It is possible to
acquire at many of the best shops nowadays actual copies of
embroidered stuffs, velvets, and damask silks of this time, and of
stuffs up to Early Victorian patterns, and this makes it easy for
painters to procure what, in other days, they were forced to invent.

Many artists have their costumes made of Bolton sheeting, on to which
they stencil the patterns they wish to use--this is not a bad thing to
do, as sheeting is not dear and it falls into beautiful folds.

The older ladies and widows of this time nearly all dressed in very
simple, almost conventual garments, many of them wearing the 'barbe'
of pleated linen, which covered the lower part of the face and the
chin--a sort of linen beard--it reached to the breast, and is still
worn by some religious orders of women.

Badges were still much in use, and the servants always wore some form
of badge on their left sleeve--either merely the colours of their
masters, or a small silver, or other metal, shield. Thus, the badge
worn by the servants of Henry VII. would be either a greyhound, a
crowned hawthorn bush, a red dragon, a portcullis, or the red and
white roses joined together. The last two were used by all the Tudors,
and the red rose and the portcullis are still used. From these badges
we get the signs of many of our inns, either started by servants, who
used their master's badge for a device, or because the inn lay on a
certain property the lord of which carried chequers, or a red dragon,
or a tiger's head.

I mentioned the silks of Bruges and her velvets without giving enough
prominence to the fine velvets of Florence, a sample of which, a cope,
once used in Westminster Abbey, is preserved at Stonyhurst College; it
was left by Henry VII. to 'Our Monastery of Westminster,' and is of
beautiful design--a gold ground, covered with boughs and leaves raised
in soft velvet pile of ruby colour, through which little loops of gold
thread appear.

I imagine Elizabeth of York, Queen to Henry VII., of the subtle
countenance--gentle Elizabeth, who died in child-birth--proceeding
through London, from the Tower to Westminster, to her coronation; the
streets cleansed and the houses hung with tapestry, arras and gold
cloth, the fine-coloured dresses of the crowd, the armoured soldiers,
all the rich estate of the company about her, and the fine trappings
of the horses. Our Queen went to her coronation with some Italian
masts, paper flowers, and some hundreds o