of an earlier
date--evidently of Oriental material, but Anglo-Saxon work--so exactly
resembling in style that at Aix given by Bock,[511] that we
can hardly doubt that they proceeded from the same workshop, or at
least are of coeval design. Both are worked with a dark red outline on
a red silk ground. The faces and hands are in white silk--all the rest
between the outlines is gold thread, flat stitch. Bock places its date
as antecedent to the tenth century, and indeed there is no reason to
doubt that this is correct, though the Worcester fragment was taken
out of a tomb of two centuries later. As these garments were stored in
the church treasuries; and as antiquity (without an historical
interest) was then of no value, these old clothes, holy by their use
and office, yet by their shabbiness unfit for public show, may have
been reverently disposed of in clothing the bodies of departed
priests, who probably had worn those very vestments, when officiating
at the altar near which they were laid to rest. When the date of the
wearer of the garment is ascertained, the dress cannot be of a later
period, but it may have belonged to a much earlier one. The
architectural part of these two embroideries, i.e. the canopy work,
resembles that of the Bayeux tapestry. Both appear to be English.
(Plate 62.)

[Illustration: Pl. 64.
From Tomb of Bishop William of Blois, died 1236. Worcester
Cathedral Library.]

[Illustration: Pl. 65.
A portion of the Mantle embroidered by Gisela for her husband, St.
Stephen of Hungary. From Bock's "Kleinodien."]

In the eleventh century, and for some part of the twelfth, needlework
design in England, France, and Germany first assumed a phase, which
may be called the metal-work style. It is to be found on the robes and
mitres of St. Thomas of Canterbury (Thomas a Becket) at Sens[512]--on
the famous rose-red cope of satin embroidered with gold and pearls at
Rheims (which we should incline to believe is English)[513] (plate
63). The fragment of the cope of William of Blois, found in his tomb,
is in this style. (He died in 1236.) The fragments of this curious
garment, worked in gold on a purple silk material, evidently Oriental,
are also preserved under glass in the Cathedral Library at Worcester
(plate 64).

Amongst the finest instances of ecclesiastical needlework, and,
indeed, we may say, of ecclesiastical art of the twelfth century, is
the coronation robe of St. Stephen o