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/137

 worthy enough of being made a testamentary bequest. At the christening of Arthur Prince of Wales, eldest son of Henry VII. "my Lady Cecill, the Queen's eldest sister, bare the prince wrapped in a Mantell of Cremesyn Clothe of Golde furred with Ermyn," &c. Such ceremonial garments varied, according to the owner's position of life, in costliness; hence Shakespeare makes the shepherd, in the "Winter's Tale," cry out, "Here's a sight for thee; look thee, a bearing cloth for a squire's child!" A well-to-do tradesman bequeathed, 1648, to his daughter Rose his "beareing cloath such  linnen as is belonginge to infants at their tyme of baptisme."

Very often in our old country houses are found, thrown aside in some antique chest, certain small square pieces of nice embroidery, the former use for which nobody now knows, and about which one is asked. If their owners would look at those several cradle-quilts here—pp. 4, 13, 66, 67, 100, 103, 104, 110—they might find out such ancient household stuff was wrought for their forefathers' comfort and adornment, when mere babies. The evangelists' emblems figured on several among these coverlets: such as No. 1344, p. 67, No. 4459, p. 100, No. 4644, p. 103, will call to mind those old nursery-rhymes we referred to at p. 103. Of yore, not only little children, but grown-up, ay, aged men too loved to think about those verses, when they went to sleep, for the inventory of furniture taken, 1446, in the Priory of Durham, tells us that in the upper chamber there was a bed-quilt embroidered with the four Evangelists—one in each corner: "j culcitrum cum iiij or Evangelistis in corneriis."

The bag or purse, No. 8313, p. 188, is of a kind which not only were used for those liturgical purposes which we have already enumerated, but served for private devotional practices. In that very interesting will made by Henry, Lord de Scrope, 1415, among other pious bequests, is the following one, of the little bag having in it a piece of our Lord's cross, which he always wore about his neck;—"j bursa parva quæ semper pendet circa collum meum cum cruce Domini."

The crimson velvet mitre,—No. 4015, p. 85,—for the boy-bishop, bairn-bishop, or Nicholas-tide bishop, as the little boy was severally called in England, is a liturgical curiosity, as the ceremonies in which it was formerly worn are everywhere laid aside. Among the things given for the use of the chapel in the college—All Souls—of his founding at