colours: "Magisque legendis libris vel canendis psalmis, quam texendis et plectendis vario colore inanis gloriæ vestibus studeant operam dare."[1] By that curious old English book, the "Ancren Riwle," written towards the end of the twelfth century, ankresses are forbidden to make purses to gain friends therewith, or blodbendes.[2] Were it not that the weaving especially of silk, was so generally followed in the cloister by English women, it had been useless to have so strongly discountenanced the practice.
Those "blodbendes," or narrow strips for winding round the arm after bleeding, are curiously illustrative of an old national custom for health-*sake kept up in the remembrance of some old folks still living, of periodical blood-letting. To his practices upon the heads and chins of people the barber at no remote period, added that of bleeding them; and the old English barber surgeons held a high position among the gilds of London. To show where he lived each member of that brotherhood had hanging out from the walls of his house a long thin pole painted spirally black and white, the white in token of the blodbende or bandage to be winded and kept about the patient's arm.
But on silk weaving by our women in small hand-looms, a very important witness, especially about several curious specimens in this collection, is John Garland, born at the beginning of the thirteenth century in London, where his namesakes and likely of his stock, were and are known. First, a John Garland, A.D. 1170, held a prebend's stall in St. Paul's Cathedral.[3] Another, A.D. 1211, was sheriff, at a later period.[4] A third, a wealthy draper of London, gave freely towards the building of a church in Somersetshire.[5] A fourth, who died A.D. 1461, lies buried in St. Sythe's;[6] and, at the present day, no fewer than twenty-two trades-*men of that name, of whom six are merchants of high standing in the city, are mentioned in the London Post Office Directory for this year 1868. We give these instances as some have tried to rob us of John Garland by saying he was not an Englishman, though of himself he had said: "Anglia cui mater fuerat, cui gallia nutrix," &c.
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."[7] Though short, this passage is curious and valuable. From
