insufficiency of strength and texture in the material itself on which they were wrought; through the want of that unselfish and advanced taste which, whilst it properly estimates, also preserves, that the future also may have the means of enjoying and admiring; partly destroyed through an ungenerous fear that such things would tend to beget a grovelling superstition, or else through a cause to which the destruction of the greater portion may be assigned, a sacrilegious love of the gold, which formed their prominent attraction, and consigned them to the Jewish broker, and then reduced them to ashes.
There are several other such entries as the foregoing in the Liberate Roll of Henry III., all tending to shew that at that time the art of Embroidery had reached a high degree of perfection in this country. Amongst those who practised it, frequent mention is made of Adam de Basinges, Adam de Bakering, John de Colonia, Thomas Chenier, John Blaton, William Courtenay, Stephen Vyne, Thomas de Carleton, &c. In this list we find Stephen Vyne so highly commended by the Duke de Berry and d'Auverne, that Richard II. and his queen appointed him their chief embroiderer, and their nephew Henry IV. granted him at their decease a yearly pension in reward for his skilful services[1].
Doubtlessly these labours were also pursued by females, both for their amusement as well as their profit, and there exists another entry (Apr. 24, 1242.) on these same Rolls in proof of it, authorizing a payment to Adam de Bakering of 6s. 8d. "for a certain cloth of silk and a fringe purchased by our command, to embroider a certain embroidered chesable which Mabilia of St. Edmund's made for us[2]." It seems most reasonable therefore to conclude, that the men commonly travailed at the orfevrie department, whilst the women undertook the needlework[3]. And in the 10th of Edward II. (May 10, 1317.) fifty marks in part payment of a hundred, were given by Queen Isabella's own hands, to Rose the wife of John de Bureford, citizen and merchant of London, for an embroidered cope for the choir, lately purchased from her to make a present to the Lord High Pontiff from the Queen[4].
In such high estimation was the opus Anglicanum held on the continent in the Latin Church, that John bishop of Marseilles in his testament (1345) made a special bequest to the
