Chapter 8

[39]Dugdale’s St. Paul’s, p. 264.

[40]Liber de Antiq. Legibus, pp. 3, 223.

[41]Leland’s Itinerary, t. 7, p. 99.

[42]Stowe’s Survey, B. iii. p. 31.

In a sort of very short dictionary, drawn up by that writer, and printed at the end of “Paris sous Philippe Le Bel,” edited by M. H. Geraud, our countryman says: “Textrices quæ texunt serica texta projiciunt fila aurata officio cavillarum et percuciunt subtemina cum linea (lignea?) spata: de textis vero fiunt cingula et crinalia divitum mulierum et stole sacerdotum.”[43]Though short, this passage is curious and valuable. Fromit we learn that, besides the usual homely textiles, those more costly cloth-of-gold webs were wrought by our women, and very likely, among their other productions—cingula—were those “blodbendes,” the weaving of which had been forbidden to ankresses and nuns; perhaps, too, of those narrow gold-wrought ribbons in this collection, pp. 24, 33, 38, 217, 218, 219, 221, &c., some may have been so employed by our high-born dames on occasion of their being bled, since as late as the sixteenth century some seasons were deemed fit, others quite unfitting for the operation. Hence, in his Richard II. act 1, scene i. Shakespeare makes the king to warn those wrath-kindled gentlemen, Bolingbroke and Norfolk:

Our doctors say this is no month to bleed.

[43]Ib. 607.

And our most popular books in olden time, one the Shepherd’s Kalendar, speaking about the signs of the zodiack, tell us which of the twelve months are either good, evil, or indifferent for blood-letting.

John Garland’s “cingula” may also mean those rich girdles or sashes worn by our women round the waist, and of which we have one in this collection,No. 8571, p. 218. Of this sort, is that border—amber coloured silk and diapered—round a vestment found in a grave at Durham, and like “a thick lace, one inch and a quarter broad—evidently owing its origin, not to the needle, but to the loom,” &c.[44]For the artist wishful to be correct concerning the head-gear of ladies from Anglo-Saxon times till the end of the later Plantagenets, this collection can furnish examples of those bands in those narrow textiles spoken of by our John Garland. For an after-period those bands are shown on the statuary, and amid the limning in illuminated MSS. of the thirteenth century; as instances of the narrow girdle, may be viewed a lady’s effigy, in Romney church, Hants; and that of Ann of Bohemia, in Westminster Abbey; both to be found in Hollis’s Monumental Effigies of Great Britain; for the band about the head, the examples in the wood-cuts in Planchè’s British Costumes, p. 116.

[44]Raine’s St. Cuthbert, p. 196.

Of such head-bands we have one at number8569, p. 217, and other three mentioned uponp. 221. They are, no doubt, the old snôd of the Anglo-Saxon period. For high-born dames they were wrought of silk and gold; those of lower degree wore them of simpler stuff. The silken snood, affected to the present hour by young unmarried women in Scotland, is a truthful witness to the fashion in vogue during Anglo-Saxon and later times in this country.

With regard to what John Garland says of stoles so made, there is one here,No. 1233, p. 24, quite entire.

From what has been here brought forward, it will be seen that of silk, whence it came or what was its kind, nothing was truly understood, even by the learned, for many ages. While, then, we smile at Virgil and the other ancients for thinking that silk was a sort of herbaceous fleece growing upon trees, let us not forget that not so many years ago our own Royal Society printed a paper in which it is set forth that the yet-called Barnacle Goose comes from a mussel-like bivalve shell, known as the “Anatifa,” or Barnacle, an origin for the bird still believed in by some of our seafaring folks, and fostered after a manner by well-read people by the scientific nomenclature of the shell and the vernacular epithet for the goose. In the twelfth century, our countryman, Alexander Neckham, foster-brother to our Richard I., wrote of this marvel thus: “Ex lignis abiegnis salo diuturno tempore madefactis originem sumit avis quæ vulgo dicitur bernekke,” &c.[45]Such, however, was the Cirencester Augustinian friar’s knowledge of natural history, that, at least four hundred years ere the Royal Society had a being amongst us, he thus spurns the popular belief upon the subject:—

Ligna novas abiegna salo madefacta, jubenteNatura, volucres edere fama refert.Id viscosus agit humor, quod publica famaAfserit indignans philosophia negat.[46]

Ligna novas abiegna salo madefacta, jubente

Natura, volucres edere fama refert.

Id viscosus agit humor, quod publica fama

Afserit indignans philosophia negat.[46]

Of a truth the Record Commission is doing England good service by drawing out of darkness the works of our mediæval writers.

[45]De Natura Rerum, p. 99, published under the direction of the Master of the Rolls.

[46]Ib. p. 304.

The breeding of the worm and the manufacture of its silk both spread themselves with steady though slow steps over most of those countries which skirt the shores of the Mediterranean; so that, by the tenth century, those processes had reached from the far east to the uttermost western limits of that same sea. Even then, and a long time after, the natural history of the silkworm became known but to a very few. Our aforesaid countryman, Alexander Neckham, made Abbot of Cirencester,A.D.1213, was, it is likely, the first who, while he had learned, tried in his popular work, “De Natura Rerum,” to help others to understand the habits of the insect: “Materiam vestium sericarum contexit vermis qui bombex dicitur. Foliis celsi, quæ vulgo morus dicitur, vescitur, et materiam serici digerit; postquam vero operari cœperit, escam renuit, labori delicioso diligentem operam impendens. Calathi parietes industrius textor circuit, lanam educens crocei coloris quæ nivei candoris efficitur per ablutionem, antequam tinctura artificialis superinduitur. Consummatoautem opere nobilis textoris, thecam in opere proprio involutam centonis in modum subintrat jamque similis papilioni, &c.”[47]

[47]Ed. T. Wright, p. 272.

Of those several raw materials that have, from the earliest periods, been employed in weaving, though not in such frequency as silk, one is

which, when judiciously brought in, brings with it, not a barbaric, but artistical richness.

The earliest written notice we have about the employment of this precious metal in the loom, or of the way in which it was wrought for such a purpose, we find set forth in the Pentateuch, where Moses tells us that he (Beseleel) made of violet and purple, scarlet and fine linen, the vestments for Aaron to wear when he ministered in the holy places. So he made an ephod of gold, violet, and purple, and scarlet twice dyed, and fine twisted linen, with embroidered work; and he cut thin plates of gold and drew them small into strips, that they might be twisted with the woof of the aforesaid colours.[48]Instead of “strip,” the authorized version says, “wire,” another translation reads “thread;” but neither can be right, for both of these English words mean a something round or twisted in the shape given to the gold before being wove, whereas the metal must have been worked in quite flat, as we learn from the text.

[48]Exodus xxxix. 1, 2, 3.

This brings us to a short notice of

The use of gold for weaving, both along with linen or quite by itself, existed, it is likely, among the Egyptians, long before the days of Moses. In either way of its being employed, the precious metal was at first wrought in a flattened, never in a round or wire shape. To this hour the Chinese and the people of India work the gold into their stuffs after the first and ancient form. In this fashion, to even now, the Italians love to weave their lama d’oro, or the more glistening toca—those cloths of gold which, to all Asiatic and many European eyes, do not glare with too much garishness, but shine with a glow that befits the raiment of personages in high station.

Among the nations of ancient Asia, garments made of webs dyed with the costly purple tint, and interwoven with gold, were on all grand occasions worn by kings and princes. So celebrated did the Medes and Persians become in such works of the loom, that cloths of extraordinarybeauty got their several names from those peoples, and Medean, Lydian, and Persian textiles came to be everywhere sought for with eagerness.

Writing of the wars carried on in Asia and India by Alexander the Great, almost four centuries before the birth of Christ, Quintus Curtius often speaks about the purple and gold garments worn by the Persians and more eastern Asiatics. Among the many thousands of those who came forth from Damascus to the Greek general, Parmenio, many were so clad: “Vestes ... auro et purpura insignes induunt.”[49]All over India the same fashion was followed in dress. When an Indian king, with his two grown-up sons, came to Alexander, all three were so arrayed: “Vestis erat auro purpuraque distincta, &c.”[50]Princes and the high nobility, all over the East, are by Quintus Curtius called, “purpurati.”[51]Not only garments but hangings were made of the same costly fabric. When Alexander wished to afford some ambassadors a splendid reception, the golden couches upon which they lay to eat their meat were screened all about with cloths of gold and purple: “Centum aurei lecti modicis intervallis positi erant: lectis circumdederat (rex Alexander) ælæa purpura auroque fulgentia, &c.”[52]But these Indian guests themselves were not less gorgeously arrayed in their own national costume, as they came wearing linen (perhaps cotton) garments resplendent with gold and purple: “Lineæ vestes intexto auro purpuraque distinctæ, &c.”[53]

The dress worn by Darius, as he went forth to do battle, is thus described by the same historian: The waist part of the royal purple tunic was wove in white, and upon his mantle of cloth of gold were figured two golden hawks as if pecking at one another with their beaks: “Purpureæ tunicæ medium album intextum erat: pallam auro distinctam aurei accipitres, velut rostris inter se concurrerent, adornabant.”[54]

[49]Q. Curtii Rufi, lib. iii. cap. xiii. 34, p. 26, ed Foss.

[50]Ib. lib. ix. cap. i. p. 217.

[51]Ib. lib. iii. cap. ii. p. 4, cap. viii. p. 16.

[52]Ib. lib. ix. cap. vii. p. 233.

[53]Ib. cap. vii. p. 233.

[54]Ib. lib. iii. cap. iii. p. 7.

From the east this love for cloth of gold reached the southern end of Italy, called Magna Græcia, and thence soon got to Rome; where, even under its early kings and much later under its emperors, garments made of it were worn. Pliny, speaking of this rich textile, says:—Gold may be spun or woven like wool, without any wool being mixed with it. We are informed by Verrius, that Tarquinius Priscus rode in triumph in a tunic of gold; and we have seen Agrippina, the wife of the Emperor Claudius, when he exhibited the spectacle of a naval combat, sitting by him, covered with a robe made entirely of woven gold without any othermaterial.[55]In fact, about the year 1840, the Marquis Campagna dug up, near Rome, two old graves, in one of which had been buried a Roman lady of high birth, inferred from the circumstance that all about her remains were found portions of such fine gold flat thread, once forming the burial garment with which she had been arrayed for her funeral: “Di due sepolcri Romani, del secolo di Augusto scoverti tra la via Latina e l’Appia, presso la tomba degli Scipioni.”

[55]BookXXXIII.c. 19. Dr. Bostock’s Translation.

Now we get to the Christian epoch. When Pope Paschal,A.D.821, sought for the body of St. Cecily, who underwent martyrdomA.D.230, the pontiff found, in the catacombs, the maiden bride whole, and dressed in a garment wrought all of gold, with some of her raiment drenched in blood lying at her feet: “Aureis illud (corpus) vestitum indumentis et linteamina martyris ipsius sanguine plena.”[56]In making the foundations for the new St. Peter’s at Rome, they came upon and looked into the marble sarcophagus in which had been buried Probus Anicius, prefect of the Pretorian, and his wife, Proba Faltonia, each of whose bodies was wrapped in a winding-sheet woven of pure gold strips.[57]Maria Stilicho’s daughter, was wedded to the Emperor Honorius, and died sometime aboutA.D.400. When her grave was opened,A.D.1544, the golden tissues in which her body had been shrouded were taken out and melted, when the yield of precious metal amounted to thirty-six pounds.[58]The late Father Marchi found, among the remains of St. Hyacinthus, martyr, several fragments of the same kind of golden web, winding sheets of which were often given by the opulent for wrapping up the dead body of some poor martyred Christian brother, as is shown by the example specified in Boldetti’s “Cimiteri de’ santi martiri di Roma.”[59]

[56]Liber Pontificalis, t. ii. p. 332, ed. Vignolio, Romæ, 1752; Hierurgia, 2nd ed. p. 275.

[57]Batelli, de Sarco. Marm. Probi Anicii et Probæ Faltoniæ in Temp. Vatic. Romæ. 1705.

[58]Cancellieri, De Secretariis Basil. Vatic. ii. 1000.

[59]T.II.p. 22.

Childeric, the second and perhaps the most renowned king of the Merovingean dynasty, died and was buriedA.D.485, at Tournai. In the year 1653 his grave was found out, and amid the earth about it so many remains of pure gold strips were turned up, that there is every reason for thinking that the Frankish king was wrapped in a mantle of such golden stuff for his burial.[60]That the strips of pure gold out of which the burial cloak of Childeric was woven were not anywise round,but quite flat, we are warranted in thinking, from the fact that, while digging in a Merovingean burial ground at Envermeu,A.D.1855, the distinguished archæologist l’Abbe Cochet came upon the grave once filled, as it seemed, by a young lady whose head had been wreathed with a fillet of pure golden web, the tissue of which is thus described: “Ces fils aussi brillants et aussi frais que s’ils sortaient de la main de l’ouvrier, n’étaient ni étirés ni cordés. Ils étaient plats et se composaient tout semplement de petites lanières d’or d’un millimètre de largeur, coupée à même une feuille d’or épaisse de moins d’un dixième de millimètre. La longueur totale de quelques-uns atteignait parfois jusqu’à quinze ou dix-huit centimètres.”[61]

[60]Cochet, Le Tombeau de Childeric Ier, p. 174.

[61]Cochet, Le Tombeau de Childeric Ierp. 175.

Our own country can furnish an example of this kind of golden textile. At Chessel Down, in the Isle of Wight, when Mr. Hillier was making some researches in an old Anglo-Saxon place of burial, the diggers found pieces of golden strips, thin, and quite flat, which are figured in M. l’Abbé Cochet’s learned book just quoted.[62]Of such a rich texture must have been the vestment covered with precious stones, given to St. Peter’s Church, at Rome, by Charles of France, in the middle of the ninth century: “Carolus rex sancto Apostolo obtulit ex purissimo auro, et gemmis constructam vestem, &c.”[63]

In the working of such webs and embroidery for use in the Church, a high-born Anglo-Saxon lady, Ælthelswitha, with her waiting maids, spent her life near Ely, where, “aurifrixoriæ et texturis secretius cum puellulis vacabat, quæ de proprio sumptu, albam casulam suis manibus ipsa talis ingenii peritissima fecit,” &c.[64]

[62]Ib. p. 176.

[63]Liber Pontificalis, l. iii., p. 201, ed. Vignolia.

[64]Liber Eliensis, ed. Stewart, p. 208.

Such a weaving of pure gold was, here in England, followed certainly as late as the beginning of the tenth century; very likely much later. In the chapter library belonging to Durham Cathedral may be seen, along with several other very precious liturgical appliances, a stole and maniple, which happily, for more reasons than one, bear these inscriptions: “Ælfflaed Fieri Precepit. Pio Episcopo Fridestano.” Queen to Alfred’s son and successor, Edward the elder was our Ælfflaed who got this stole and maniple made for a gift to Fridestan, consecrated bishop of WinchesterA.D.905. With these webs under his eye, Mr. Raine, in his “Saint Cuthbert,”[65]writes thus: In the first, the ground work of the whole is woven exclusively with thread of gold. I do not mean by thread of gold, the silver-gilt wire frequently used in such matters,but real gold thread, if I may so term it, not round, but flat. This is the character of the whole web, with the exception of the figures, the undulating cloud-shaped pedestal upon which they stand, the inscriptions, and the foliage; for all of which, however surprising it may appear, vacant spaces have been left by the loom, and they themselves afterwards inserted with the needle. Further on, in his description of a girdle, the same writer tells us: Its breadth is exactly seven-eighths of an inch. It has evidently proceeded from the loom; and its two component parts are a flattish thread of pure gold, and a thread of scarlet silk, &c.[66]Let it be borne in mind that Winchester was then a royal city, and abounded, as it did afterwards, with able needle-women.

[65]P. 202.

The employment, till a late period, of flattened gold in silk textiles is well shown by those fraudulent imitations, and substitution in its stead of gilt parchment, which we have pointed out among the specimens in this collection, as may be seen at Nos.7095, p. 140;8590, p. 224;8601, p. 229;8639, p. 244, &c.

That these Durham cloth-of-gold stuffs for vestments were home made—we mean wrought in Anglo-Saxondom—is likely, and by our women’s hands, after the way we shall have to speak about further on.

This love for such glittering attire, not only for liturgical use but secular wear, lasted long in England. Such golden webs went here under different names; at first they were called “ciclatoun,” “siglaton,” or “siklatoun,” as the writer’s fancy led him to spell the common Persian word for them at the time throughout the east.

By the old English ritual, plain cloth of gold was allowed, as now, to be taken for white, and worn in the Church’s ceremonials as such, when that colour happened to be named for use by the rubric. Thus in the reign of Richard II., among the vestments at the Chapel of St. George, Windsor Castle, there was “unum vestimentum album bonum de panno adaurato pro principalibus festis B. Mariæ,” &c.[67]

St. Paul’s, London, had, at the end of the thirteenth century, two amices; one an old one, embroidered with solid gold wire: “Amictus breudatus de auro puro; amictus vetus breudatus cum auro puro.”[68]

[66]Mr. Raine, St. Cuthbert, p. 209.

[67]Dugdale’s Mon. Angl. t. viii., p. 1363.

[68]Dugdale, p. 318.

The use of golden stuffs not unlikely woven in England, but assuredly worn by royalty here, is curiously shown by the contrast between the living man clothed in woven gold, and the dead body, and its frightful state at burial, of Henry I., set forth by Roger Hoveden; who thus writes of that king: “vide ... quomodo regis potentissimi corpus cujus cervixdiademite, auro et gemmis electissimis quasi divino splendore vernaverat ... cujus reliqua superficies auro textile tota rutilaverat,” &c.[69]

Often was this splendid web wrought so thick and strong, that each string, whether it happened to be of hemp or of silk, in the warp, had in it six threads, while the weft was of flat gold shreds. Hence such a texture was called “samit,” a word shortened from its first and old Byzantine name “exsamit,” as we shall have to notice further on. Among several other purchases for the wardrobe of Edward I., in the year 1300, we find this entry: “Pro samitis pannis ad aurum tam in canabo quam in serico,” &c.[70]And such was the quantity kept there of this costly cloth, that the nobles of that king were allowed to buy it out of the royal stores; for instance, four pieces at thirty shillings each were sold to the Lord Robert de Clifford, and another piece at the same price to Thomas de Cammill.[71]Not only Asia Minor, but the Island of Cyprus, the City of Lucca, and Moorish Spain, sent us these rich tissues. The cloth of gold from Spain is incidentally spoken of later in the Sherborn bequest, p. lvi. Along with other things left behind him at Haverford castle, by Richard II., were twenty-five cloths of gold of divers suits, of which four came from Cyprus, the others from Lucca: “xxv. draps d or de diverses suytes dount iiii. deCipresles autres deLukes.”[72]How Edward IV. liked cloth-of-gold for his personal wear, may be gathered from his “Wardrobe Accounts,” edited by Nicolas; and the lavish use of this stuff ordered by Richard III. for his own coronation, is recorded in the “Antiquarian Repertory.”[73]The robes to be worn by the unfortunate Edward V. at this same function were cloth of gold tissue. “Diverse peces of cloth of gold” were bought by Henry VII., “of Lombardes.”[74]

[69]Annalium, &c., p. 276, ed. Savile.

[70]Liber Quotidianus Garderobæ, p. 354.

[71]Ib., p. 6.

[72]Ancient Kalendars, &c., ed. Palgrave, t. iii., 358.

[73]I. p. 43, &c.

[74]Excerpta Historica, p. 90.

A “gowne of cloth-of-gold, furred with pawmpilyon, ayenst Corpus Xpi day,” was brought from London to Richmond, to Elizabeth of York, afterwards Henry VII.’s queen, for her to wear as she walked in the procession on that great festival.[75]The affection shown by Henry VIII., and all our nobility, men and women, of the time, for cloth of gold in their garments, was unmistakingly set forth in so many of their likenesses brought together in that very instructive Exhibition of National Portraits in the year,A.D.1866, in the South Kensington Museum. This stuff seems to have been costly then, for Princess, afterwards QueenMary, thirteen years before she came to the throne: “payed to Peycocke, of London, for xix yerds iii. qr̃t of clothe of golde at xxxviij.[~s] the yerde, xxxvijli.xs.vjd.”[76]And for “a yerde and drqr̃t of clothe of siluer xls.”[77]

[75]Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York, p. 33, ed. Nicolas.

[76]Privy Purse Expenses of Princess Mary, ed. Madden, p. 87.

[77]Ib. p. 86.

Cloth of gold called

As between common silk and satin, there runs a broad difference, at least in look, one being dull, the other smooth and glossy, so there is a great distinction to be made among cloths of gold; some are, so to say, dead; others, brilliant and sparkling. When the gold is twisted into its silken filament, it takes the deadened look; when the flattened, filmy strip of metal is rolled about it so evenly as to bring its edges close to one another, it seems to be one unbroken wire of gold, sparkling and lustrous, like what is now known as “passing,” and, during the middle ages, went by the term of Cyprus gold; and rich samits woven with it, were called damasks of Cyprus.

The very self-same things get for themselves other denominations as time goes on: such happened to cloths of gold. What the thirteenth century called, first, “ciclatoun,” then “baudekin,” afterward “nak,” people, two hundred years later, chose to name “tissue,” or the bright shimmering golden textile affected so much by our kings and queens in their dress, for the more solemn occasions of stately grandeur, as was just now mentioned. Up to this time, the very thin smooth paper made at first on purpose to be, when this rich stuff lay by, put between its folds to hinder it from fraying or tarnish, yet goes, though its original use is forgotten, by the name of tissue-paper.

The gorgeous and entire set of vestments presented to the altar at St. Alban’s Abbey, by Margaret, Duchess of Clarence,A.D.1429, and made of the cloth of gold commonly called “tyssewys,” must have been as remarkable for the abundance and purity of the gold in its texture, as for the splendour of the precious stones set on it, as well as the exquisite beauty of its embroideries: “Obtulit etiam unum vestimentum integrum cum tribus capis choralibus de panno Tyssewys vulgariter nuncupato in quibus auri pretiosa nobilitas, gemmarum pulchritudo et curiosa manus artificis stuporem quendam inspectantium oculis repræsentant.”[78]The large number of vestments made out of gold tissue, and of crimson, light blue, purple, green, and black, once belonging to YorkCathedral, are all duly registered in the valuable “Fabric Rolls” of that Church lately published by the Surtees Society.[79]

[78]Mon. Anglic. II. 222.

[79]Pp. 229, &c.

Among those many rich and costly vestments in Lincoln Cathedral, some were made of this sparkling golden tissue contra-distinguished in its inventory, from the duller cloth of gold, thus: “Four good copes of blew tishew with orphreys of red cloth of gold, wrought with branches and leaves of velvet;”[80]“a chesable with two tunacles of blew tishew having a precious orphrey of cloth of gold.”[81]

To this day, in some countries the official robes of certain dignitaries are wrought of this rich textile. Even now, these Roman princes, and the senator whose place on great festivals when the Pope is present, is about the pontifical throne, are all arrayed in state garments made of cloth of gold.

[80]Monasticon Anglicanum, ed. Dugdale, t. viii. p. 1282.

[81]Ib.

Silken textures ornamented with designs in copper gilt thread, were brought into market and honestly sold for what they really were: of such inferior wares we find mention in the inventory of vestments at Winchester Cathedral, drawn up by order of Henry VIII. where we read of “twenty-eight copys of white bawdkyne, woven with copper gold.”[82]The substitution of gilt parchment for metal will be noticed further on, Section vi.

To imitate cloth of gold, the gilding of silk and fine canvas, like our gilding of wood and other substances, though not often, was sometimes resorted to for splendour’s sake on momentary occasions; such, for instance, as some stately procession, or a solemn burial service. Mr. Raine tells us he got from a grave at Durham, among other textiles, “a robe of thinnish silk; the ground colour of the whole is amber; and the ornamental parts were literally covered withleaf gold, of which there remained distinct and very numerous portions.”[83]In the churchyard of Cheam, Surrey,A.D.1865, was found the skeleton of a priest buried there some time during the fourteenth century; around the waist was a flat girdle made of brown silk that had been gilt, and a shred of it now lies before the writer.

In the “Romaunt of the Rose,” translated by Chaucer, Dame Gladnesse is thus described:—

—in an over gilt samiteClad she was.[84]

—in an over gilt samite

Clad she was.[84]

On a piece of German orphrey-web, in this collection,No. 1373, p. 80,and likely done at Cologne, in the sixteenth century, the gold is put by the gilding process.

[82]Ib. t. i. p. 202, new ed.

[83]Saint Cuthbert, by J. Raine, p. 194.

[84]Poems, ed. Nicolas, t. iv. p. 27.

In the year 1295, St. Paul’s, London, had: “Casula de panno inaurato super serico,” a chasuble of gilded silk;[85]and it was lined with red cloth made at Ailesham,[86]or Elesham Priory in Lincolnshire. It had, too, another chasuble, and altar frontals of gilded canvas: “casula de panno inaurato in canabo, lineata carda Indici coloris cum panno consimili de Venetiis ad pendendum ante altare.”[87]Venice seems to have been the place where these gilded silks and canvases, like the leather and pretty paper of a later epoch, were wrought.

[85]Dugdale’s St. Paul’s, p. 335.

[86]Ib.

[87]Ib.

As gold, so too

was hammered out into very thin sheets, which were cut into narrow long shreds to be woven, unmixed with anything else, into a web for garments fitting for the wear of kings. Of this we have a striking illustration in the “Acts,” where St. Luke, speaking of Herod Agrippa, tells us that he presented himself arrayed in kingly apparel, to the people, who to flatter him, shouted that his was the voice, not of a man, but of a god; and forthwith he was smitten by that loathsome disease—eaten up by worms—which shortly killed him.[88]This royal robe, as Josephus informs us, was a tunic all made of silver and wonderful in its texture. Appearing in this dress at break of day in the theatre, the silver, lit up by the rays of the early morning’s sun, gleamed so brightly as to startle the beholders in such a manner that some among them, by way of glozing, shouted out that the king before them was a god.[89]

[88]Acts. c. xii. vv. 21-23.

[89]Ant. l. xix. 8.

Intimately connected with the raw materials, and how they were wrought in the loom, is the question about the time when

was found out. At what period, and among what people the art of working up pure gold, or gilded silver, into a long, round, hair-like thread—into what may be correctly called “wire”—began, is quite unknown. That with their mechanical ingenuity the ancient Egyptians bethought themselves of some method for the purpose, is not unlikely. From Sir Gardiner Wilkinson, we learn that at Thebes there was found the appearance of gold wire.[90]Of those remarkable pieces of Egyptian handicraft the corslets sent by King Amasis—one to Lindus, the second to Lacædemon—of which we have already spoken (p. xiv.), we may fairly presumethat the work upon them done by the needle in gold, required by its minuteness that the precious metal should be not flat, but in the shape of a real wire. By the delicate management of female fingers, the usual narrow flat strips might have been pinched or doubled up, so that the two edges should meet, and then rubbed between men’s harder hands, or better still, between two pieces of smooth highly-polished granite, would produce a golden wire of any required fineness. Belonging to the writer is an Egyptian gold ring, which was taken from off the finger of a mummy by a friend. The hoop is a plain, somewhat thick wire. On each side of its small green-dyed ivory scarabee, to keep it in its place, are wound several rounds of rather fine wire. In Etruscan and Greek jewellery, wire is often to be found; but in all instances it is so well shaped and so even, that no hammer could have hardly wrought it, and it must have been fashioned by some rolling process. All through the mediæval times the filigree work is often very fine and delicate. Likely is it that the embroidery which we thus read of in the descriptions of the vestments belonging whilom to our old churches, for instance: “amictus breudatus cum auro puro”[91]—was worked with gold wire. To go back to Anglo-Saxon times in this country, such gold wire would seem to have been well known and employed, since in Peterborough minster there were two golden altar-cloths: “ii. gegylde ƿeofad sceatas;”[92]and at Ely Cathedral, among its old ritual ornaments, were, in the reign of William Rufus: “Duo cinguli, unus totus de auri filo, alter de pallio cujus pendentia” (the tassels) “sunt bene ornata de auri filo.”[93]

The first idea of a wire-drawing machine dawned upon a workman’s mind in the year 1360, at Nuremberg; and yet it was not until two hundred years after,A.D.1560, that the method was brought to England. One sample of a stuff with pure wire in it may be seen, p. 220,No. 8581, in this collection, as well as atNo. 8228, p. 150.

Back to Index Next