newe;
Diamondes and rubies,
And other stones of mychel pryse."

The lady who owns this mantle is herself great in "workes of
broderie."

From the Conquest to the Wars of the Roses, England may claim to have
gradually acquired a higher place in art. Our architecture, sculpture,
manuscripts, and paintings were not surpassed on the Continent:
witness Queen Eleanor's crosses, and her tomb in Westminster Abbey;
and the portrait of Richard II., surrounded by saints and angels, at
Wilton House,[588] a picture which, preceding Fra Beato Angelico's
works by at least a quarter of a century, yet suggests his style,
refined drawing, and tender colouring. All who saw the frescoes found
in the Chapel at Eton College when it was restored, will remember
their extreme beauty, and regret that they were effaced, instead of
being preserved and restored. They were a lesson in what English art
was in the end of the thirteenth, during the fourteenth, and into the
beginning of the fifteenth centuries.

During the Wars of the Roses, when a duke of the blood-royal is said
to have begged his bread in the streets of the rich Flemish towns,
ladies of rank, more fortunate, were able to earn theirs by the work
of their needle.[589]

The monuments of the eleventh and twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, are our best authorities for the embroideries then worn.
The surcoat of the Black Prince in Canterbury Cathedral is a
noteworthy example. The sculptured effigy on the tomb over which it is
suspended is absolutely clothed in the same surcoat, with the same
accidents of embroidery, as if it had been modelled from it.

In Worcester, when the archaeologists opened King John's tomb in 1797,
they found him in the same dress and attitude as that portrayed on the
recumbent statue.[590] Dress was then extravagantly expensive, and
embroidered dresses were worn with borders richly set with precious
stones and pearls.

The Librate Roll of Henry III. gives us a list of embroiderers' names:
Alain de Basinge, Adam de Bakeryne, John de Colonia, &c.; and in the
wardrobe accompts of Richard II., William Sanstoune and Robert de
Ashmede are called the "Broudatores Domini Regis." These may have
been the artists to whom the orders were delivered, for in the Librate
Roll of Henry III. we find Adam de Baskeryne receiving 6_s._ 8_d._ for
a "cloth of silk, and fringe, purchased by our commands to embroider a
certain chasuble which Mabilia of St. Edmund