satten repte in peces and a clothe made thereof to hange before our pulpitt;"[1] and, A.D. 1520, York cathedral had "a vestment of balkyn (baudekin) with a crosse of green satten in bryges."[2]
Her damask silks were equally in demand; and the specimens here will interest the reader. Nos. 8318, p. 190, 8332, p. 197, show the ability of the Bruges loom, while the then favourite pattern with the pomegranate in it, betrays the likings of the Spaniards, at that time the rulers of the country, for this token of their beloved Isabella's reconquered Granada. No. 8319, p. 191, is another sample of Flemish weaving, rich in its gold, and full of beauty in design.
In her velvets, Flanders had no need to fear a comparison with anything of the kind that Italy ever threw off from her looms, whether at Venice, Florence, or Genoa, as the samples we have here under Nos. 8673, p. 254, 8674, p. 255, 8704, p. 264, will prove. Nay, this last specimen, with its cloth of gold ground, and its pattern in a dark blue deep-piled velvet, is not surpassed in gorgeousness even by that splendid stuff from Florence yet to be seen in one of the copes for Westminster Abbey given it by Henry VII.
Block-printed linen was, toward the end of the fourteenth century, another production of Flanders, of which pieces may be seen at Nos. 7022, p. 118, 7027, p. 120, 8303, p. 184, 8615, p. 234. Though to the eyes of many, these may look so poor, so mean; to men like the cotton-printers of Lancashire and other places they will have a strong attraction; to the scholar they will be deeply interesting as suggestive of the art of printing. Such specimens are rare, but it is likely that England can show, in the chapter library at Durham, the earliest sample of the kind as yet known, in a fine sheet wrapped about the body of some old bishop discovered, along with several pieces of ancient silks, and still more ancient English embroidery, in a grave opened by Mr. Raine, A.D. 1827, within that grand northern cathedral.
What Bruges was in silks and velvets Yprès, in the sixteenth century, became for linen, and for many years Flemish linens had been in favourite use throughout England. Hardly a church of any size, scarcely a gentleman's house in this country, but used a quantity of towels and other napery that was made in Flanders, especially at Yprès.[3] Of this textile instances may be seen at pp. 34, 73, 75, 124, 203, 205, 255, 263.
French silks, now in such extensive use, were until the end of the sixteenth century not much cared for in France itself, and seldom heard
