Manufactures.
- factures, the meagre chronicles of the period furnish
little information. We find, however, that Northumberland was then comparatively famous, as it has been ever since, for the manufacture of glass, while the English jewellers and workers in gold surpassed those of most other nations. Nor were the women of England less famous for their taste and skill in the embroidering of silk of various colours interspersed with threads of gold and silver. So famous, indeed, were they in this description of work, that when William the Conqueror sent to his patron, Pope Alexander II., the banner of Harold wrought for him by them, it was remarked that "it might be greatly admired even in Constantinople,"[1] then the wealthiest and most refined city of the world; and similar presents made by him to the church of Caen in Normandy are said to have been "such as strangers of the highest rank, who had seen the treasures of many noble churches, might look upon them with delight; and even the natives of Greece and Arabia, if they were to travel thither, would be equally charmed with them."[2]
Wealth. At this early period there must have been a considerable amount of accumulated wealth in England, to have enabled Canute to have expended the vast sums he is said to have done on his pilgrimage to Rome, or to have allowed Edward the Confessor to build the Abbey of St. Peter's at Westminster, and many other churches, at an enormous expense. Nor do the resources of his treasury appear to have been drained by all this expenditure; for the
