our
king, Henry VII., in his will bequeathed to God and St. Peter, and to
the Abbot and Prior of our Monastery at Westminster,"[598] which were
designed for him by Torrigiano.

From the portraits of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries we can
judge of the prevailing taste in dress embroideries of that period,
which consisted mostly of delicate patterns of gold or silver on the
borders of dresses, and the linen collars and sleeves. Of this style I
give a small sampler, from Lord Middleton's collection. We have a good
many specimens of the work of these centuries, both ecclesiastical and
secular. They had still a Gothic stamp, which totally disappeared in
the beginning of the sixteenth century in the new style of the
Renaissance.

[Illustration: Fig. 27.
Sampler, from Lord Middleton's collection.
Time, Henry VIII.]

The next great change throughout northern Europe affecting all the
conditions of life, most especially in England, was caused by the
Reformation, which swept away both the art and the artist of the
Gothic era. The monasteries which had fostered painting, illumination,
and embroidery, and the arts which had been so passionately devoted to
the Church, were doomed. George Gifford, writing to Cromwell of the
suppression of a religious house at Woolstrope, in Lincolnshire, after
praising that establishment says, "There is not one religious person
there, but what _can_ and _doth_ use either embrotheryng, wryting
bookes with a fayre hand, making garments, karvynge, &c."[599]

In the general clearance the churches and shrines were swept, though
never again garnished, and the survivals have to be painfully sought
for, and are so few that a short catalogue will tell them all.

The greater part of the fine embroideries which escaped the
"iconoclastic rage" of the Reformation, and the final sweep of the
Puritans, are to be seen now in the houses and chapels of the old
Roman Catholic families, who have either preserved or collected them;
also in the museums of our cathedrals, and spread about the Continent.
For instance, at Sens are the vestments of Thomas a Becket, and at
Valencia, in Spain, there are yet in the chapter-house a chasuble and
two dalmatics, brought from London by two merchants of Valencia, whose
names are preserved--Andrew and Pedro de Medina. They purchased them
at the sale of the Roman Catholic ornaments of Westminster Abbey in
the time of Henry VIII. They are embroidered in gold, and r