Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 4.djvu/316

 293 ENGLISH MEDIEVAL EMBROIDERY. vanity or a natural desire to see suitably executed, she caused to be erected during her lifetime. The archbishop of York preached her funeral sermon, and pronounced a lofty eulo- gium upon her virtues. That she was discreet and prudent in the management of her temporal affairs, is shewn by the height of grandem' to which her vast estates raised the houses of Cavendish and Newcastle, and by the four ducal, even the royal alliance of her grand-daughters. Yet with all the care exercised in exalting her family to this extraordinary pitch of greatness, with a laudable ambition to decorate her native county with the most magnificent residences England can boast of, with an affectionate discharge of maternal duties to fourteen children, and a due performance of the conjugal obe- dience claimed successively by four husbands, she, like all the gentlewomen of that generation, found leisure to embroider her own chairs, and work her own counterpanes. From a personage so exalted we must descend to those of a more humble station, though perhaps they may be more memorable for their manual attainments. The first we read of is a damsel whose fame has been handed down to us by a passage in the Domesday Survey. Aluuid, for such is her name, held at Achelai, in Buckinghamshire, two hides of land, freely to bequeath or sell to whom she chose, and from the demesne fee of the Confessor she had half a hide, which Earl Godric granted to her as long as he remained earl, on con- dition of her teaching his daughter to work embroidery. This most curious entry in the Conqueror's Survey is not however the only one which it contains allusive to the art, since there is a second that speaks of a certain Leuide, who made, and continued to make when the record was formed, embroidery for the use of the king and queen. The casula, wrought by the wife of Alcleret of Winchester, and mentioned in the will of Matilda, as left to the church of the Holy Trinity at Caen, and the clamis wrought in gold which was laid up in her chamber, and the vestment worked in England, have pre- viously been slightly alluded to. The testament itself ie how- ever so remarkable that it deserves to be placed before the attention of the reader entire. Ei^o Mathildis Regina do Sanctse Trinitati Cadomi casulam quam apud Wintoniam operatur uxor Aldereti, et clamidein operatam ex auro qua? est in camera mea ad cappam faciendam, atque de duabus ligaturis meis aureis in quibus cruces stint, ilhun (puc embleniatibus est insculpta, ad lampadem