ortly before the Norman conquest, in the beginning of the eleventh
century, we have notices of sundry other very remarkable pieces of
work.

The Danish Queen Emma, daughter of Richard, Duke of Normandy, when she
was wife to Ethelred the Unready, and again during her second marriage
to Canute, gave the finest embroideries to various abbeys and
monasteries. Canute, being then a Christian, joined her in these
splendid votive offerings. To Romsey and Croyland they gave
altar-cloths which had been embroidered by his first queen,
Aelgitha,[576] and vestments covered with golden eagles. She worked
one altar-cloth on shot blood-red and green silk,[577] with golden
orphreys at the side and across the top. When one considers what the
life of poor Queen Emma was, one hopes that "Art the Consoler" came to
her in the form of her favourite craft, and that she did find
consolation in it.

Croyland Abbey seems to have been most splendidly endowed by the
Anglo-Saxon monarchs. There is continual mention in the records of
those times of offerings of embroideries and other Church apparels.
Queen Editha, the wife of the Confessor, dispensed beautiful works
from her own workrooms, and herself embroidered King Edward's
coronation mantle.

When in the eleventh century the Normans became our masters, they
found cathedrals, churches, and palaces which almost vied with their
own; likewise sculptures, illuminated books, embroidered hangings,
and vestments of surpassing beauty.

William of Poitou, Chaplain to William the Conqueror,[578] relates
that the Normans were as much struck on the Conqueror's return into
Normandy with the splendid embroidered garments of the Saxon nobles,
as with the beauty of the Saxon youth. Queen Matilda, who evidently
appreciated Anglo-Saxon work, left in her will, to the Abbey of the
Holy Trinity, "My tunic worked by Alderet's wife, and the mantle which
is in my chamber, to make a cope. Of my two golden girdles, I give the
one which is adorned with emblems to suspend the lamp before the great
altar."

I come now to the earliest large work remaining to us of the
period--the Bayeux tapestry. We must claim it as English, both on
account of the reputed worker, and the history it commemorates, though
the childish style of which it is a type is indeed inferior in every
way to the beautiful specimens which have been rescued from tombs in
Durham, Worcester, and elsewhere. They seem hardly to belong to the
same period, s