used to caress the king. The duke asked the king, 'What does this mean?' 'Cousin,' replied the king, 'it means a great deal for you, and very little for me. This greyhound fondles and pays his court to you this day as King of England.'"[1] That such a pet as Math once so given to fawn upon his royal master should, with other emblematic animals, have been figured in the pattern on a textile meant for its master's wear, or that of his court, seems very likely: and thus the piece before us possesses a more than ordinary interest.
Respecting ecclesiastical symbolism, we have to observe that with regard to the subjects figured upon these liturgical embroideries, we may see at a glance, that the one untiring wish, both of the designer and of those who had to wear those vestments, was to set before the people's eyes and to bring as often as possible to their mind the divinity of Christ, strongly and unmistakably, along with the grand doctrine of the Atonement. Whether it be cope, or chasuble, or reredos, or altar-frontal such a teaching is put forth upon it. Beginning with the divinity of our Saviour's manhood, sometimes we have shown us how, with such lowly reverence, Gabriel spoke his message to the Blessed Virgin Mary with the mystic three-flowered lily standing up between them; or the Nativity with the shepherds or the wise men kneeling in adoration to acknowledge the divinity of our Lord even as a child just born; then some event in His life, His passion, His scourging at the pillar, the bearing of His cross, His being crowned with thorns, always His crucifixion, often above that, His upraised person like a king enthroned and crowning her of whom He had taken flesh; while everywhere about the vestment are represented apostles, martyrs, and saints all nimbed with glory, and among them, winged seraphim standing upon wheels, signifying that heaven is now thrown open to fallen but redeemed man, who, by the atonement wrought for him by our Divine Redeemer, is made to become the fellow-companion of angels and cherubim. To this same end, the black vestments worn at the services for the dead were, according to the old English rite, marked; the chasubles on the back with a green cross upon a red ground, the copes with a red orphrey at their sides, to remind those present that while they mourned their departed friend, they must believe that his soul could never enter heaven unless made clean and regenerated by the atoning blood shed for it on the cross.
At his dubbing, "unto a knight is given a sword, which is made in the semblance of the cross, for to signify how our Lord God vanquished in the cross the death of human lineage, to the which he was judged for
- ↑ Froissart's Chronicles, by Johnes, t. ii. chap. cxiii p. 692.
