8712.

Chasuble,Cloth of, now tawny, once crimson, silk; pattern, animals amid floriations. Sicilian, 14th century. 4 feet 5 inches by 3 feet 6 inches.

Made of precisely the same rich and beautiful stuff employed in the apparels of the alb just noticed,No. 8710, the elaborate design of which is here seen in all its perfectness. The chasuble itself has been much cut away from its first large shape.

Made of precisely the same rich and beautiful stuff employed in the apparels of the alb just noticed,No. 8710, the elaborate design of which is here seen in all its perfectness. The chasuble itself has been much cut away from its first large shape.

Partof a large Piece of Needlework, done upon linen in coloured worsteds, figured with a king and queen seated together on a Gothic throne, and a young princess sitting at the queen’s feet. All about are inscriptions. German (?), 15th century. 5 feet 6½ inches by 3 feet 10 inches.

Wofully cut as this large work has been, enough remains to make it very interesting. The king,—whose broad-toed shoes, as well as the very little dog at his feet, will not escape notice,—holds a royal sceptre in his left hand, and around his head runs a scroll bearing this inscription, “Inclitus Rex Alfridus ex ytalia Pacis amator.” About the head of the queen, which is wimpled, the scroll is written with, “Pia Hildeswit Fundatrix Peniten (?), Ao. Mo. XIIo.” Below the princess, whose hair, as that of a maiden, falls all about her shoulders, and whosediadem is not a royal one, nor jewelled like those worn by the king and queen, runs a scroll bearing these words, “Albergissa Abbatissa.” Just under the king, on a broad band, comes—“o. dāpnacionis (damnationis) in &.” At top, on a broad bright crimson ground, in large yellow letters, we read—“v (ex voto?) hoc opus completum ē (est).” From droppings of wax still upon it, this curious piece of needlework must have been used somewhere about an altar—very likely as a sort of reredos; and from the inscription, it would seem to have been wrought as an ex voto offering.

Wofully cut as this large work has been, enough remains to make it very interesting. The king,—whose broad-toed shoes, as well as the very little dog at his feet, will not escape notice,—holds a royal sceptre in his left hand, and around his head runs a scroll bearing this inscription, “Inclitus Rex Alfridus ex ytalia Pacis amator.” About the head of the queen, which is wimpled, the scroll is written with, “Pia Hildeswit Fundatrix Peniten (?), Ao. Mo. XIIo.” Below the princess, whose hair, as that of a maiden, falls all about her shoulders, and whosediadem is not a royal one, nor jewelled like those worn by the king and queen, runs a scroll bearing these words, “Albergissa Abbatissa.” Just under the king, on a broad band, comes—“o. dāpnacionis (damnationis) in &.” At top, on a broad bright crimson ground, in large yellow letters, we read—“v (ex voto?) hoc opus completum ē (est).” From droppings of wax still upon it, this curious piece of needlework must have been used somewhere about an altar—very likely as a sort of reredos; and from the inscription, it would seem to have been wrought as an ex voto offering.

Pieceof Needlework, in silk, upon linen, figured with St. Bartholomew and St. Paul, each standing beneath a round arch. German, early 12th century. 2 feet 8 inches by 1 foot 6 inches.

The linen upon which this venerable specimen of embroidery is done shows a very fine texture; but the silk in which the whole is wrought is of such an inferior quality that, at first sight, though soft to the touch, it looks like the better sort of untwisted cotton thread. Such parts of the design as were meant to be white are left uncovered upon the linen, and the shading is indicated by brown lines. As such early examples are scarce, this is a great curiosity. Dr. Bock has figured it in his “Geschichte der Liturgischen Gewänder des Mittelalters,” 2 Lieferung, pl. viii.

The linen upon which this venerable specimen of embroidery is done shows a very fine texture; but the silk in which the whole is wrought is of such an inferior quality that, at first sight, though soft to the touch, it looks like the better sort of untwisted cotton thread. Such parts of the design as were meant to be white are left uncovered upon the linen, and the shading is indicated by brown lines. As such early examples are scarce, this is a great curiosity. Dr. Bock has figured it in his “Geschichte der Liturgischen Gewänder des Mittelalters,” 2 Lieferung, pl. viii.

PersianTunic, crimson satin, embroidered in various-coloured silks after shawl-patterns, with a double-mouthed long pocket in front. 4 feet by 3 feet.

Pieceof Embroidered Silk; ground, blue silk; pattern, flowers in coloured flos-silks and gold thread, and broad band figured with wood-nymphs, syrens, boys,and an animal half a fish and half a lion. Italian, 17th century. 6 feet ½ inch by 3 feet 1½ inches.

No doubt this embroidery served as domestic decoration. It may have been employed as the front to a lady’s dressing-table.

No doubt this embroidery served as domestic decoration. It may have been employed as the front to a lady’s dressing-table.

Counterpane;ground, thread net, embroidered with foliage and flowers in various silks. Italian, 16th century. 8 feet by 7 feet 10 inches.

The flos-silks used are of a bright colour, and the whole was worked in narrow slips sewed together in places with yellow silk; in other parts the joinings were covered by a narrow silk lace of a pleasing design.

The flos-silks used are of a bright colour, and the whole was worked in narrow slips sewed together in places with yellow silk; in other parts the joinings were covered by a narrow silk lace of a pleasing design.

Frontalto an Altar; ground, crimson; pattern, sacred subjects and saints, some in gold, some in yellow silk. Venetian, early 16th century. 6 feet 6 inches by 2 feet 3½ inches.

This frontal is made out of pieces of woven orphreys, and by the way in which those pieces are put together we know that they must have been taken from old vestments, some of which had been much used. It is composed of nine stripes or pales of broad orphrey-web; and allowing for the two end pales being brought round the ends of the altar when hung there, it would then present seven stripes or pales to the eye. Looking at it thus, we find the first pale of crimson silk, figured in yellow silk, with the B. V. Mary holding our Lord as an infant on her lap, with the mund or terraqueous globe surmounted by a cross in His right hand, amid a strap-like foliation; the next pale of crimson silk is figured in gold, with a saint-bishop vested in alb, stole crossed over his breast, and cope, and wearing jewelled gloves, with his pastoral staff in his right hand. The third pale, in yellow silk upon a crimson ground, presents us our Lord’s tomb, with soldiers watching it, and ourLord Himself uprising, with His right hand giving a blessing, and in His left a banner, and by His side cherubic heads. The fourth pale at top gives us the B. V. Mary and our infant Saviour in her arms, very much worn away, and beneath, St. Peter with his keys, in gold upon crimson. The other pales are but repetitions of the foregoing. Altogether, this frontal, thread-bare as it is in places, is well worth the attention of those who interest themselves in the history of Venetian design, and the art of weaving.

This frontal is made out of pieces of woven orphreys, and by the way in which those pieces are put together we know that they must have been taken from old vestments, some of which had been much used. It is composed of nine stripes or pales of broad orphrey-web; and allowing for the two end pales being brought round the ends of the altar when hung there, it would then present seven stripes or pales to the eye. Looking at it thus, we find the first pale of crimson silk, figured in yellow silk, with the B. V. Mary holding our Lord as an infant on her lap, with the mund or terraqueous globe surmounted by a cross in His right hand, amid a strap-like foliation; the next pale of crimson silk is figured in gold, with a saint-bishop vested in alb, stole crossed over his breast, and cope, and wearing jewelled gloves, with his pastoral staff in his right hand. The third pale, in yellow silk upon a crimson ground, presents us our Lord’s tomb, with soldiers watching it, and ourLord Himself uprising, with His right hand giving a blessing, and in His left a banner, and by His side cherubic heads. The fourth pale at top gives us the B. V. Mary and our infant Saviour in her arms, very much worn away, and beneath, St. Peter with his keys, in gold upon crimson. The other pales are but repetitions of the foregoing. Altogether, this frontal, thread-bare as it is in places, is well worth the attention of those who interest themselves in the history of Venetian design, and the art of weaving.

Hoodto a Cope; ground, two shades of yellow silk; subject, the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Venetian, 16th century. 1 foot 4 inches by 1 foot 3½ inches.

Within an oval, upheld by four angels, and radiant with glory, and having a cherubic head beneath her, the B. V. Mary is rising heavenward from her tomb, out of which lilies are springing, and by it St. Thomas on his knees is reaching out his hand to catch the girdle dropped down to him. On an oval upon the face of the tomb is written “Assunta est,” like what is shown in other pieces in this collection.

Within an oval, upheld by four angels, and radiant with glory, and having a cherubic head beneath her, the B. V. Mary is rising heavenward from her tomb, out of which lilies are springing, and by it St. Thomas on his knees is reaching out his hand to catch the girdle dropped down to him. On an oval upon the face of the tomb is written “Assunta est,” like what is shown in other pieces in this collection.

Pieceof Silk Orphrey Web; ground, crimson; pattern, the Coronation, in heaven, of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in yellow. Venetian, 16th century. 1 foot 7½ inches by 10¾ inches.

This design, though treated after the tradition of the Italian schools, has one peculiarity. On the royal diadem which our Lord, who wears, as Great High Priest of the new law, a triple-crowned tiara, is putting on the head of His mother a large star is conspicuously shown; one of the titles of St. Mary is “stella maris,” star of the sea, which would not be forgotten by a seafaring people like the Venetians.

This design, though treated after the tradition of the Italian schools, has one peculiarity. On the royal diadem which our Lord, who wears, as Great High Priest of the new law, a triple-crowned tiara, is putting on the head of His mother a large star is conspicuously shown; one of the titles of St. Mary is “stella maris,” star of the sea, which would not be forgotten by a seafaring people like the Venetians.

Tissueof Crimson Silk and Gold Thread; pattern, the Blessed Virgin Mary in glory, amid cherubic heads, and having two angels, one on each side, standing on clouds. Venetian, 16th century. 1 foot 4 inches by 1 foot.

The subject, a favourite one of the time, is the Assumption of the B. V. Mary, and the tissue was woven entirely for the adornment of liturgical furniture.

The subject, a favourite one of the time, is the Assumption of the B. V. Mary, and the tissue was woven entirely for the adornment of liturgical furniture.

Cushion,elaborately wrought by the needle on fine canvas, and figured with animals, armorial bearings, flowers, and love-knots, as well as with the letters I and R royally crowned. Scotch, 17th century. 11 inches by 8 inches.

We have on the first large pane a rose tree, bearing one red rose seededor, barbedvert, and at its foot, but separating them, two unicornsargent, outlined and horned in silver thread; above them, and separated by the red rose, two lions passant, face to face, langued and outlined in gold thread; above the flower a royal crownor, and two small knotsor, and at each side a white rose slipped; over each unicorn a gold knot, and a strawberry proper. Beneath this larger shield are three small ones: the first, frettyor, andvert(but so managed that the field takes the shape of strawberry leaves), charged with four true-love-knotsor, and in chiefvert, a strawberry branch or wireor, bearing one fruit proper, and one flowerargent; the second shield gives us, on a fieldazure, and within an orle of circles linked together on four sides by golden bands, and charged with strawberry fruit, and leaf, and flower proper, and alternating, a plume of Prince of Wales’s feathersargent, with the quill of the middle feather marked red orgules, at each of the four corners there is a true-love-knot in gold; the third small shield is a series of circles outlined in gold, and filled in with quatrefoils outlined green; below, on a large green pane, a white rose slipped, with grapes and acorns; by its side, the capital letters, in gold, I and R, with a strawberry and leaf close by each letter, and above all, and between twolove-knots, a regal crown. By the sides of this device are several small panes, exhibiting fanciful patterns of flowers, &c.: but in most of them the true-love-knot as well as the strawberry plant, in one combination or another, are the principal elements; and in one of the squares or panes the ornamentation evidently affects the shape of the capital letter S; upon the other side, with an orle of knots of different kinds, is figured a mermaid on the sea, with a comb in one hand, and on one side of this pane is shown a high-born dame, whose fan, seemingly of feathers, is very conspicuous. Underneath the mermaid are shown, upon a fieldvert, a man with a staff, amid four rabbits, each with a strawberry-leaf in its mouth, and at each far corner a stag. As on the other side, so here the larger squares are surrounded by smaller ones displaying in their design true-love-knots, strawberries, acorns, roses, white and red, and in one pane the combination, in a sort of net-work, of the true-love-knot with the letter S, is very striking. In Scotland several noble families, whether they spell their name Fraser or Frazer, use, as a canting charge in their blazon, the frasier or strawberry, leafed, flowered, and fructed proper; the buck, too, comes in upon or about their armorial shields. And this may have been worked by a member of that family.

We have on the first large pane a rose tree, bearing one red rose seededor, barbedvert, and at its foot, but separating them, two unicornsargent, outlined and horned in silver thread; above them, and separated by the red rose, two lions passant, face to face, langued and outlined in gold thread; above the flower a royal crownor, and two small knotsor, and at each side a white rose slipped; over each unicorn a gold knot, and a strawberry proper. Beneath this larger shield are three small ones: the first, frettyor, andvert(but so managed that the field takes the shape of strawberry leaves), charged with four true-love-knotsor, and in chiefvert, a strawberry branch or wireor, bearing one fruit proper, and one flowerargent; the second shield gives us, on a fieldazure, and within an orle of circles linked together on four sides by golden bands, and charged with strawberry fruit, and leaf, and flower proper, and alternating, a plume of Prince of Wales’s feathersargent, with the quill of the middle feather marked red orgules, at each of the four corners there is a true-love-knot in gold; the third small shield is a series of circles outlined in gold, and filled in with quatrefoils outlined green; below, on a large green pane, a white rose slipped, with grapes and acorns; by its side, the capital letters, in gold, I and R, with a strawberry and leaf close by each letter, and above all, and between twolove-knots, a regal crown. By the sides of this device are several small panes, exhibiting fanciful patterns of flowers, &c.: but in most of them the true-love-knot as well as the strawberry plant, in one combination or another, are the principal elements; and in one of the squares or panes the ornamentation evidently affects the shape of the capital letter S; upon the other side, with an orle of knots of different kinds, is figured a mermaid on the sea, with a comb in one hand, and on one side of this pane is shown a high-born dame, whose fan, seemingly of feathers, is very conspicuous. Underneath the mermaid are shown, upon a fieldvert, a man with a staff, amid four rabbits, each with a strawberry-leaf in its mouth, and at each far corner a stag. As on the other side, so here the larger squares are surrounded by smaller ones displaying in their design true-love-knots, strawberries, acorns, roses, white and red, and in one pane the combination, in a sort of net-work, of the true-love-knot with the letter S, is very striking. In Scotland several noble families, whether they spell their name Fraser or Frazer, use, as a canting charge in their blazon, the frasier or strawberry, leafed, flowered, and fructed proper; the buck, too, comes in upon or about their armorial shields. And this may have been worked by a member of that family.

SilkDamask; ground, white; pattern, wreaths of flowers and fruits, in net-work, each mesh filled in with two peacocks beneath a large bunch of red centaurea, or corn-flowers. Sicilian, late 15th century. 2 feet 3½ inches by 1 foot 8 inches.

The garlands of the meshes, made out of boughs of oak bearing red and blue acorns, have, at foot, two eagles red and blue; at top, two green parrots beneath a bunch of pomegranates, the fruit of which is red and cracked, showing its blue seed ready to fall out. The corn-flower is spread forth like a fan. This stuff shows the mark of Spanish rule over the two Sicilies.

The garlands of the meshes, made out of boughs of oak bearing red and blue acorns, have, at foot, two eagles red and blue; at top, two green parrots beneath a bunch of pomegranates, the fruit of which is red and cracked, showing its blue seed ready to fall out. The corn-flower is spread forth like a fan. This stuff shows the mark of Spanish rule over the two Sicilies.

TheSyon Monastery Cope; ground, green, with crimson interlacing barbed quatrefoils enclosing figures of our Lord, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Apostles, with winged cherubim standing on wheels in the intervening spaces, and the orphrey, morse, and hem wrought with armorial bearings, the whole done in gold, silver, and various-coloured silks. English needlework, 13th century. 9 feet 7 inches by 4 feet 8 inches.

9182.PART OF THE ORPHREY OF THE SYON COPE.English, 13thcentury.Vincent Brooks Day & Son, Lith.

9182.PART OF THE ORPHREY OF THE SYON COPE.English, 13thcentury.Vincent Brooks Day & Son, Lith.

9182.

PART OF THE ORPHREY OF THE SYON COPE.

English, 13thcentury.

Vincent Brooks Day & Son, Lith.

This handsome cope, so very remarkable on account of its comparative perfect preservation, is one of the most beautiful among the several liturgic vestments of the olden period anywhere to be now found in christendom. If by all lovers of mediæval antiquity it will be looked upon as so valuable a specimen in art of its kind and time, for every Englishman it ought to have a double interest, showing, as it does, such a splendid and instructive example of the “Opus Anglicum,” or English work, which won for itself so wide a fame, and was so eagerly sought after throughout the whole of Europe during the middle ages.Beginning with the middle of this cope, we have, at the lowermost part, St. Michael overcoming Satan; suggested by those verses of St. John, “And there was a great battle in heaven, Michael and his angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels; ... and that great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan,” &c.—Rev. xii. 7, 9, to which may be added the words of the English Golden Legend: “The fourth victorye is that that tharchaungell Mychaell shal have of Antecryst whan he shall flee hym. Than Michaell the grete prynce shall aryse, as it is sayd Danielis xii, He shall aryse for them that ben chosen as an helper and a protectour and shall strongely stande ayenst Antecryst ... and at the last he (Antichrist) shall mount upon the mount of Olyvete, and whan he shall be ... entred in to that place where our Lorde ascended Mychaell shall come and shall flee hym, of whiche victorye is understonden after saynt Gregorye that whyche is sayd in thapocalipsis, the batayll is made in heven,” (fol. cclxx. b.). As he tramples upon the writhing demon, the archangel, barefoot, and clad in golden garments, and wearing wings of gold and silver feathers, thrusts down his throat and out through his neck a lance, the shaft of which is tipped with a golden cross crosslet, while from his left armhe lets down anazureshield blazoned with a silver cross. The next quatrefoil above this one is filled in with the Crucifixion. Here the Blessed Virgin Mary is arrayed in a green tunic, and a golden mantle lined with vair or costly white fur, and her head is kerchiefed, and her uplifted hands are sorrowfully clasped; St. John—whose dress is all of gold—with a mournful look, is on the left, at the foot of the cross upon which the Saviour, wrought all in silver—a most unusual thing,—with a cloth of gold wrapped about His loins, is fastened by three, not four, nails. The way in which the ribs are shown and the chest thrown up in the person of our Lord is quite after old English feelings on the subject. In the book of sermons called the “Festival” it is said, with strong emphasis, how “Cristes body was drawen on the crosse as a skyn of parchement on a harow, so that all hys bonys myght be tolde,” fol. xxxiii. In the highest quatrefoil of all is figured the Redeemer uprisen, crowned as a king and seated on a cushioned throne. Resting upon His knee, and steadied by His left hand, is the mund or ball representing the earth—the world. Curiously enough, this mund is distinguished into three parts, of which the larger one—an upper horizontal hemicycle—is coloured crimson (now faded to a brownish tint), but the lower hemicycle is divided vertically in two, of which one portion is coloured green, the other white or silvered. The likelihood is, that such markings were meant to show the then only known three parts of our globe; for if the elements were hereon intended, there would have been four quarters—fire, water, earth, and heaven; instead, too, of the upper half being crimsoned, it would have been tinted, like the heavens, blue. Furthermore, the symbolism of those days would put, as we here see, this mund under the sovereign hand of the Saviour, as setting forth the Psalmist’s words, “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof, the world and all that dwell therein;” while its round shape—itself the emblem of endlessness—must naturally bring to mind that everlasting Being—the Alpha and the Omega spoken of in the Apocalypse—the beginning and the end, Who is and Who was, and Who is to come—the Almighty. Stretching forth His right arm, with His thumb and first two fingers upraised—emblem of one God in three persons—He is giving His blessing to His mother. Clothed in a green tunic, over which falls a golden mantle lined with vair or white fur, she is seated on the throne beside Him, with hands upraised in prayer. It ought not to be overlooked, that while the Blessed Virgin Mary wears ornamented shoes, our Lord, like His messengers, the angels and apostles, is barefoot. To show that as He had said to those whom He sent before His face, that they were to carry neitherpurse, nor scrip, nor shoes, so therefore, is He Himself here and elsewhere figured shoeless. Though already in heaven, still, out of reverence towards Him, the head of His mother is kerchiefed, as it would have been were she yet on earth and present at the sacred liturgy. John Beleth, an Englishman, who, inA.D.1162, a short century before this cope was worked, wrote a book upon the Church Ritual, lays it down as an unbending rule that, while men are to hear the Gospel bare-headed, all women, whatever be their age, rank, or condition, must never be uncovered, and if a young maiden be so her mother or any other female ought to cast a cloth of some sort over her head;—“Viri, itaque ... aperto capite Evangelium audire debent.... Mulieres vero debent audire Evangelium tecto et velato capite etiamsi sit virgo, propter pomum vetitum. Et si eveniat ut virgo capite sit aperto, ut velamen non habeat, necesse est, ut mater, aut quævis alia mulier capiti ejus pannum vel simile quippiam imponat.” Divin. Offic. Explic. c. xxxix. p. 507.The next two subjects now to be described are—one, that on the right hand, the death of the Blessed Virgin Mary; the other, to the left, her burial. To fully understand the traditionary treatment of both, it would be well to give the words of Caxton’s English translation of the “Golden Legend,” from the edition “emprynted at London, in Fletestrete at yesygne of yeSonne, by Wynkyn de Worde, in yeyere of our LordeM.CCCCXVII,” a scarce and costly work not within easy reach. “We fynde in a booke sente to saynt Johan the evangelys, or elles the boke whiche is sayd to be apocryphum ... in what maner the Assumpcyon of the blessyd vyrgyn saynt Marye was made ... upon a daye whan all the apostles were spradde through the worlde in prechynge, the gloryous vyrgyne was gretely esprysed and enbraced wyth desyre to be wyth her sone Ihesu Cryste ... and an aungell came tofore her with grete lyghte and salewed her honourably as the mother of his Lorde, sayenge, All hayle blessyd Marie.... Loo here is a bowe of palme of paradyse, lady, ... whiche thou shalte commaunde to be borne tofore thy bere, for thy soule shall be taken from thy body the thyrde daye nexte folowynge; and thy Sone abydeth thee His honourable moder.... All the apostles shall assemble this daye to thee and shall make to thee noble exequyes at thy passynge, and in the presence of theym all thou shalte gyve up thy spyryte. For he that broughte the prophete (Habacuc) by an heer from Judee to Babylon (Daniel xiv. 35, according to the Vulgate) may without doubte sodeynly in an houre brynge the apostles to thee.... And it happened as Saynt Johan the euangelyst preched in Ephesym the heven sodeynly thondred and a whyte cloude toke hym up and brought hym tofore the gate ofthe blessyd vyrgyne Marye at Jerusalem (who) sayd to hym, ... Loo I am called of thy mayster and my God, ... I have herde saye that the Jewes have made a counseyll and sayd, let us abyde brethren unto the tyme that she that bare Jhesu Crist be deed, and thenne incontynente we shall take her body and shall caste it in to the fyre and brenne it. Thou therefore take this palme and bere it tofore the bere whan ye shall bere my body to the sepulcre. Than sayd Johan, O wolde God that all my brethren the apostles were here that we myght make thyn exequyes covenable as it hoveth and is dygne and worthy. And as he sayd that, all the apostles were ravysshed with cloudes from the places where they preched and were brought tofore the dore of the blessyd vyrgyn Mary.... And aboute the thyrde houre of the nyght Jhesu Crist came with swete melodye and songe with the ordre of aungelles.... Fyrst Jhesu Crist began to saye, Come my chosen and I shall set thee in my sete ... come fro Lybane my spouse. Come from Lybane. Come thou shalte be crowned. And she sayd I come, for in the begynnynge of the booke it is wryten of me that I sholde doo thy wyll, for my spyryte hath joyed in thee the God of helth; and thus in the mornynge the soule yssued out of the body and fledde up in the armes of her sone.... And than the apostles toke the body honourably and layde it on the bere.—And than Peter and Paule lyfte up the bere, and Peter began to synge and saye Israhell is yssued out of Egypt, and the other apostles folowed hym in the same songe, and our Lorde covered the bere and the apostles with a clowde, so that they were not seen but the voyce of them was onely herde, and the aungelles were with the apostles syngynge, and than all the people was moved with that swete melodye, and yssued out of the cyte and enquyred what it was.—And than there were some that sayd that Marye suche a woman was deed, and the dyscyples of her sone Jhesu Crist bare her, and made suche melodye. And thenne ranne they to armes and they warned eche other sayenge, Come and let us slee all the dysciples and let us brenne the body of her that bare this traytoure. And whan the prynce of prestes sawe that he was all abashed and, full of angre and wrath sayd, Loo, here the tabernacle of hym that hath troubled us, and our lygnage, beholde what glorye he now receyveth, and in the saynge so he layde his hondes on the bere wyllynge to turne it and overthrowe it to the grounde. Than sodeynly bothe his hondes wexed drye and cleved to the bere so that he henge by the hondes on the bere and was sore tormented and wepte and brayed. And the aungelles ... blynded all the other people that they sawe no thynge. And the prynce of prestes sayd, saynt Peter despyse not me in this trybulacyon, and I praye thee topraye for me to our Lorde.—And saynt Peter sayd to hym—Kysse the bere and saye I byleve in God Jhesu Crist. And whan he had so sayd he was anone all hole perfyghtly.—And thenne the apostles bare Mary unto the monument (in the Vale of Josaphat outside Jerusalem) and satte by it lyke as oure Lord had commaunded. And at the thyrde daye ... the soule came agayne to the body of Marye and yssued gloryously out of the tombe, and thus was receyved in the hevenly chaumbre, and a grete company of aungelles with her; and saynt Thomas was not there; and whan he came he wolde not byleve this; and anone the gyrdell with whiche her body was gyrde came to hym fro the ayre, whiche he receyved, and therby he understode that she was assumpte into heven; and all this it here to fore is sayd and called apocryphum,” &c. ff. ccxvi, &c.With this key we may easily unlock what, otherwise, would lie hidden, not only about the coronation, but, in an especial manner, the death and burial, as here figured, of the Blessed Virgin Mary; the former of these two is thus represented on the right hand side. In her own small house by the foot of Mount Sion, at Jerusalem, is Christ’s mother on her dying bed. Four only of the apostles—there would not have been room enough for showing more in the quatrefoil—are standing by the couch upon which she lies, dressed in a silver tunic almost wholly overspread with a coverlet of gold; she is bolstered up by a deep purple golden fretted pillow. St. Peter is holding up her head, while by her side stands St. Paul, clad, like St. Peter, in a green tunic and a golden mantle; then St. Matthew, in a blue tunic and a mantle of gold, holding in the left hand his Gospel, which begins with the generation of our Lord as man, and the pedigree of Mary His mother; while, in front of them, stands John, arrayed in a shaded light-purple tunic, youthful in look, and whose auburn hair is in so strong a contrast to the hoary locks of his brethren. On the left-hand side we have her burial. Stretched full-length upon a bier, over which is thrown a pall of green shot with yellow, lies the Virgin Mary, her hair hanging loose from her head. St. Peter, known by his keys, St. Paul, by his uplifted sword, are carrying on their shoulders one end of the bier, in front; behind, in the same office, are St. Andrew bringing his cross with him, and some other apostle as his fellow. After them walks St. Thomas, who, with both his uplifted hands, is catching the girdle as it drops to him from above, where, in the skies, her soul, in the shape of a little child, is seen standing upright with clasped hands, within a large flowing sheet held by two angels who have come from heaven to fetch it thither. Right before the funeral procession is a small Jew, who holds in onehand a scabbard, and with the other is unsheathing his weapon. By the side of the bier stand two other Jews also small in size—one, the high priest. One of them has both his arms, the priest but one, all twisted and shrunken, stretched forward on the bier, as if they wanted to upset it; while the latter holds in one of his wasted hands the green bough of the palm-tree, put into it by St. John.With regard to St. Thomas and the girdle, this cope, if not the earliest, is among the earlier works upon which that part of the legend is figured, though after a somewhat different manner to the one followed in Italy, where, as is evident from several specimens, in this collection, it found such favour.Below the burial, we have our Lord in the garden, signified by the two trees (John xx. 17). Still wearing a green crown of thorns, and arrayed in a golden mantle, our Lord in His left hand holds the banner of the resurrection, and with His right bestows His benediction on the kneeling Magdalene, who is wimpled, and wears a mantle of green shot yellow, over a light purple tunic. Below, but outside the quatrefoil, is a layman clad in gold upon his knees, and holding a long narrow scroll, bearing words which cannot now be satisfactorily read. Lowermost of all we see the apostle St. Philip with a book in the left hand, but upon the right, muffled in a large towel wrought in silver, three loaves of bread, done partially in gold, piled up one on the other, in reference to our Lord’s words (John vi. 5), before the miracle of feeding the five thousand. At the left is St. Bartholomew holding a book in one hand, in the other the flaying knife. A little above him, St. Peter with his two keys, one gold, the other silver; and somewhat under him, to the right, is St. Andrew with his cross. On the other side of St. Michael and the dragon is St. James the Greater—sometimes called of Compostella, because he lies buried in that Spanish city—with a book in one hand, and in the other a staff, and slung from his wrist a wallet, both emblems of pilgrimage to his shrine in Galicia. In the next quatrefoil above stands St. Paul with his usual sword, emblem alike of his martyrdom, and of the Spirit, which is the word of God (Ephes. vi. 17), and a book; lower, to the right, St. Thomas with his lance of martyrdom and a book; and still further to the right, St. James the Less with a book and the club from which he received his death-stroke (Eusebius, book ii. c. 23). Just above is our Saviour clad in a golden tunic, and carrying a staff overcoming the unbelief of St. Thomas. Upon his knees that apostle feels, with his right hand held by the Redeemer, the spear-wound in His side (John xx. 27).As at the left hand, so here, quite outside the sacred history on the cope, we have the figure of an individual probably living at the time the vestment was wrought. The dress of the other shows him to be a layman; by the shaven crown upon his head, this person must have been a cleric of some sort: but whether monk, friar, or secular we cannot tell, as his gown has become quite bare, so that we see nothing now but the lower canvas with the lines drawn in black for the shading of the folds. Like his fellow over against him, this churchman holds up a scroll bearing words which can no longer be read.When new this cope could show, written in tall gold letters more than an inch high, an inscription now cut up and lost, as the unbroken word “Ne” on one of its shreds, and a solitary “V” on another, are all that remains of it, the first on the lower right side; the second, in the like place, to the left. Though so short, the Latin word leads us to think that it was the beginning of the anthem to the seven penitential psalms, “Nereminiscaris, Domine, delicta nostra,vel parentum nostrorum; nequevindictam sumas de peccatis nostris,” a suitable prayer for a liturgical garment, upon which the mercies of the Great Atonement are so well set forth in the Crucifixion, the overthrow of Antichrist, and the crowning of the saints in heaven.In its original state it could give us, not, as now, only eight apostles, but their whole number. Even as yet the patches on the right-hand side afford us three of the missing heads, while another patch to the left shows us the hand with a book, belonging to the fourth. The lower part of this vestment has been sadly cut away, and reshaped with shreds from itself; and perhaps at such a time were added its present heraldic orphrey, morse, and border, perhaps some fifty years after the embroidering of the other portions of this invaluable and matchless specimen of the far-famed “Opus Anglicum,” or English needlework.The early writers throughout Christendom, Greek as well as Latin, distinguished “nine choirs” of angels, or three great hierarchies, in the upper of which were the “cherubim, or seraphim, and thrones;” in the middle one, the “dominations, virtues, and powers;” in the lower hierarchy, the “principalities, angels, and archangels.” Now, while looking at the rather large number of angels figured here, we shall find that this division into three parts, each part again containing other three, has been accurately observed. Led a good way by Ezekiel (i.), but not following that prophet step by step, our mediæval draughtsmen found out for themselves a certain angel form. To this they gave a human shape having but one head, and that of a comely youth, clothing him with six wings, as Isaias told (vi. 2) of the seraphim,and in place of the calf’s cloven hoofs, they made it with the feet of man; instead of its body being full of eyes, this feature is not unoften to be perceived upon the wings, but oftenest those wings themselves are composed of the bright-eyed feathers borrowed from the peacock’s tail.Those eight angels standing upon wheels, and so placed that they are everywhere by those quatrefoils wherein our Lord’s person comes, may be taken to represent the upper hierarchy of the angelic host; those other angels—and two of them only are entire—not upon wheels, and far away from our Lord, one of the perfect ones under St. Peter, the other under St. Paul, no doubt belong to the second hierarchy; while those two having but one, not three, pair of wings, the first under the death, the other under the burial of the Virgin, both of them holding up golden crowns, one in each hand, represent, we may presume, the lowest of the three hierarchies. All of them, like our Lord and His apostles, are barefoot. All of them have their hands uplifted in prayer.For every lover of English heraldic studies this cope, so plentifully blazoned with armorial bearings, will have an especial value, equal to that belonging to many an ancient roll of arms. To begin with its orphrey: that broad band may, in regard to its shields, be distinguished into three parts, one that falls immediately about the neck of the cleric wearing this vestment, and the other two portions right and left. In this first or middle piece the shields, four in number, are of a round shape, but, unlike the square ones, through both the other two side portions, are not set upon squares alternately green and crimson (faded to brown) as are the quatrefoils on the body of the cope. Taking this centre-piece first, to the left we have—6. Checkyazureandor, a chevronermine.Warwick.7. Quarterly 1 and 4gules, a three-towered castleor; 2 and 3argent, a lion rampantazure.Castile and Leon.8. Vairorandgules, within a bordureazure, charged with sixteen horse-shoesargent.Ferrers.9.Azure, three barnaclesor, on a chieferminea demi-lion rampantgules.Geneville.These four shields are round, as was said before, and upon a green ground, having nothing besides upon it. All the rest composing this orphrey are squares of the diamond form, and put upon a grounding alternately crimson and green; on the crimson are two peacocks and two swans in gold; on the green, four stars of eight rays in gold voided crimson. Now, beginning at the furthermost left side, we see these blazons:—

This handsome cope, so very remarkable on account of its comparative perfect preservation, is one of the most beautiful among the several liturgic vestments of the olden period anywhere to be now found in christendom. If by all lovers of mediæval antiquity it will be looked upon as so valuable a specimen in art of its kind and time, for every Englishman it ought to have a double interest, showing, as it does, such a splendid and instructive example of the “Opus Anglicum,” or English work, which won for itself so wide a fame, and was so eagerly sought after throughout the whole of Europe during the middle ages.

Beginning with the middle of this cope, we have, at the lowermost part, St. Michael overcoming Satan; suggested by those verses of St. John, “And there was a great battle in heaven, Michael and his angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels; ... and that great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan,” &c.—Rev. xii. 7, 9, to which may be added the words of the English Golden Legend: “The fourth victorye is that that tharchaungell Mychaell shal have of Antecryst whan he shall flee hym. Than Michaell the grete prynce shall aryse, as it is sayd Danielis xii, He shall aryse for them that ben chosen as an helper and a protectour and shall strongely stande ayenst Antecryst ... and at the last he (Antichrist) shall mount upon the mount of Olyvete, and whan he shall be ... entred in to that place where our Lorde ascended Mychaell shall come and shall flee hym, of whiche victorye is understonden after saynt Gregorye that whyche is sayd in thapocalipsis, the batayll is made in heven,” (fol. cclxx. b.). As he tramples upon the writhing demon, the archangel, barefoot, and clad in golden garments, and wearing wings of gold and silver feathers, thrusts down his throat and out through his neck a lance, the shaft of which is tipped with a golden cross crosslet, while from his left armhe lets down anazureshield blazoned with a silver cross. The next quatrefoil above this one is filled in with the Crucifixion. Here the Blessed Virgin Mary is arrayed in a green tunic, and a golden mantle lined with vair or costly white fur, and her head is kerchiefed, and her uplifted hands are sorrowfully clasped; St. John—whose dress is all of gold—with a mournful look, is on the left, at the foot of the cross upon which the Saviour, wrought all in silver—a most unusual thing,—with a cloth of gold wrapped about His loins, is fastened by three, not four, nails. The way in which the ribs are shown and the chest thrown up in the person of our Lord is quite after old English feelings on the subject. In the book of sermons called the “Festival” it is said, with strong emphasis, how “Cristes body was drawen on the crosse as a skyn of parchement on a harow, so that all hys bonys myght be tolde,” fol. xxxiii. In the highest quatrefoil of all is figured the Redeemer uprisen, crowned as a king and seated on a cushioned throne. Resting upon His knee, and steadied by His left hand, is the mund or ball representing the earth—the world. Curiously enough, this mund is distinguished into three parts, of which the larger one—an upper horizontal hemicycle—is coloured crimson (now faded to a brownish tint), but the lower hemicycle is divided vertically in two, of which one portion is coloured green, the other white or silvered. The likelihood is, that such markings were meant to show the then only known three parts of our globe; for if the elements were hereon intended, there would have been four quarters—fire, water, earth, and heaven; instead, too, of the upper half being crimsoned, it would have been tinted, like the heavens, blue. Furthermore, the symbolism of those days would put, as we here see, this mund under the sovereign hand of the Saviour, as setting forth the Psalmist’s words, “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof, the world and all that dwell therein;” while its round shape—itself the emblem of endlessness—must naturally bring to mind that everlasting Being—the Alpha and the Omega spoken of in the Apocalypse—the beginning and the end, Who is and Who was, and Who is to come—the Almighty. Stretching forth His right arm, with His thumb and first two fingers upraised—emblem of one God in three persons—He is giving His blessing to His mother. Clothed in a green tunic, over which falls a golden mantle lined with vair or white fur, she is seated on the throne beside Him, with hands upraised in prayer. It ought not to be overlooked, that while the Blessed Virgin Mary wears ornamented shoes, our Lord, like His messengers, the angels and apostles, is barefoot. To show that as He had said to those whom He sent before His face, that they were to carry neitherpurse, nor scrip, nor shoes, so therefore, is He Himself here and elsewhere figured shoeless. Though already in heaven, still, out of reverence towards Him, the head of His mother is kerchiefed, as it would have been were she yet on earth and present at the sacred liturgy. John Beleth, an Englishman, who, inA.D.1162, a short century before this cope was worked, wrote a book upon the Church Ritual, lays it down as an unbending rule that, while men are to hear the Gospel bare-headed, all women, whatever be their age, rank, or condition, must never be uncovered, and if a young maiden be so her mother or any other female ought to cast a cloth of some sort over her head;—“Viri, itaque ... aperto capite Evangelium audire debent.... Mulieres vero debent audire Evangelium tecto et velato capite etiamsi sit virgo, propter pomum vetitum. Et si eveniat ut virgo capite sit aperto, ut velamen non habeat, necesse est, ut mater, aut quævis alia mulier capiti ejus pannum vel simile quippiam imponat.” Divin. Offic. Explic. c. xxxix. p. 507.

The next two subjects now to be described are—one, that on the right hand, the death of the Blessed Virgin Mary; the other, to the left, her burial. To fully understand the traditionary treatment of both, it would be well to give the words of Caxton’s English translation of the “Golden Legend,” from the edition “emprynted at London, in Fletestrete at yesygne of yeSonne, by Wynkyn de Worde, in yeyere of our LordeM.CCCCXVII,” a scarce and costly work not within easy reach. “We fynde in a booke sente to saynt Johan the evangelys, or elles the boke whiche is sayd to be apocryphum ... in what maner the Assumpcyon of the blessyd vyrgyn saynt Marye was made ... upon a daye whan all the apostles were spradde through the worlde in prechynge, the gloryous vyrgyne was gretely esprysed and enbraced wyth desyre to be wyth her sone Ihesu Cryste ... and an aungell came tofore her with grete lyghte and salewed her honourably as the mother of his Lorde, sayenge, All hayle blessyd Marie.... Loo here is a bowe of palme of paradyse, lady, ... whiche thou shalte commaunde to be borne tofore thy bere, for thy soule shall be taken from thy body the thyrde daye nexte folowynge; and thy Sone abydeth thee His honourable moder.... All the apostles shall assemble this daye to thee and shall make to thee noble exequyes at thy passynge, and in the presence of theym all thou shalte gyve up thy spyryte. For he that broughte the prophete (Habacuc) by an heer from Judee to Babylon (Daniel xiv. 35, according to the Vulgate) may without doubte sodeynly in an houre brynge the apostles to thee.... And it happened as Saynt Johan the euangelyst preched in Ephesym the heven sodeynly thondred and a whyte cloude toke hym up and brought hym tofore the gate ofthe blessyd vyrgyne Marye at Jerusalem (who) sayd to hym, ... Loo I am called of thy mayster and my God, ... I have herde saye that the Jewes have made a counseyll and sayd, let us abyde brethren unto the tyme that she that bare Jhesu Crist be deed, and thenne incontynente we shall take her body and shall caste it in to the fyre and brenne it. Thou therefore take this palme and bere it tofore the bere whan ye shall bere my body to the sepulcre. Than sayd Johan, O wolde God that all my brethren the apostles were here that we myght make thyn exequyes covenable as it hoveth and is dygne and worthy. And as he sayd that, all the apostles were ravysshed with cloudes from the places where they preched and were brought tofore the dore of the blessyd vyrgyn Mary.... And aboute the thyrde houre of the nyght Jhesu Crist came with swete melodye and songe with the ordre of aungelles.... Fyrst Jhesu Crist began to saye, Come my chosen and I shall set thee in my sete ... come fro Lybane my spouse. Come from Lybane. Come thou shalte be crowned. And she sayd I come, for in the begynnynge of the booke it is wryten of me that I sholde doo thy wyll, for my spyryte hath joyed in thee the God of helth; and thus in the mornynge the soule yssued out of the body and fledde up in the armes of her sone.... And than the apostles toke the body honourably and layde it on the bere.—And than Peter and Paule lyfte up the bere, and Peter began to synge and saye Israhell is yssued out of Egypt, and the other apostles folowed hym in the same songe, and our Lorde covered the bere and the apostles with a clowde, so that they were not seen but the voyce of them was onely herde, and the aungelles were with the apostles syngynge, and than all the people was moved with that swete melodye, and yssued out of the cyte and enquyred what it was.—And than there were some that sayd that Marye suche a woman was deed, and the dyscyples of her sone Jhesu Crist bare her, and made suche melodye. And thenne ranne they to armes and they warned eche other sayenge, Come and let us slee all the dysciples and let us brenne the body of her that bare this traytoure. And whan the prynce of prestes sawe that he was all abashed and, full of angre and wrath sayd, Loo, here the tabernacle of hym that hath troubled us, and our lygnage, beholde what glorye he now receyveth, and in the saynge so he layde his hondes on the bere wyllynge to turne it and overthrowe it to the grounde. Than sodeynly bothe his hondes wexed drye and cleved to the bere so that he henge by the hondes on the bere and was sore tormented and wepte and brayed. And the aungelles ... blynded all the other people that they sawe no thynge. And the prynce of prestes sayd, saynt Peter despyse not me in this trybulacyon, and I praye thee topraye for me to our Lorde.—And saynt Peter sayd to hym—Kysse the bere and saye I byleve in God Jhesu Crist. And whan he had so sayd he was anone all hole perfyghtly.—And thenne the apostles bare Mary unto the monument (in the Vale of Josaphat outside Jerusalem) and satte by it lyke as oure Lord had commaunded. And at the thyrde daye ... the soule came agayne to the body of Marye and yssued gloryously out of the tombe, and thus was receyved in the hevenly chaumbre, and a grete company of aungelles with her; and saynt Thomas was not there; and whan he came he wolde not byleve this; and anone the gyrdell with whiche her body was gyrde came to hym fro the ayre, whiche he receyved, and therby he understode that she was assumpte into heven; and all this it here to fore is sayd and called apocryphum,” &c. ff. ccxvi, &c.

With this key we may easily unlock what, otherwise, would lie hidden, not only about the coronation, but, in an especial manner, the death and burial, as here figured, of the Blessed Virgin Mary; the former of these two is thus represented on the right hand side. In her own small house by the foot of Mount Sion, at Jerusalem, is Christ’s mother on her dying bed. Four only of the apostles—there would not have been room enough for showing more in the quatrefoil—are standing by the couch upon which she lies, dressed in a silver tunic almost wholly overspread with a coverlet of gold; she is bolstered up by a deep purple golden fretted pillow. St. Peter is holding up her head, while by her side stands St. Paul, clad, like St. Peter, in a green tunic and a golden mantle; then St. Matthew, in a blue tunic and a mantle of gold, holding in the left hand his Gospel, which begins with the generation of our Lord as man, and the pedigree of Mary His mother; while, in front of them, stands John, arrayed in a shaded light-purple tunic, youthful in look, and whose auburn hair is in so strong a contrast to the hoary locks of his brethren. On the left-hand side we have her burial. Stretched full-length upon a bier, over which is thrown a pall of green shot with yellow, lies the Virgin Mary, her hair hanging loose from her head. St. Peter, known by his keys, St. Paul, by his uplifted sword, are carrying on their shoulders one end of the bier, in front; behind, in the same office, are St. Andrew bringing his cross with him, and some other apostle as his fellow. After them walks St. Thomas, who, with both his uplifted hands, is catching the girdle as it drops to him from above, where, in the skies, her soul, in the shape of a little child, is seen standing upright with clasped hands, within a large flowing sheet held by two angels who have come from heaven to fetch it thither. Right before the funeral procession is a small Jew, who holds in onehand a scabbard, and with the other is unsheathing his weapon. By the side of the bier stand two other Jews also small in size—one, the high priest. One of them has both his arms, the priest but one, all twisted and shrunken, stretched forward on the bier, as if they wanted to upset it; while the latter holds in one of his wasted hands the green bough of the palm-tree, put into it by St. John.

With regard to St. Thomas and the girdle, this cope, if not the earliest, is among the earlier works upon which that part of the legend is figured, though after a somewhat different manner to the one followed in Italy, where, as is evident from several specimens, in this collection, it found such favour.

Below the burial, we have our Lord in the garden, signified by the two trees (John xx. 17). Still wearing a green crown of thorns, and arrayed in a golden mantle, our Lord in His left hand holds the banner of the resurrection, and with His right bestows His benediction on the kneeling Magdalene, who is wimpled, and wears a mantle of green shot yellow, over a light purple tunic. Below, but outside the quatrefoil, is a layman clad in gold upon his knees, and holding a long narrow scroll, bearing words which cannot now be satisfactorily read. Lowermost of all we see the apostle St. Philip with a book in the left hand, but upon the right, muffled in a large towel wrought in silver, three loaves of bread, done partially in gold, piled up one on the other, in reference to our Lord’s words (John vi. 5), before the miracle of feeding the five thousand. At the left is St. Bartholomew holding a book in one hand, in the other the flaying knife. A little above him, St. Peter with his two keys, one gold, the other silver; and somewhat under him, to the right, is St. Andrew with his cross. On the other side of St. Michael and the dragon is St. James the Greater—sometimes called of Compostella, because he lies buried in that Spanish city—with a book in one hand, and in the other a staff, and slung from his wrist a wallet, both emblems of pilgrimage to his shrine in Galicia. In the next quatrefoil above stands St. Paul with his usual sword, emblem alike of his martyrdom, and of the Spirit, which is the word of God (Ephes. vi. 17), and a book; lower, to the right, St. Thomas with his lance of martyrdom and a book; and still further to the right, St. James the Less with a book and the club from which he received his death-stroke (Eusebius, book ii. c. 23). Just above is our Saviour clad in a golden tunic, and carrying a staff overcoming the unbelief of St. Thomas. Upon his knees that apostle feels, with his right hand held by the Redeemer, the spear-wound in His side (John xx. 27).

As at the left hand, so here, quite outside the sacred history on the cope, we have the figure of an individual probably living at the time the vestment was wrought. The dress of the other shows him to be a layman; by the shaven crown upon his head, this person must have been a cleric of some sort: but whether monk, friar, or secular we cannot tell, as his gown has become quite bare, so that we see nothing now but the lower canvas with the lines drawn in black for the shading of the folds. Like his fellow over against him, this churchman holds up a scroll bearing words which can no longer be read.

When new this cope could show, written in tall gold letters more than an inch high, an inscription now cut up and lost, as the unbroken word “Ne” on one of its shreds, and a solitary “V” on another, are all that remains of it, the first on the lower right side; the second, in the like place, to the left. Though so short, the Latin word leads us to think that it was the beginning of the anthem to the seven penitential psalms, “Nereminiscaris, Domine, delicta nostra,vel parentum nostrorum; nequevindictam sumas de peccatis nostris,” a suitable prayer for a liturgical garment, upon which the mercies of the Great Atonement are so well set forth in the Crucifixion, the overthrow of Antichrist, and the crowning of the saints in heaven.

In its original state it could give us, not, as now, only eight apostles, but their whole number. Even as yet the patches on the right-hand side afford us three of the missing heads, while another patch to the left shows us the hand with a book, belonging to the fourth. The lower part of this vestment has been sadly cut away, and reshaped with shreds from itself; and perhaps at such a time were added its present heraldic orphrey, morse, and border, perhaps some fifty years after the embroidering of the other portions of this invaluable and matchless specimen of the far-famed “Opus Anglicum,” or English needlework.

The early writers throughout Christendom, Greek as well as Latin, distinguished “nine choirs” of angels, or three great hierarchies, in the upper of which were the “cherubim, or seraphim, and thrones;” in the middle one, the “dominations, virtues, and powers;” in the lower hierarchy, the “principalities, angels, and archangels.” Now, while looking at the rather large number of angels figured here, we shall find that this division into three parts, each part again containing other three, has been accurately observed. Led a good way by Ezekiel (i.), but not following that prophet step by step, our mediæval draughtsmen found out for themselves a certain angel form. To this they gave a human shape having but one head, and that of a comely youth, clothing him with six wings, as Isaias told (vi. 2) of the seraphim,and in place of the calf’s cloven hoofs, they made it with the feet of man; instead of its body being full of eyes, this feature is not unoften to be perceived upon the wings, but oftenest those wings themselves are composed of the bright-eyed feathers borrowed from the peacock’s tail.

Those eight angels standing upon wheels, and so placed that they are everywhere by those quatrefoils wherein our Lord’s person comes, may be taken to represent the upper hierarchy of the angelic host; those other angels—and two of them only are entire—not upon wheels, and far away from our Lord, one of the perfect ones under St. Peter, the other under St. Paul, no doubt belong to the second hierarchy; while those two having but one, not three, pair of wings, the first under the death, the other under the burial of the Virgin, both of them holding up golden crowns, one in each hand, represent, we may presume, the lowest of the three hierarchies. All of them, like our Lord and His apostles, are barefoot. All of them have their hands uplifted in prayer.

For every lover of English heraldic studies this cope, so plentifully blazoned with armorial bearings, will have an especial value, equal to that belonging to many an ancient roll of arms. To begin with its orphrey: that broad band may, in regard to its shields, be distinguished into three parts, one that falls immediately about the neck of the cleric wearing this vestment, and the other two portions right and left. In this first or middle piece the shields, four in number, are of a round shape, but, unlike the square ones, through both the other two side portions, are not set upon squares alternately green and crimson (faded to brown) as are the quatrefoils on the body of the cope. Taking this centre-piece first, to the left we have—

6. Checkyazureandor, a chevronermine.Warwick.

7. Quarterly 1 and 4gules, a three-towered castleor; 2 and 3argent, a lion rampantazure.Castile and Leon.

8. Vairorandgules, within a bordureazure, charged with sixteen horse-shoesargent.Ferrers.

9.Azure, three barnaclesor, on a chieferminea demi-lion rampantgules.Geneville.

These four shields are round, as was said before, and upon a green ground, having nothing besides upon it. All the rest composing this orphrey are squares of the diamond form, and put upon a grounding alternately crimson and green; on the crimson are two peacocks and two swans in gold; on the green, four stars of eight rays in gold voided crimson. Now, beginning at the furthermost left side, we see these blazons:—

1.Ermine, a crossgulescharged with five lioncels statant gardantor.Everard.2. Same as 8.Ferrers.3.Gules, the Holy Lambargentwith flagor, between two stars and a crescentor.Badge of the Knights Templars.4. Same as 2.Ferrers.5. Same as 1.Everard.10. Checkyazureandor, a bendgulescharged with three lioncels passantargent.Clifford.11. Quarterlyargentandgules; 2 and 3 frettyor, over all a bendsable.Spencer.12. The same as 3, but the Lamb isor, the flagargent.Badge of the Knights Templars.13. Same as 11.Spencer.14. Same as 10.Clifford.Just below the two middle shields are four nicely-formed loops, through which might be buttoned on to the cope the moveable hood—or different hoods, according to the festival, and figured with the subject of the feast—now lost. On the other edge of the orphrey, to the left, are seen other three loops, like the former, made of thick gold cord, by which was made fast the morse that is also blazoned with ten coats, as follows:—1.Gules, a large six-pointed starargentvoided with another starazurevoidedargentvoidedgules, between four cross-crossletsor.2.Gules, an eagle displayedor.LimesiorLindsey.3.Castile and Leon.4.Gules, a fessargentbetween three covered cupsor.Le Botiler.5.Castile and Leon.6.Ferrers.7.Azure, a crossargentbetween four eagles (?) displayedargent(?).8.Spencer.9. Same as 2.Lindsey.10.Geneville.The ground is checkyazureandorupon which these small shields in the morse are placed.On the narrow band, at the hem, the same alternation of green and crimson squares, as a ground for the small diamond-shaped shields, is observed, as in the orphrey; and the blazons are, beginning at the left-hand side:—1. Barry of tenazureandorimbattled, a fessgulessprinkled with four-petaled flowers seededazure.2.Or, charged with martletsgules, and a pair of bars gemellesazure.3.Ferrers.4.Castile and Leon.5.Azure, a crossor.Sheldon.6.Azure, a lion rampantor, within a borduregulescharged with eight water-bougetsargent.7.Warwick.8.Spencer.9.Azure, a bend between six birdsor.Monteneyof Essex.10.Gules, sprinkled with cross-crossletsor, and a saltire verry potentargentandazure.Champernoun.11.Geneville.12.England.13. Checkyargentandazure, on a bendgules, three garbs (?) or escallop-shells (?)or.14.Or, on a fessgulesbetween six fleurs-de-lis three and threegules, three fleurs-de-lisor.15.Gules, a lion rampantargent, within a bordureazure, charged with eight water-bougetsor.16. Checkyorandgules, on a bendazure, five horse-shoesargent.17. Same as 1.18. Same as 2.19. Same as 3.Ferrers.20. Same as 10.Champernoun.21. Same as 10 in the orphrey.Clifford.22. Same as 8.Spencer.23.Azure, between six escallop-shells (?) three and three, a bendor.Tyddeswall.24. Same as 6.25. Paly of tenargentandazure, on a bendgules, three escallop-shells (?)or. A coat ofGrandison.26.Gules, a lion rampantor.Fitz Alan.27. Barryargentandazure, a chief checkyorandgules.28.Geneville.29. Party per fessazureandor, a cross fusil counterchanged.30.Argent, four birdsgules, between a saltiregules, charged with nine bezants.Hampden(?).31.Azure, five fusils in fesseor.Percy.32. Same as 1, on the orphrey.Everard.33. Same as 6, on the orphrey.Warwick.34.Gules, three lucies hauriant in fess between six cross-crossletsor.Lucy.35. Paly of tenorandazure, on a fessgules, three mullets of six pointsargent, voided with a crossazure.Chambowe(?).36. Party per fessgules, frettedor, andermine.Ribbesford(?).37. Same as 9.38.Or, on a crossgules, five escallop-shellsargent.Bygod.39. Barry, a chief paly and the corners gyronny,orandazure, an inescutcheonermine.Roger de Mortimer.40. Same as 6.41. Party per fess,argentthree eight-petaled flowers formed as it were out of a knot made cross-wise, with two flowers at the end of each limb, andazurewith a string of lozenges like a fessargent, and three fleurs-de-lis (?) two and oneor.42.Gules, a fess checkyargentandazure, between twelve cross crossletsor. Possibly one of the many coats taken byLe Botiler.43.Azure, three lucies hauriant in fess between six cross-crossletsor.Lucy.44.Ermine, on a chevrongules, three escallop-shellsor.GolboreorGrove.45. Gyronny of twelveorandazure.De Bassingburn.Besides their heraldry, squares upon which are shown swans and peacocks wrought at each corner, afford, in those birds, objects of much curious interest for every lover of mediæval symbolism under its various phases.In the symbolism of those times, the star and the crescent, the peacock and the swan, had, each of them, its own several figurative meanings. By the first of these emblems was to be understood, according to the words, in Numbers xxiv. 17, of Balaam’s prophecy,—“a star shall arise out of Jacob,”—our Saviour, who says of His divine self, Apocalypse xxii. 16, “I am the bright and morning star.” By inference, the star not only symbolized our Lord Himself, but His Gospel—Christianity—in contradistinction to Mahometanism, against which the crusades had been but lately carried on. The star of Bethlehem, too, was thus also brought before the mind with all its associated ideas of the Holy Land.The crescent moon, on the shields with the Holy Lamb, represents the Church, for the reason that small at first, but getting her light from the true Sun of justice, our Lord, she every day grows larger, and at the end of time, when all shall believe in her, will at last be in her full brightness. This symbolism is set forth, at some length, by PetrusCapuanus as quoted by Dom (now Cardinal) Pitra in his valuable “Spicilegium Solesmense,” t. ii. 66. But for an English mediæval authority on the point, we may cite our own Alexander Neckam, bornA.D.1157 at St. Albans, and who had as a foster-brother King Richard of the Lion-Heart. In his curious work, “De Naturis Rerum,” not long since printed for the first time, and published by the authority of Her Majesty’s treasury, under the direction of the Master of the Rolls, Neckam thus writes:—“Per solem item Christus, verus sol justiciæ plerumque intelligitur; per lunam autem ecclesia, vel quæcunque fidelis anima. Sicut autem luna beneficium lucis a sole mendicat, ita et fidelis anima a Christo qui est lux vera.” P. 53.Not always was the peacock taken to be the unmitigated emblem of pride and foolish vanity. Osmont the cleric, in his “Volucraire, or Book of Birds,” after noticing its scream instead of song, its serpent-like shape of head that it carries so haughtily, but lowers quite abashed as it catches a glimpse at its ugly feet, and its garish plumage with the many bright-eyed freckles on its fan-like tail which it loves to unfold for admiration, draws these comparisons. As the peacock affrights us by its cry, so does the preacher, when he thunders against sin startle us into a hatred of it; if the step of the bird be so full of majesty, with what steadiness ought a true Christian fearlessly tread his narrow path. A man may perhaps find a happiness, nay, show a pride in the conviction of having done a good deed, perhaps may sometimes therefore carry his head a trifle high, and, strutting like the peacock, parade his pious works to catch the world’s applause; as soon as he looks into Holy Writ and there learns the weakness, lowliness, of his own origin, he too droops his head in all humility. Those eye-speckled feathers in its plumage warn him that never too often can he have his eyes wide open, and gaze inwardly upon his own heart and know its secret workings. Thus spoke an Anglo-Norman writer.About the swan an Englishman, our Alexander Neckam, says:—“Quid quod cygnus in ætate tenella fusco colore vestitus esse videtur, qui postmodum in intentissimum candorem mutatur? Sic nonnulli caligine peccatorum prius obfuscati, postea candoris innocentiæ veste spirituali decorantur.”—De Naturis Rerum, p. 101. Here our countryman hands us the key to the symbolic appearance of the swan upon this liturgical garment; for, as while a cygnet, its feathers are always of a dusky hue, but when the bird has grown up its plumage changes into the most intensely white, just so, some people who are at first darkened with the blackness of sin, in after days become adorned with the garb of white innocence.Besides their ecclesiastical meanings these same symbols had belonging to them a secular significance. Found upon a piece of stuff quite apart from that of the cope itself, and worked for the adornment of that fine vestment after a lapse of many years, made up too of an ornamentation the whole of which is heraldic and thus bringing to mind worldly knights and their blazons and its age’s chivalry, it is easy to find out for it an adaptation to the chivalric notions and customs of those times. The Bethlehem star overtopping the Islam badge of the crescent moon showed forth the wishes of every one who had been or meant to be a crusader, or rather more, not merely of our men at arms but of every true believer throughout Christendom whose untiring prayers were that the Holy Land might be wrested from the iron hand of the Mahometan. At great national festivities and solemn gatherings of the aristocracy, not the young knight alone then newly girt, but the grey-haired warrior would often, in that noble presence, bind himself by vow to do some deed of daring, and swore it to heaven, and the swan, the pheasant, or the peacock as the bird of his choice, was brought with a flourish of trumpets, and amid a crowd of stately knights waiting on a bevy of fair young ladies, and set before him. This sounds odd at this time of day; not so did it in mediæval times, when those birds were looked upon with favour on account of the majestic gracefulness of their shape, or the sparkling beauty of their plumage. It must not be forgotten that this orphrey was blazoned by English hands in England, and while all the stirring doings of our first Edward were yet fresh in our people’s remembrance. That king had been and fought in the Holy Land against the Saracens. At his bidding, towards the end of life, a scene remarkable even in that period of royal festive magnificence, took place, when he himself, in the year 1306, girded his son, afterwards Edward II, with the military belt in the palace of Westminster, and then sent him to bestow the same knightly honour, in the church of that abbey, upon the three hundred young sons of the nobility, who had been gathered from all parts of the kingdom to be his companions in the splendours of the day. But that grand function was brought to an end by a most curious yet interesting act; to the joyous sounds of minstrelsy came forwards a procession, bearing along a pair of swans confined in a net, the meshes of which were made of cords fashioned like reeds and wrought of gold. These birds were set in solemn pomp before the king; and there and then Edward swore by the God in heaven and the swans that he would go forth and wage war against the Scots: Matthew Westminster, p. 454. No wonder, then, that along with the star and crescent we find the knightly swan and peacock mingled in the heraldryof the highest families in England, wrought upon a work from English hands, during the fourteenth century. A long hundred years after this elaborate orphrey was worked we find that Dan John Lydgate, monk of Bury St. Edmund’s, in his poem called “All stant in chaunge like a mydsomer Rose,” upon the fickleness of all earthly things, while singing of this life’s fading vanities, counts among them—“Vowis of pecok, with all ther proude chere.”Minor Poems,ed. Halliwell for Percy Society, p. 25.To the wild but poetic legend of the swan and his descendants, we have already alluded in our Introduction.A word or two now upon the needlework, how it was done, and a certain at present unused mechanical appliance to it after it was wrought, so observable upon this vestment, lending its figures more effect, and giving it, as a teaching example of embroidery, much more value than any foreign piece in this numerous collection.Looking well into this fine specimen of the English needle, we find that, for the human face, all over it, the first stitches were begun in the centre of the cheek, and worked in circular, not straight lines, into which, however, after the middle had been made, they fell, and were so carried on through the rest of the fleshes. After the whole figure had thus been wrought; then with a little thin iron rod ending in a small bulb or smooth knob slightly heated, were pressed down those spots upon the faces worked in circular lines, as well as that deep wide dimple in the throat especially of an aged person. By the hollows thus lastingly sunk, a play of light and shadow is brought out that, at a short distance, lends to the portion so treated a look of being done in low relief. Upon the slightly-clothed person of our Lord this same process is followed in a way that tells remarkably well; and the chest with the upper part of the pelvis in the figure of our Saviour overcoming Thomas’s unbelief, shows a noteworthy example of the mediæval knowledge of external anatomy.We must not, however, hide from ourselves the fact that the edges, though so broad and blunt, given by such a use of the hot iron to parts of an embroidery, expose it somewhat to the danger of being worn out more in those than other portions which soon betray the damage by their thread-bare dingy look, as is the case in the example just cited.The method for filling in the quatrefoils, as well as working much of the drapery on the figures, is remarkable for being done in a long zigzag diaper-pattern, and after the manner called in ancient inventories,“opus plumarium,” from the way the stitches overlie each other like the feathers on a bird.The stitchery on the armorial bearings is the same as that now followed in so many trifling things worked in wool.The canvas for every part of this cope is of the very finest sort; but oddly enough, its crimson canvas lining is thick and coarse. What constituted, then, the characteristics of the “opus Anglicum,” or English work, in mediæval embroidery were, first, the beginning of the stitchery in certain parts of the human figure—the face especially—in circular lines winding close together round and round; and, in the second place, the sinking of those same portions into permanent hollows by the use of a hot iron.A word or two now about the history of this fine cope.In olden days not a town, hardly a single parish, throughout England, but had in it one or more pious associations called “gilds,” some of which could show the noblest amongst the layfolks, men and women, and the most distinguished of the clergy in the kingdom, set down upon the roll of its brotherhood, which often grew up into great wealth. Each of these gilds had, usually in its parish church, a chapel, or at least an altar of its own, where, for its peculiar service, it kept one if not several priests and clerics, provided, too, with every needful liturgical appliance, articles of which were frequently the spontaneous offering of individual brothers, who sometimes clubbed together for the purpose of thus making their joint gift more splendid. Now it is most remarkable that upon this cope, and quite apart from the sacred story on it, we have two figures, that to the left, pranked out in the gay attire of some rich layman; on the right, the other, who must be an ecclesiastic from the tonsure on his head; each bears an inscribed scroll in his hand, and both are in the posture of suppliants making offerings. This cleric and this layman may have been akin to one another, brothers, too, of the same gild for which they at their joint cost got this cope worked and gave to it. But where was this gild itself?Among the foremost of our provincial cities once was reckoned Coventry. Its Corpus Christi plays or mysteries, illustrated by this embroidery, enjoyed such a wide-spread fame that for the whole eight days of their performance, every year, they drew crowds of the highest and the gentlest of the land far and near, as the “Paston Letters” testify, to see them; its gild was of such repute that our nobility—lords and ladies—our kings and queens, did not think it anywise beneath their high estate to be enrolled among its brotherhood. Besides many other authorities, we have one in that splendid pieceof English tapestry—figured with Henry VI, Cardinal Beaufort, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and other courtiers, on the left or men’s side, and on the women’s, Queen Margaret, the Duchess of Buckingham, and other ladies, most of them on their knees, and all hearing mass—still hanging on the wall of the dining hall of St. Mary’s gild, of which that king, with his queen and all his court became members; and at whose altar, as brethren, they heard their service, on some Sunday, or high festival, which they spent at Coventry. Taking this old city as a centre, with a radius of no great length, we may draw a circle on the map which will enclose Tamworth, tower and town, Chartly Castle, Warwick, Charlcote, Althorp, &c. where the once great houses of Ferrers, Beauchamp, Lucy, and Spencer held, and some of them yet hold, large estates; and from being the owners of broad lands in its neighbourhood, their lords would, in accordance with the religious feeling of those times, become brothers of the famous gild of Coventry; and on account of their high rank, find their arms emblazoned upon the vestments belonging to their fraternity. That such a pious queen as the gentle Eleanor, our First Edward’s first wife, who diedA.D.1290, should have, in her lifetime, become a sister, and by her bounties made herself to be gratefully remembered after death, is very likely, so that we may with ease account for her shield—Castile and Leon—as well as for the shields of the other great families we see upon the orphrey, being wrought there as a testimonial that, while, like many others, they were members, they also had been munificent benefactors to the association. A remembrance of brotherhood for those others equally noble, but less generous in their benefactions, may be read in those smaller shields upon the narrow hem going along the lower border of this vestment. The whole of it must have taken a long, long time in the doing; and the probability is that it was worked by the nuns of some convent which stood in or near Coventry.Upon the banks of the Thames, at Isleworth, near London, in the year 1414, Henry V. built, and munificently endowed, a monastery to be called “Syon,” for nuns of St. Bridget’s order. Among the earliest friends of this new house was a Master Thomas Graunt, an official in one of the ecclesiastical courts of the kingdom. In the Syon nuns’ martyrologium—a valuable MS. lately bought by the British Museum—this churchman is gratefully recorded as the giver to their convent of several precious ornaments, of which this very cope seemingly is one. It was the custom for a gild, or religious body, to bestow some rich church vestment upon an ecclesiastical advocate who had befriended it by his pleadings before the tribunals, and thus to convey their thanksto him along with his fee. After such a fashion this cope could have easily found its way, through Dr. Graunt, from Warwickshire to Middlesex. At the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign it went along with the nuns as they wandered in an unbroken body through Flanders, France, and Portugal, where they halted. About sixty years ago it came back again from Lisbon to England, and has found a lasting home in the South Kensington Museum.

1.Ermine, a crossgulescharged with five lioncels statant gardantor.Everard.

2. Same as 8.Ferrers.

3.Gules, the Holy Lambargentwith flagor, between two stars and a crescentor.Badge of the Knights Templars.

4. Same as 2.Ferrers.

5. Same as 1.Everard.

10. Checkyazureandor, a bendgulescharged with three lioncels passantargent.Clifford.

11. Quarterlyargentandgules; 2 and 3 frettyor, over all a bendsable.Spencer.

12. The same as 3, but the Lamb isor, the flagargent.Badge of the Knights Templars.

13. Same as 11.Spencer.

14. Same as 10.Clifford.

Just below the two middle shields are four nicely-formed loops, through which might be buttoned on to the cope the moveable hood—or different hoods, according to the festival, and figured with the subject of the feast—now lost. On the other edge of the orphrey, to the left, are seen other three loops, like the former, made of thick gold cord, by which was made fast the morse that is also blazoned with ten coats, as follows:—

1.Gules, a large six-pointed starargentvoided with another starazurevoidedargentvoidedgules, between four cross-crossletsor.

2.Gules, an eagle displayedor.LimesiorLindsey.

3.Castile and Leon.

4.Gules, a fessargentbetween three covered cupsor.Le Botiler.

5.Castile and Leon.

6.Ferrers.

7.Azure, a crossargentbetween four eagles (?) displayedargent(?).

8.Spencer.

9. Same as 2.Lindsey.

10.Geneville.

The ground is checkyazureandorupon which these small shields in the morse are placed.

On the narrow band, at the hem, the same alternation of green and crimson squares, as a ground for the small diamond-shaped shields, is observed, as in the orphrey; and the blazons are, beginning at the left-hand side:—

1. Barry of tenazureandorimbattled, a fessgulessprinkled with four-petaled flowers seededazure.

2.Or, charged with martletsgules, and a pair of bars gemellesazure.

3.Ferrers.

4.Castile and Leon.

5.Azure, a crossor.Sheldon.

6.Azure, a lion rampantor, within a borduregulescharged with eight water-bougetsargent.

7.Warwick.

8.Spencer.

9.Azure, a bend between six birdsor.Monteneyof Essex.

10.Gules, sprinkled with cross-crossletsor, and a saltire verry potentargentandazure.Champernoun.

11.Geneville.

12.England.

13. Checkyargentandazure, on a bendgules, three garbs (?) or escallop-shells (?)or.

14.Or, on a fessgulesbetween six fleurs-de-lis three and threegules, three fleurs-de-lisor.

15.Gules, a lion rampantargent, within a bordureazure, charged with eight water-bougetsor.

16. Checkyorandgules, on a bendazure, five horse-shoesargent.

17. Same as 1.

18. Same as 2.

19. Same as 3.Ferrers.

20. Same as 10.Champernoun.

21. Same as 10 in the orphrey.Clifford.

22. Same as 8.Spencer.

23.Azure, between six escallop-shells (?) three and three, a bendor.Tyddeswall.

24. Same as 6.

25. Paly of tenargentandazure, on a bendgules, three escallop-shells (?)or. A coat ofGrandison.

26.Gules, a lion rampantor.Fitz Alan.

27. Barryargentandazure, a chief checkyorandgules.

28.Geneville.

29. Party per fessazureandor, a cross fusil counterchanged.

30.Argent, four birdsgules, between a saltiregules, charged with nine bezants.Hampden(?).

31.Azure, five fusils in fesseor.Percy.

32. Same as 1, on the orphrey.Everard.

33. Same as 6, on the orphrey.Warwick.

34.Gules, three lucies hauriant in fess between six cross-crossletsor.Lucy.

35. Paly of tenorandazure, on a fessgules, three mullets of six pointsargent, voided with a crossazure.Chambowe(?).

36. Party per fessgules, frettedor, andermine.Ribbesford(?).

37. Same as 9.

38.Or, on a crossgules, five escallop-shellsargent.Bygod.

39. Barry, a chief paly and the corners gyronny,orandazure, an inescutcheonermine.Roger de Mortimer.

40. Same as 6.

41. Party per fess,argentthree eight-petaled flowers formed as it were out of a knot made cross-wise, with two flowers at the end of each limb, andazurewith a string of lozenges like a fessargent, and three fleurs-de-lis (?) two and oneor.

42.Gules, a fess checkyargentandazure, between twelve cross crossletsor. Possibly one of the many coats taken byLe Botiler.

43.Azure, three lucies hauriant in fess between six cross-crossletsor.Lucy.

44.Ermine, on a chevrongules, three escallop-shellsor.GolboreorGrove.

45. Gyronny of twelveorandazure.De Bassingburn.

Besides their heraldry, squares upon which are shown swans and peacocks wrought at each corner, afford, in those birds, objects of much curious interest for every lover of mediæval symbolism under its various phases.

In the symbolism of those times, the star and the crescent, the peacock and the swan, had, each of them, its own several figurative meanings. By the first of these emblems was to be understood, according to the words, in Numbers xxiv. 17, of Balaam’s prophecy,—“a star shall arise out of Jacob,”—our Saviour, who says of His divine self, Apocalypse xxii. 16, “I am the bright and morning star.” By inference, the star not only symbolized our Lord Himself, but His Gospel—Christianity—in contradistinction to Mahometanism, against which the crusades had been but lately carried on. The star of Bethlehem, too, was thus also brought before the mind with all its associated ideas of the Holy Land.

The crescent moon, on the shields with the Holy Lamb, represents the Church, for the reason that small at first, but getting her light from the true Sun of justice, our Lord, she every day grows larger, and at the end of time, when all shall believe in her, will at last be in her full brightness. This symbolism is set forth, at some length, by PetrusCapuanus as quoted by Dom (now Cardinal) Pitra in his valuable “Spicilegium Solesmense,” t. ii. 66. But for an English mediæval authority on the point, we may cite our own Alexander Neckam, bornA.D.1157 at St. Albans, and who had as a foster-brother King Richard of the Lion-Heart. In his curious work, “De Naturis Rerum,” not long since printed for the first time, and published by the authority of Her Majesty’s treasury, under the direction of the Master of the Rolls, Neckam thus writes:—“Per solem item Christus, verus sol justiciæ plerumque intelligitur; per lunam autem ecclesia, vel quæcunque fidelis anima. Sicut autem luna beneficium lucis a sole mendicat, ita et fidelis anima a Christo qui est lux vera.” P. 53.

Not always was the peacock taken to be the unmitigated emblem of pride and foolish vanity. Osmont the cleric, in his “Volucraire, or Book of Birds,” after noticing its scream instead of song, its serpent-like shape of head that it carries so haughtily, but lowers quite abashed as it catches a glimpse at its ugly feet, and its garish plumage with the many bright-eyed freckles on its fan-like tail which it loves to unfold for admiration, draws these comparisons. As the peacock affrights us by its cry, so does the preacher, when he thunders against sin startle us into a hatred of it; if the step of the bird be so full of majesty, with what steadiness ought a true Christian fearlessly tread his narrow path. A man may perhaps find a happiness, nay, show a pride in the conviction of having done a good deed, perhaps may sometimes therefore carry his head a trifle high, and, strutting like the peacock, parade his pious works to catch the world’s applause; as soon as he looks into Holy Writ and there learns the weakness, lowliness, of his own origin, he too droops his head in all humility. Those eye-speckled feathers in its plumage warn him that never too often can he have his eyes wide open, and gaze inwardly upon his own heart and know its secret workings. Thus spoke an Anglo-Norman writer.

About the swan an Englishman, our Alexander Neckam, says:—“Quid quod cygnus in ætate tenella fusco colore vestitus esse videtur, qui postmodum in intentissimum candorem mutatur? Sic nonnulli caligine peccatorum prius obfuscati, postea candoris innocentiæ veste spirituali decorantur.”—De Naturis Rerum, p. 101. Here our countryman hands us the key to the symbolic appearance of the swan upon this liturgical garment; for, as while a cygnet, its feathers are always of a dusky hue, but when the bird has grown up its plumage changes into the most intensely white, just so, some people who are at first darkened with the blackness of sin, in after days become adorned with the garb of white innocence.

Besides their ecclesiastical meanings these same symbols had belonging to them a secular significance. Found upon a piece of stuff quite apart from that of the cope itself, and worked for the adornment of that fine vestment after a lapse of many years, made up too of an ornamentation the whole of which is heraldic and thus bringing to mind worldly knights and their blazons and its age’s chivalry, it is easy to find out for it an adaptation to the chivalric notions and customs of those times. The Bethlehem star overtopping the Islam badge of the crescent moon showed forth the wishes of every one who had been or meant to be a crusader, or rather more, not merely of our men at arms but of every true believer throughout Christendom whose untiring prayers were that the Holy Land might be wrested from the iron hand of the Mahometan. At great national festivities and solemn gatherings of the aristocracy, not the young knight alone then newly girt, but the grey-haired warrior would often, in that noble presence, bind himself by vow to do some deed of daring, and swore it to heaven, and the swan, the pheasant, or the peacock as the bird of his choice, was brought with a flourish of trumpets, and amid a crowd of stately knights waiting on a bevy of fair young ladies, and set before him. This sounds odd at this time of day; not so did it in mediæval times, when those birds were looked upon with favour on account of the majestic gracefulness of their shape, or the sparkling beauty of their plumage. It must not be forgotten that this orphrey was blazoned by English hands in England, and while all the stirring doings of our first Edward were yet fresh in our people’s remembrance. That king had been and fought in the Holy Land against the Saracens. At his bidding, towards the end of life, a scene remarkable even in that period of royal festive magnificence, took place, when he himself, in the year 1306, girded his son, afterwards Edward II, with the military belt in the palace of Westminster, and then sent him to bestow the same knightly honour, in the church of that abbey, upon the three hundred young sons of the nobility, who had been gathered from all parts of the kingdom to be his companions in the splendours of the day. But that grand function was brought to an end by a most curious yet interesting act; to the joyous sounds of minstrelsy came forwards a procession, bearing along a pair of swans confined in a net, the meshes of which were made of cords fashioned like reeds and wrought of gold. These birds were set in solemn pomp before the king; and there and then Edward swore by the God in heaven and the swans that he would go forth and wage war against the Scots: Matthew Westminster, p. 454. No wonder, then, that along with the star and crescent we find the knightly swan and peacock mingled in the heraldryof the highest families in England, wrought upon a work from English hands, during the fourteenth century. A long hundred years after this elaborate orphrey was worked we find that Dan John Lydgate, monk of Bury St. Edmund’s, in his poem called “All stant in chaunge like a mydsomer Rose,” upon the fickleness of all earthly things, while singing of this life’s fading vanities, counts among them—

“Vowis of pecok, with all ther proude chere.”Minor Poems,ed. Halliwell for Percy Society, p. 25.

“Vowis of pecok, with all ther proude chere.”Minor Poems,ed. Halliwell for Percy Society, p. 25.

“Vowis of pecok, with all ther proude chere.”Minor Poems,ed. Halliwell for Percy Society, p. 25.

“Vowis of pecok, with all ther proude chere.”

Minor Poems,ed. Halliwell for Percy Society, p. 25.

To the wild but poetic legend of the swan and his descendants, we have already alluded in our Introduction.

A word or two now upon the needlework, how it was done, and a certain at present unused mechanical appliance to it after it was wrought, so observable upon this vestment, lending its figures more effect, and giving it, as a teaching example of embroidery, much more value than any foreign piece in this numerous collection.

Looking well into this fine specimen of the English needle, we find that, for the human face, all over it, the first stitches were begun in the centre of the cheek, and worked in circular, not straight lines, into which, however, after the middle had been made, they fell, and were so carried on through the rest of the fleshes. After the whole figure had thus been wrought; then with a little thin iron rod ending in a small bulb or smooth knob slightly heated, were pressed down those spots upon the faces worked in circular lines, as well as that deep wide dimple in the throat especially of an aged person. By the hollows thus lastingly sunk, a play of light and shadow is brought out that, at a short distance, lends to the portion so treated a look of being done in low relief. Upon the slightly-clothed person of our Lord this same process is followed in a way that tells remarkably well; and the chest with the upper part of the pelvis in the figure of our Saviour overcoming Thomas’s unbelief, shows a noteworthy example of the mediæval knowledge of external anatomy.

We must not, however, hide from ourselves the fact that the edges, though so broad and blunt, given by such a use of the hot iron to parts of an embroidery, expose it somewhat to the danger of being worn out more in those than other portions which soon betray the damage by their thread-bare dingy look, as is the case in the example just cited.

The method for filling in the quatrefoils, as well as working much of the drapery on the figures, is remarkable for being done in a long zigzag diaper-pattern, and after the manner called in ancient inventories,“opus plumarium,” from the way the stitches overlie each other like the feathers on a bird.

The stitchery on the armorial bearings is the same as that now followed in so many trifling things worked in wool.

The canvas for every part of this cope is of the very finest sort; but oddly enough, its crimson canvas lining is thick and coarse. What constituted, then, the characteristics of the “opus Anglicum,” or English work, in mediæval embroidery were, first, the beginning of the stitchery in certain parts of the human figure—the face especially—in circular lines winding close together round and round; and, in the second place, the sinking of those same portions into permanent hollows by the use of a hot iron.

A word or two now about the history of this fine cope.

In olden days not a town, hardly a single parish, throughout England, but had in it one or more pious associations called “gilds,” some of which could show the noblest amongst the layfolks, men and women, and the most distinguished of the clergy in the kingdom, set down upon the roll of its brotherhood, which often grew up into great wealth. Each of these gilds had, usually in its parish church, a chapel, or at least an altar of its own, where, for its peculiar service, it kept one if not several priests and clerics, provided, too, with every needful liturgical appliance, articles of which were frequently the spontaneous offering of individual brothers, who sometimes clubbed together for the purpose of thus making their joint gift more splendid. Now it is most remarkable that upon this cope, and quite apart from the sacred story on it, we have two figures, that to the left, pranked out in the gay attire of some rich layman; on the right, the other, who must be an ecclesiastic from the tonsure on his head; each bears an inscribed scroll in his hand, and both are in the posture of suppliants making offerings. This cleric and this layman may have been akin to one another, brothers, too, of the same gild for which they at their joint cost got this cope worked and gave to it. But where was this gild itself?

Among the foremost of our provincial cities once was reckoned Coventry. Its Corpus Christi plays or mysteries, illustrated by this embroidery, enjoyed such a wide-spread fame that for the whole eight days of their performance, every year, they drew crowds of the highest and the gentlest of the land far and near, as the “Paston Letters” testify, to see them; its gild was of such repute that our nobility—lords and ladies—our kings and queens, did not think it anywise beneath their high estate to be enrolled among its brotherhood. Besides many other authorities, we have one in that splendid pieceof English tapestry—figured with Henry VI, Cardinal Beaufort, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and other courtiers, on the left or men’s side, and on the women’s, Queen Margaret, the Duchess of Buckingham, and other ladies, most of them on their knees, and all hearing mass—still hanging on the wall of the dining hall of St. Mary’s gild, of which that king, with his queen and all his court became members; and at whose altar, as brethren, they heard their service, on some Sunday, or high festival, which they spent at Coventry. Taking this old city as a centre, with a radius of no great length, we may draw a circle on the map which will enclose Tamworth, tower and town, Chartly Castle, Warwick, Charlcote, Althorp, &c. where the once great houses of Ferrers, Beauchamp, Lucy, and Spencer held, and some of them yet hold, large estates; and from being the owners of broad lands in its neighbourhood, their lords would, in accordance with the religious feeling of those times, become brothers of the famous gild of Coventry; and on account of their high rank, find their arms emblazoned upon the vestments belonging to their fraternity. That such a pious queen as the gentle Eleanor, our First Edward’s first wife, who diedA.D.1290, should have, in her lifetime, become a sister, and by her bounties made herself to be gratefully remembered after death, is very likely, so that we may with ease account for her shield—Castile and Leon—as well as for the shields of the other great families we see upon the orphrey, being wrought there as a testimonial that, while, like many others, they were members, they also had been munificent benefactors to the association. A remembrance of brotherhood for those others equally noble, but less generous in their benefactions, may be read in those smaller shields upon the narrow hem going along the lower border of this vestment. The whole of it must have taken a long, long time in the doing; and the probability is that it was worked by the nuns of some convent which stood in or near Coventry.

Upon the banks of the Thames, at Isleworth, near London, in the year 1414, Henry V. built, and munificently endowed, a monastery to be called “Syon,” for nuns of St. Bridget’s order. Among the earliest friends of this new house was a Master Thomas Graunt, an official in one of the ecclesiastical courts of the kingdom. In the Syon nuns’ martyrologium—a valuable MS. lately bought by the British Museum—this churchman is gratefully recorded as the giver to their convent of several precious ornaments, of which this very cope seemingly is one. It was the custom for a gild, or religious body, to bestow some rich church vestment upon an ecclesiastical advocate who had befriended it by his pleadings before the tribunals, and thus to convey their thanksto him along with his fee. After such a fashion this cope could have easily found its way, through Dr. Graunt, from Warwickshire to Middlesex. At the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign it went along with the nuns as they wandered in an unbroken body through Flanders, France, and Portugal, where they halted. About sixty years ago it came back again from Lisbon to England, and has found a lasting home in the South Kensington Museum.

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