Page:Costume, fanciful, historical, and theatrical (1906).djvu/249

XVII England, and taffy was the name of a watered edition of this, which we owe to the refugees, who crowded here in their numbers, and made us familiar with brocade amongst other novelties. Satin was known in England as early as the thirteenth century, having been imported into Europe from China, but not achieving much popularity owing to its exorbitant price, though later Henry VIII. had a great predilection for it in red. Amongst stuffs associated immortally with history and romance are sackcloth and samite, and the latter, besides bearing its fame down from biblical days, has been credited with possessing every known virtue that the textile is heir to; it was originally, no doubt, a heavy silk material woven with a thread of six fibres, and carrying thick upon its surface most glossy honours. When Sir Launcelot came to King Arthur, the poet says:

And it is in white we invariably picture it, yet more constantly in olden days it was made in red. Suffering much change in its orthography, it was originally written "samits," later "samit," and finally invested with the final "e," and yet while every record grants it a silken surface, some German scholar, owing to the circumstance that to this day their word "samt" expresses velvet, is quite convinced that the samit of old was of velvet substance.

To China was accorded the privilege of persuading us permanently of the charms of brocade and velvet, and the descriptions of the mediæval velvets suggest that this could have been no difficult task,