attern from painted glass. St. Michael's Church, York.
Fourteenth century.
3. A portion of the material of the Towneley Copes. Fifteenth
century.]

Of the twelfth century (1170) we have the robes and mitres of Thomas
a Becket at Sens; and another mitre of the period, white and gold, is
in the museum at Munich, with his martyrdom embroidered on one side,
and that of St. Stephen on the other. The gold needlework is so
perfect that it resembles weaving. It is recorded that a splendid
dress was embroidered in London for Elinor of Aquitaine, which cost
L80, equal to L1400 of the value of to-day.[582]

Rock ("Church of our Fathers," t. ii. p. 279) truly says that it is
shown by plentiful records and written documents, from the days of St.
Osmond to the time of Henry VIII., that the materials employed in
English ecclesiastical embroideries were the best that could be found
in our own country or in far-off lands, and the art bestowed on them
was the best we could learn and give. Various fabrics came from
Byzantine or Saracenic looms, which are described as damasked, rayed,
marbled, &c. The few surviving specimens fully justify the admiration
bestowed on them throughout Christendom.

Matthew Paris, in the reign of Henry III., says that Innocent III.
(1246), seeing certain copes and infulae with desirable orphreys, was
informed they were English work. He exclaimed, "Surely England is a
garden of delight! In sooth this is a well inexhaustible! And where
there is so much abundance, from thence much may be extracted!"[583]

From the Conquest to the Reformation the catalogues of Church
vestments which are to be found in the libraries of York, Lincoln, and
Peterborough, show the luxury of ecclesiastical decoration. In Lincoln
alone there were upwards of 600 vestments wrought with divers kinds of
needlework, jewellery, and gold, upon "Indian baudichyn," samite,
tartarin, velvet, and silk. Even in reading the dry descriptions of a
common inventory, we are amazed by the lists of "orphreys of goodly
needlework," copes embroidered with armorial bearings, and knights
jousting, lions fighting, and amices "barred with amethysts and
pearls, &c. &c." The few I have named will give an idea of the
accumulation of riches in the churches, and the gorgeousness of
English embroideries.[584]

I have collected from Strutt's "Illustrations"[585] and other sources
a number of patterns for domestic hangings, copied from MSS. of