o weak are the designs and the composition of the
groups. Though Mr. Rede Fowke gives the Abbe de la Rue's doubts as to
the accepted period of the Bayeux tapestry, which he assigns to the
Empress Matilda, he yet leans to other equally good authorities who
consider the work as being coeval with the events it records.[579]

Mr. Collingwood Bruce is of the same opinion, and for this
reason--the furniture, buildings, &c., are all of the eleventh
century, and our ancestors were no archaeologists, and always drew what
they saw around them. Mr. Bruce fancies the design to be Italian,
"because of the energetic action of the figures;" this seems hardly
justified when we look at the simple poverty of the style. Miss A.
Strickland suggests that the artist was perhaps Turold the Dwarf, who
has cunningly introduced his effigy and name. That the tapestry is not
found in any catalogue before 1369, is only a piece of presumptive
evidence against the earlier date, and cannot compete with the
internal evidence in its favour. On 227 feet of canvas-linen, twenty
inches wide, are delineated the events of English history from the
time of Edward the Confessor to the landing of the Conqueror at
Hastings. The Bayeux tapestry is worked in worsted on linen; the
design is perfectly flat and shadowless. The outlines are firmly drawn
with cords on thickly set stem-stitches. The surfaces are laid in flat
stitch. Though coarsely worked, there is a certain "maestria" in the
execution.

The word "orphrey" (English for auriphrigium or Phrygian gold
embroidery) is first found in Domesday Book, where "Alvide the maiden"
receives from Godric the Sheriff, for her life, half a hide of land,
"If she might teach his daughters to make orphreys."[580]

In the end of the eleventh century, Christina, Abbess of Markgate,
worked a pair of sandals and three mitres of surpassing beauty, sent
through the Abbot of St. Alban's to Pope Adrian IV., who doubtless
valued them the more because they came from his native England.[581]

[Illustration: Pl. 74.
English Patterns, chiefly from Strutt's "Royal and Ecclesiastical
Antiquities of England."
1. 1066. 2. 1092. 3. 1100. 4. 1171. 5. 1171. 6. 1189. 7. 1189. 8.
1361. 9, 10. 1377. 11. 1399. 12. 1422. 13. 1426. 14. 1440. 15.
1445. 16. 1416. 17. 1445. 18. 1477. 19. 1530. 20. 1272.]

[Illustration: Pl. 75.
1. Panel of a Screen in Hornby Church. Painted fifteenth century.
2. Dress p