The value of such a collection of textile fabrics as that at South Kensington can scarcely be overrated. Without such aid it is not possible for the painter or the historian to bring before his own mind, much less bring before another’s, a true representation of ancient ceremonies and pageants. Whether his subject be a coronation or a royal marriage, a queen’s “taking her chamber,” a progress, or a funeral, he cannot correctly set forth the splendour or the details of the occasion, unless he can refer to existing examples of the cloths of gold, the figured velvets, the rich embroidery, or the splendid silks, which used to be worn of old. Take for example nos. 1310 and 8624. Upon these are figured stags with tall branching horns, couchant, chained, upturning their antlered heads to sunbeams darting down upon them amid a shower of rain; and beneath the stags are eagles. This Sicilian textile, woven about the end of the fourteenth century, brings to one’s mind the bronze recumbent figure of a king in Westminster abbey. It is that of Richard the second; made for him before his downfall, and by two coppersmiths of London, Nicholas Broker and Godfrey Prest. This effigy, once finely gilt, is as remarkable for its beautiful workmanship as for the elaborate manner in which the cloak and kirtle worn by the king are diapered all over with a pattern, copied from the silken stuff out of which those garments must have been cut for his personal wear while living. The105 pattern consists of a sprig of the planta genesta, the humble broom plant—the haughty Plantagenet’s device—along with a couchant hart chained and gazing straight forwards, and above it a cloud with rays darting up from behind. These were Richard’s favourite cognizances: the one from his grandfather Edward the third; the other from his mother Joan of Kent. It is very probable that the king’s dress was of the same kind of silk Sicilian textile as the examples just referred to: and that those very examples are portions of pieces wrought, perhaps at Palermo, for the court of Richard. They are of the same date and they show his devices; the chained hart and the sunbeams issuing from a cloud. The seemliness, not to say comfort, of private life was improved by the use of textiles. Let the historian contrast the custom even in a royal palace, during the middle ages, with that now followed in every tradesman’s home. Then straw and rushes were strewed in houses upon the floor in every room; and Wendover, in his life of St. Thomas, speaks of the king’s courtiers platting knots with the litter, and flinging them with a gibe at a man who had been slighted by the prince. Not quite a hundred years later when Eleanor of Castile came to London for her marriage with our first Edward she found her lodgings furnished, under the directions of the Spanish courtiers who had arrived before her, with hangings and curtains of silk around the walls, and carpets spread upon the ground. This offended some of the people; more of them, as Matthew Paris records, laughed at the thought that such costly things were laid down to be walked upon.
Take, again, the famous Syon cope. Not only is it full of interest to writers upon liturgies and rituals but of even more to the herald and genealogist. Covered as its orphreys are with armorial bearings, this cope carries with it evidences as important and as valuable as any contemporary roll of arms; and no inquirer into the pedigrees of the ancient families of the Percies or106 Ferrers, of Cliffords or Botelers, and of many others, can afford to neglect it.
We have several records of evidence in courts of law taken from heraldic embroideries upon robes and vestments. In the famous controversy between the houses of Scrope and Grosvenor, in the fourteenth century, inquiries were made and proofs were offered on both sides as to the right of bearing upon their shields the bend or upon a field azure. Witnesses produced at Westminster corporas cases, copes, and albs embroidered with the arms of Scrope. Chaucer was one of the witnesses; and said he had seen those arms on banners and vestments and commonly called the arms of Scrope. Again; the fact that in her wardrobe was found a vestment embroidered with the royal arms was brought forward to prove the charge of treason against the old countess of Salisbury, the mother of cardinal Pole; and for which crime she was condemned.
Collections of ancient textiles are of still greater use to students of ecclesiastical history and church rituals than even to the secular historian. It is probable that the greater number of the specimens which now exist formed originally portions of sacred vestments and furniture for altars. Formerly so common, fragments even of such cloths and robes have become of very great rarity, especially in England; where for the last two or three centuries the use of the numerous old church vestments and decorations has entirely ceased.
Again, for example: the three cases nos. 5958, 8329, and 8327 are of the kind known as the “capsella cum serico decenter ornata” of the medi?val writers; small cases or boxes decently fitted up with silk; or the “capsula corporalium,” the box in which were kept the corporals or square pieces of fine linen, required for service during holy week. The name as well as the use of this appliance is very old, and both are spoken of in the very ancient ‘Ordines Romani’ edited by Mabillon. One of these, in the rubric for Good Friday, speaks of the Host as107 having been kept in the corporal’s case or box: “in capsula corporialium.” In England, such small wooden boxes covered with silks and velvets richly embroidered were once employed for the same purpose: and several are mentioned in the Exeter inventories.
The two pyx-cloths, nos. 8342 and 8691, have an especial interest for the student of medi?val liturgy. There was a custom during the middle ages in England, as well as in France and several other countries on the continent, of keeping the Eucharist hung up over the high altar beneath a canopy, within a pyx of gold, silver, ivory, or enamel, mantled with a fine linen cloth or veil. This veil for the pyx was sometimes embroidered with golden thread and coloured silks. Such an one is mentioned in the records of the Exchequer, edited by Palgrave: among the valuables belonging to Richard the second in Haverford castle and sent by the sheriff of Hereford to the exchequer, at the beginning of the reign of Henry the fourth, were “i coupe d’or pour le Corps Ihu Cryst. i towayll ove (avec) i longe parure de mesure la suyte.”
Several names were given to this fine linen covering. In the inventory of things taken from Dr. Caius, and in the college of his own founding at Cambridge, are “corporas clothes, with the pix and ‘sindon’ and canopie.” This variety in nomenclature doubtless has led some writers to state that before Mary queen of Scots laid her head upon the block she had a “corporal,” strictly so called, bound over her eyes: as it is given in one of our histories of England, “a handkerchief in which the Eucharist had formerly been enclosed.” But this bandage must have been the veil for a pyx. As Mary wrought much with her needle, and specimens of her work yet remain at Chatsworth and at Greystock, this piece may have been embroidered by her own hand and perhaps also had been once used.
One of these old English pyx or Corpus Christi cloths, was found a few years ago at the bottom of a chest in Hessett church,108 Suffolk. As it is a remarkable specimen of the ingenious handicraft of our medi?val countrywomen it deserves description. To make this pyx-cloth a piece of thick linen, about two feet square, was chosen, and being marked off into small equal widths on all its four edges, the threads at ever............