lework alone of a pair of these boots
would cost from four to ten pounds. The making of a single shirt would
frequently cost 10_l._, so richly were they ornamented with
"needleworke of silke, and so curiously stitched with other knackes."

"Woman's triflings," too, their handkerchiefs, reticules, workbags,
&c., were decorated richly. We have seen within these few days a
workbag which would startle a modern fair one, for, as far as regards
_size_, it has a most "industrious look," but which, despite the
ravages of near three centuries, yet gives token of much original
magnificence. It is made of net, lined with silk; the material, the
net itself, (a sort of honeycomb pattern, like what we called a few
years ago the Grecian lace,) was made by the fair workwoman in those
days, and was a fashionable occupation both in France and England.
This bag is wrought in broad stripes with gold thread, and between the
stripes various flowers are embroidered in different coloured silks.
The bag stands in a sort of card-board basket, covered in the same
style; it is drawn with long cords and tassels, and is large enough
perhaps, on emergency, to hold a good sized baby.

It is more than probable that female skill was in request in various
matters of household decoration. The Arras looms, indeed, had long
superseded the painful fingers of notable dames in the construction of
hangings for walls, which were universally used, intermingled and
varied in the palaces and nobler mansions by "painted cloth," and
cloth of gold and silver. Thus Shakspeare describes Imogen's chamber
in Cymbeline:

"Her bed-chamber was hanged
With tapestry of silk and silver."

We have remarked that Henry the Eighth's palaces were very splendid;
Elizabeth's were equally so, and more consistently finished in minor
conveniences, as it is particularly remarked that "easye quilted and
lyned formes and stools for the lords and ladyes to sit on" had
superseded the "great plank forms, that two yeomen can scant remove
out of their places, and waynscot stooles so hard, that since great
breeches were layd asyde men can skant indewr to sitt on." Her two
presence chambers at Hampton Court shone with tapestry of gold and
silver, and silk of various colours; her bed was covered with costly
coverlids of silk, wrought in various patterns, by the needle; and she
had many "chusions," moveable articles of furniture of various shapes,
answering to our large family of tabour