Page:Textile fabrics; a descriptive catalogue of the collection of church-vestments, dresses, silk stuffs, needle-work and tapestries, forming that section of the Museum (IA textilefabricsde00soutrich).pdf/126

 as appears from Domesday. Coming from Bayeux itself, and owing service to its bishop, through whom they had become rich lords in England, these three men may have very naturally wished to make a joint offering to the cathedral of their native city. Hence they had this piece of needlework done in London, and on it caused, neither Matilda nor any of the great chiefs of the Norman expedition, but instead, the bishop of Bayeux and themselves its citizens to be so conspicuously set forth upon what was meant to be, for Bayeux itself, a memorial of the part that the bishop and three men of Bayeux had taken in the Norman conquest of England.

On second thoughts, we look upon this curious piece as the work of the early part of the twelfth century, perhaps as an offering to the new church (the old one having been burned down by our Henry I. 1106) of Bayeux, as in measurement it exactly fits for hanging both sides of the present nave, its original as well as recent purpose.

In future, then, our writers may be led to use with caution this so-called Bayeux Tapestry, as a document cotemporaneous with the Norman conquest.

Though, in the reign of our Henry II. London was the head city of this kingdom, and the chief home of royalty, some reader may perhaps be startled on hearing that while its churches were 120, the inhabitants amounted only to the number of 40,000, as we learn from Peter, its then archdeacon: "nam quum sint in illa civitate (Londinensi) quadra-*ginta millia hominum, atque centum et viginti ecclesiæ," &c. —yet, at that very time, the capital of Sicily—Palermo—by itself was yielding to its king a yearly revenue quite equal in amount to the whole income of England's sovereign, as we are told by Gerald Barry the learned Welsh writer then living: "Urbs etenim una Siciliæ, Palernica scilicet, plus certi redditus regi Siculo singulis annis reddere solet, quam Anglorum regi nunc reddit Anglia tota." This great wealth was gathered to Sicily by her trade in silken textiles, first with the Byzantines and the coasts of Asia Minor and Alexandria, where those stuffs were at the time wrought; and secondly, with Europe, and the products of her own looms somewhat later. Many of the pieces in this collection were woven at Palermo and other cities in that island. She herself was not the least consumer of her own industry, and of the profuse employment of silk for royal awnings, during the twelfth century in the kingdom of the two Sicilies. We have an example in the silken tent, made for queen Joan, and given her by