Baner out de un cendal safrin,
O un lioun rampant purprin.
Most, if not all the other flags were made of the same cendal silk.
When the stalworth knight of Southampton wished to keep himself unknown at a tournament, we thus read of him—
Sir Bevis disguised all his weed
Of black cendal and of rede,
Flourished with roses of silver bright, &c.[1]
Of the ten beautiful silken albs which Hugh Pudsey left to Durham, two were made of samit, other two of cendal, or as the bishop calls it, sandal: "Quæ dicuntur sandales."[2] Exeter cathedral had a red cope with a green lining of sandal: "Capa rubea cum linura viridi sandalis;"[3] and a cape of sandaline: "Una capa de sandalin."[4] Chasubles, too, were, it is likely, for poorer churches, made of cendal or sandel; Piers Ploughman speaks thus to the high dames of his day—
And ye lovely ladies
With youre long fyngres,
That ye have silk and sandal
To sowe, whan tyme is.
Chesibles for chapeleyns,
Chirches to honoure, &c.[5]
A stronger kind of cendal was wrought and called, in the Latin inventories of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, cendatus afforciatus, and of such there was a cope at St. Paul's;[6] while another cope of cloth of gold was lined with it,[7] as also a chasuble of red samit given by Bishop Henry of Sandwich.
Syndonus or Sindonis, as it would seem, was a bettermost sort of cendal. St. Paul's had a chasuble as well as a cope of this fabric: "Casula de sindone purpurea, linita cendata viridi;[8] "capa de syndono Hispanico."[9]
Taffeta, it is likely, if not a thinner, was a less costly silken stuff than cendal; which word, to this day, is used in the Spanish language, and is defined to be a thin transparent textile of silk or linen: "Tela de seda ó lino muy delgada y trasparente."
As the Knights' flags:
Ther gonfanens and ther penselles
Wer well wrought off grene sendels;
