Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/99

Rh extremities of Europe may be collected from the records of the times. One very remarkable notice occurs in the Registry of the Priory of St. Andrew's, in Scotland, in which it is related that Alexander I., when bestowing a certain endowment of land upon the church of that city, presented at the same time an Arabian horse which he was wont to ride, with his bridle, saddle, shield, and silver lance, a magnificent pall or horse-cloth, and other Turkish arms (arma Turchensia) of various descriptions. He caused the horse, arrayed in its splendid furniture, to be led up to the high altar of the church; and the record adds that the Turkish armour, the shield, and the saddle were still preserved there, and shown to the people, who came from all parts of the country to behold them. Alexander reigned from 1107 till 1124; and this account is written in the reign of his brother and successor, David I.

But the most precious gift which Europe obtained from the East within the present period was the knowledge of the art of rearing and managing the silk-worm. Cloth of silk had long been known in England and other European countries, to which it was brought in a manufactured state from Greece and other parts of the East. Afterwards the Saracens introduced the art of weaving silk into Spain. The silk-worm, however, was first brought from Greece in 1146, by Roger, the Norman king of Sicily, who, in an expedition which he led against Athens, Thebes, and Corinth, carried off a great number of silk-weavers from these cities, and settled them in his capital of Palermo. From them the Sicilians learned both how to weave the cloth and how to rear the worm; and within twenty years from this time the silk fabrics of Sicily were celebrated over Europe. It is not till some centuries later that we have any accounts of the establishment of any branch of the manufacture in this country; but from