e in foreign inventories.

At Durham are preserved some beautiful fragments of embroidery worked in
the Xth century, and many examples, belonging to the great period of the
XIIIth and XIVth centuries, are preserved at the South Kensington
Museum, which is particularly rich in specimens of this art. In order to
judge of what were then its possibilities it is worth while to go and
see there three notable copes, the blue cope, the Sion cope, and the
rose-colour Jesse-tree cope, the last two of which are certainly
English, and the former probably so. The Sion cope bears a remnant of an
inscription which has unfortunately been cut down and otherwise injured,
so that all that I have been able to read is as follows: DAVN PERS : DE
: V ...; probably the name of the donor.

In the XIIIth century the craft of embroidery was practised both by men
and women.

That great art patron, Henry the Third, chiefly employed for his
embroideries, says Mr. Hudson Turner, "a certain Mabel of Bury St.
Edmund's, whose skill as an embroideress seems to have been remarkable,
and many interesting records of her curious performances might be
collected." And I have found a record of an embroidered chasuble made
for the king by "Mabilia" of St. Edmund's in 1242. The most splendid
piece of embroidery produced for this king must have been the altar
frontal of Westminster Abbey, completed about 1269. It was silk,
garnished with pearls, jewels, and translucent enamels. Four
embroideresses worked on it for three years and three-quarters, and it
seems to have cost a sum equal to about L3000 of our money.

"The London Broderers" did not receive a formal charter of incorporation
until 1561, but they must have been a properly organised craft centuries
before. In 2 Henry IV. it was reported to Parliament that divers persons
of the "Craft of Brauderie" made unfit work of inferior materials,
evading the search of "the Wardens of Brauderie" in the said City of
London.

In Paris, in the year 1295, there were ninety-three embroiderers and
embroideresses registered as belonging to the trade. The term of
apprenticeship to the craft was for eight years, and no employer might
take more than one apprentice at a time. In the XVIth century the Guild
was at the height of its power, and embroideries were so much in demand
that the Jardin des Plantes in Paris was established to furnish
flower-subjects for embroidery design. It was founded by the gardener,
Jean Robin, an