"i," and smoothed itself into "satin," a word for this silk among us English as well as our neighbours in France, while in Italy it now goes by the name of "raso," and the Spaniards keep up its first designation in their dictionary.
In the earlier inventories of church vestments, no mention can be found of satin; and it is only among the various rich bequests (ed. Oliver) made to his cathedral at Exeter by Bishop Grandison, between A.D. 1327-69 that this fine silk is spoken of; though later, and especially in the royal wardrobe accompts (ed. Nicolas), it is perpetually specified. Hence we may fairly assume that till the beginning of the fourteenth century satin was unknown in England; afterwards it met much favour. Flags were made of it. On board the stately ship in which Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, in the reign of Henry VI., sailed from England to France, there were flying "three penons of satten," besides "sixteen standards of worsted entailed with a bear and a chain," and a great streamer of forty yards in length and eight yards in breadth, with a great bear and griffin holding a ragged staff poudred full of ragged staffs.[1] Like other silken textiles, satin seems to have been, in some few instances, interwoven with flat gold thread, so as to make it a tissue: for example, Lincoln had of the gift of one of its bishops, eighteen copes of red tinsel sattin with orphreys of gold.[2]
Though not often, yet sometimes do we read of a silken stuff called, cadas, carda, carduus, and used for inferior purposes. The outside silk on the cocoon is of a poor quality compared with the inner filaments, from which it is kept quite apart in reeling, and set aside for other uses; this is cadas which the Promptorium Parvulorum defines, however, as "Bombicinium," or silk. St. Paul's, A.D. 1295, had "pannus rubeus diasperatus de Laret lineatus de carda Inda;"[3] and Exeter possessed another cloth for the purpose: "Cum carduis viridibus."[4] More frequently, instead of being spun it served as wadding in dress; on the barons at the siege of Caerlaverock, might be seen many a rich gambeson garnished with silk, cadas, and cotton:—
Meint riche gamboison guarni
De soi, de cadas e coton.[5]
One of the Lenten veils at St. Paul's, in the chapel of St. Faith, was of blue and yellow carde: "velum quadragesimale de carde croceo et indico."[6] The quantity of card purchased for the royal wardrobe,
