Chaucer says
Of Brugges were his hosen broun
His robe was of ciclatoun.
Though so light and thin, this cloak of “ciclatoun” was often embroidered in silk and had golden ornaments sewn on it; we read in the ‘Metrical romances’ of a maiden who sat
In a robe ryght ryall bowne
Of a red syclatowne
Be hur fader syde;
A coronell on hur hedd set,
Hur clothys with bestes and byrdes wer bete
All abowte for pryde.
27 Knights in the field wore over their armour a long sleeveless gown slit up almost to the waist on both sides; sometimes of “samit,” often of “cendal,” oftener still of “ciclatourn:” and the name of the gown itself, shortened from the material, became known as “cyclas.” Matthew of Westminster records that when Edward the first knighted his son in Westminster abbey he sent to three hundred sons of the nobility, whom the prince was afterward to dub knights in the same church, a most splendid gift of attire, fitting for the ceremony; among which were clycases woven with gold. That these garments were very light and thin we gather from the quiet wit of John of Salisbury, who jeers a man affecting to perspire in the depth of winter, though clad in nothing but his fine cyclas.
Not so costly was a silken stuff known as cendal, cendallus, sandal, sandalin, cendatus, syndon, syndonus, as the way of writing the word altered as time went on. When Sir Guy of Warwick was knighted,
And with him twenty good gomes
Knightes’ and barons’ sons,
Of cloth of Tars and rich cendale
Was the dobbing in each deal.
The Roll of Caerlaverock tells us that among the grand array which joined Edward the first at Carlisle in 1300, there was to be seen many a rich caparison embroidered upon cendal and samit:
La ot meint riche guarnement
Brodé sur sendaus e samis:
and Lacy, earl of Lincoln, leading the first squadron, hoisted his banner made of yellow cendal blazoned with a lion rampant purpre
Baner out de un cendal safrin,
O un lioun rampant purprin.
When Sir Bevis of Southampton wished to keep himself unknown at a tournament, we thus read of him:
28
Sir Bevis disguised all his weed
Of black cendal and of rede,
Flourished with roses of silver bright, etc.
Of the ten silken albs which Hugh Pudsey left to Durham, two were made of samit and two of cendal, or as the bishop calls it, sandal. Exeter cathedral had a red cope with a green lining of sandal and a cape of sandaline: “Una capa de sandalin.” Piers Ploughman speaks thus to the women of his day:
And ye lovely ladies
With youre long fyngres,
That ye have silk and sandal
To sowe, whan tyme is.
Chesibles for chapeleyns,
Chirches to honoure, etc.
A stronger kind of cendal was wrought and called, in the Latin inventories of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, “cendatus afforciatus:” there was a cope of this material at St. Paul’s, and another cope of cloth of gold was lined with it.
Syndonus or Sindonis, as it would seem, was a bettermost sort of cendal. St. Paul’s had a chasuble as well as a cope of this fabric.
Taffeta, if not a thinner, was a less costly silken stuff than cendal; which word, to this day, is used in the Spanish language, and is defined to be a thin transparent textile of silk or linen: “Tela de seda ó lino muy delgada y trasparente.” Taffeta and cendal were used for linings in medi?val England. Chaucer says of his “doctour of phisike,”
In sanguin and in perse he clad was alle
Lined with taffeta and with sendalle.
Sarcenet during the fifteenth century took by degrees the place of cendal, at least here in England.
By some improvement in their weaving of cendal, the Saracens in the south of Spain earned for this light web a good name in29 our markets, and it became much sought for here. Among other places, York cathedral had several sets of curtains for its high altar, “de sarcynet.” At first this stuff was called from its makers “saracenicum.” But, in Anglicising, the name was shortened into “sarcenet;” a word which we use now for the thin silk which of old was known among us as “cendal.”
Satin, though far from being so common as other silken textures, was not unknown to England in the middle ages; and Chaucer speaks of it in his ‘Man of lawes tale:’
In Surrie whilom dwelt a compagnie
Of chapmen rich, and therto sad and trewe,
That wide were senten hir spicerie,
Clothes of gold, and satins rich of hewe.
When satin first appeared in trade it was called round the shores of the Mediterranean “aceytuni.” The term slipped through early Italian lips into “zetani;” coming westward this name, in its turn, dropped its “i,” and smoothed itself into “satin.” So, also, it is called in France; while in Italy it now goes by the name of “raso,” and the Spaniards keep up its first designation.
In the earlier inventories of church vestments no mention can be found of satin; but this fine silk is spoken of among the various rich bequests made to his cathedral at Exeter by bishop Grandison, about 1340; though later, and especially in the royal wardrobe accompts, it is very commonly specified. Hence we may fairly assume that till the fourteenth century satin was unknown in England; afterwards it met with much favour. Flags were made of it. On board the stately ship in which Beauchamp earl of Warwick, in the reign of Henry the sixth, sailed from England to France, there were flying “three penons of satten,” besides “sixteen standards of worsted entailed with a bear and a chain,” and a great streamer of forty yards in length and eight yards in breadth, with a great bear and griffin holding a ragged staff poudred full of ragged staffs. Like other silken textiles, satin seems to have been in some instances interwoven with flat gold thread: for30 example, Lincoln had of the gift of one of its bishops eighteen copes of red tinsel sattin with orphreys of gold.
Though not often, yet sometimes we read of a silken stuff called cadas, carda, carduus, and used for inferior purposes. The outside silk on the cocoon is of a poor quality compared with the inner filaments, from which it is kept apart in reeling, and set aside for other uses. We find mention of such cloths as belonging to the cathedrals of Exeter and St. Paul’s in the thirteenth century. More frequently, instead of being spun, it served as wadding in dress: on the barons at the siege of Caerlaverock might be seen many a rich gambeson garnished with silk, cadas, and cotton:
Meint riche gamboison guarni
De soi, de cadas e coton.
The quantity of card purchased for the royal wardrobe, in the year 1299, is set forth in the Liber quotidianus.
Camoca, camoka, camak, as the name is differently written, was a textile of which in England we hear nothing before the latter end of the fourteenth century. No sooner did it make its appearance than this camoca rose into great repute; the Church used it for her vestments, and royalty employed it for dress as well as in adorning palaces, especially in draping beds of state. In the year 1385, besides some smaller articles, the royal chapel in Windsor castle had a whole set of vestments and other ornaments for the altar, of white camoca; and our princes must have arrayed themselves, on grand occasions, in the same material; for Herod, in one of the Coventry mysteries—the adoration of the Magi—is made to boast of himself: “In kyrtyl of cammaka kynge am I cladde.” But it was in draping its state-beds that our ancient royalty showed its affection for camoca. Edward the Black Prince bequeaths to his confessor “a large bed of red camoca with our arms embroidered at each corner,” and the prince’s mother leaves to another of her sons “a bed of red camak.” Edward lord Despencer, in 1375, wills to his wife “my great31 bed of blue camaka, with griffins, also another bed of camaka, striped with white and black.” What may have been the real texture of this stuff, thought so magnificent, we do not positively know, but it was probably woven of fine camels’ hair and silk, and of Asiatic workmanship.
From this mixed web we pass to another more precious, the Cloth of Tars; which we presume to have been the forerunner of the now celebrated cashmere, and together with silk made of the downy wool of goats reared in several parts of Asia, but especially in Tibet.
Velvet is a silken textile, the history of which has still to be written. Of the country whence it first came, or the people who were the earliest to hit upon the happy way of weaving it, we know nothing. A very old piece was in the beautiful crimson cope embroidered by English hands in the fourteenth century, now kept at the college of Mount St. Mary, Chesterfield.
We are probably indebted to central Asia, or perhaps China, for velvet as well as satin; and among the earliest places in Europe where it was manufactured, were perhaps first the south of Spain, and then Lucca.
In the earliest of the inventories which we have of church vestments, that of Exeter cathedral, 1277, velvet is not spoken of; but in St. Paul’s, London, A. D. 1295, there is some notice of velvet with its kindred web “fustian,” for chasubles. Velvet is for the first time mentioned at Exeter in 1327, but as in two pieces not made up, of which some yards had been then sold for vestment-making. From the middle of the fourteenth century velvet is of common occurrence.
The name itself of velvet, “velluto,” seems to point out Italy as the market through which we got it from the east, for the word in Italian indicates something which is hairy or shaggy, like an animal’s skin.
Fustian was known at the end of the thirteenth century. St. Paul’s cathedral at that date had “a white chasuble of fustian.”32 In an English sermon preached at the beginning of the same century great blame is found with the priest who had his chasuble made of middling fustian: “te meshakele of medeme fustian.” As then wove, fustian had a short nap on it, and one of the domestic uses to which during the middle ages it had been put was for bed clothes, as thick undersheets. Lady Bargavenny bequeaths, in 1434, “A bed of gold of swans, two pair sheets of raynes (fine linen, made at Rheims), a pair of fustians, six pair of other sheets, etc.” It is not unlikely that this stuff may have hinted to the Italians the way of weaving silk in the same manner, and so of producing velvet. Other nations took up the manufacture, and the weaving of velvet was wonderfully improved. It became diapered and, upon a ground of silk or of gold, the pattern came out in a bold manner, with a raised pile. At last, the most beautiful of all manners of diapering, namely, making the pattern to show itself in a double pile, one pile higher than the other and of the same tint, now, as formerly, known as velvet upon velvet, was brought to its highest perfection; and velvets in this fine style were wrought in greatest excellence in Italy, in Spain and in Flanders. Our old inventories often specify these differences in the making of the web. York cathedral had “four copes of crimson velvet plaine, with orphreys of clothe of goulde, for standers;” “a greene cushion of raised velvet;” and “a cope of purshed velvet (redd):” “purshed” means that the velvet was raised in a network pattern.
Diaper was a silken fabric, held everywhere in high estimation during many hundred years, both abroad and in England. We know this from documents beginning with the eleventh century: but the origin of the name is uncertain. Possibly, in order to indicate a one-coloured yet patterned silk, which diaper is, the Byzantine Greeks of the early middle ages invented the term δια?πρ?ν, diaspron, from δια?παω, I separate, to signify “what distinguishes or separates itself from things about it,” as every pattern does on a one-coloured silk. With this textile the Latins33 took the name for it from the Greeks and called it “diasper,” which in English has been moulded into “diaper.” In the year 1066 the empress Agnes gave to Monte Cassino a diaper-chasuble of cloth of gold, “planetam diasperam.” This early mention of the name seems to be a conclusive argument against those writers who derive it from Yprès, in Flanders; a town celebrated for linen manufactures at a somewhat later period: yet even then, according to Chaucer, rivalled by workwomen in England. He tells us of the “good wif of Bathe” that
Of cloth-making she hadde swiche an haunt
She passed hem of Ipres and of Gaunt.
In the South Kensington collection, no. 1270 shows how these cloths were wrought; and it would seem that cloth of gold was often diapered with a pattern, at least in the time of Chaucer, who describes it on the housing of a king’s horse:
——trapped in stele,
Covered with cloth of gold diapred wele.
Church inventories make frequent mention of such diapered silks for vestments. Exeter cathedral had a cope of white diaper with half moons, the gift of bishop Bartholomew, in 1161. Sometimes the pattern of the diapering is noticed; for instance, at St. Paul’s, “a chasuble of white diaper, with coupled parrots in places, among branches.” Probably the most elaborate specimen of diaper-weaving on record is that which Edmund, earl of Cornwall, gave to the same cathedral; “a cope of a certain diaper of Antioch colour covered with trees and diapered birds, of which the heads, breasts and feet, as well as the flowers on the tress, were woven in gold thread.”
By degrees the word “diaper” became widened in its meaning. Not only all sorts of textile, whether of silk, of linen, or of worsted, but the walls of a room were said to be diapered when the self-same ornament was repeated and sprinkled well over it.34 Thus, in ‘the squire of low degree,’ the king of Hungary promises his daughter a chair or carriage, that
Shal be coverd wyth velvette reede
And clothes of fyne golde al about your heede,
With damaske whyte and azure blewe
Well dyaperd with lylles newe.
The bow for arrows held by Sweet-looking is, in Chaucer’s ‘Romaunt of the rose,’ described as
painted well, and thwitten
And over all diapred and written, etc.
So now, we call our fine table linen “diaper” because it is figured with flowers and fruits. Sometimes silks diapered were called “fygury:” as the cope mentioned in the York fabric rolls, “una capa de sateyn fygury.”
 
Ladies spinning and weaving; from a manuscript of the fifteenth century.