A piece, nineteen inches broad and two hundred and twenty-six feet long, crowded with fighting men—some on foot, some on horseback—with buildings and castles, must have taken much time and busied many hands for its working. Yet of all this, nought has ever turned up in any notice of Matilda’s life. She was not, like the Anglo-Saxon Margaret queen of Scotland, known to fill up her time amidst her maids with needlework, nor ever stood out a parallel to an older Anglo-Saxon high-born lady, the noble Ælfleda, of whom we now speak. Her husband was the famous Northumbrian chieftain, Brithnoth, who had so often fought and so sorely worsted the invading Danes, by whom he was at last slain. His loving wife and her women wrought his deeds of daring in needlework upon a curtain which she gave to the minster church at Ely, wherein the headless body of her Brithnoth lay buried: “cortinam gestis viri sui (Brithnothi) intextam atque depictam in memoriam probitatis ejus, huic ecclesiæ (Eliensi) donavit (Ælfleda).”[370] Surely when Ælfleda’s handiwork found a chronicler, that of a queen would never have gone without one. Moreover, had such a piece any-wise or ever belonged to William’s wife, we must think that, instead of being let to stray away to Bayeux, towards which place she bore no particular affection, she would have bequeathed it, like other things, to her beloved church at Caen. Yet in her will no notice of it comes, and the only mention of any needlework is of two English specimens, one a chasuble bought of Aldaret’s wife at Winchester, and a vestment then being wrought for her in England: “casulam quam apud Wintoniam operatur uxor Aldereti ... atque aliud vestimentum quod operatur in Anglia,” both of which she leaves to the Church of the Holy Trinity at Caen.
[370] Historia Eliensis, Lib. Secund. ed. Stewart, p. 183.
But there is the tradition that it is Matilda’s doing. True, but it is barely a hundred years old, and its first appearance was in the year 1730 or so: tradition so young goes then for nothing. Who then got it worked, and why did it find its way to Bayeux?
Odo, bishop of Bayeux, and own brother to William came himself, and, like other rich and powerful Norman Lords, brought vassals who fought at Hastings. Of all the great chiefs, but one, at most but two, are pointed out by name on this piece. Odo, however, is figured in no less than three of its compartments; furthermore, three men quite unknown to fame, Turold, Vital, and Wadard, receive as many times as the bishop this same honourable distinction. Rich and influential in Normandy, Odo, after being made Earl of Kent by his victorious brother, became richer and more influential in England; hence the three above-mentioned individuals, the prelate’s feudatories, by their master’s favour, got possession of wide landed estates in many parts of England, 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. A.D. 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 contemporaneous 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.[371]—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.”[372] 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 her husband king William, large enough to hold two hundred knights sitting down to dinner; and which, along with her chair of gold, and golden table twelve feet long and a foot and a-half wide, her brother, our Richard I. got back for his sister from Tancred: “Ipse (Richardus rex) enim a rege Tancredo exigebat—cathedram auream ad opus ejusdem Johannæ de consuetudine reginarum illius regni et ad opus sui ipsius mensam auream de longitudine duodecim pedum, et de latitudine unius pedis et semis et quoddam tentorium de serico magnum adeo quod ducenti milites in eo possint simul manducare.”[373]
Among the old copes, dalmatics and chasubles which, one after the other, find their way at last to collections such as this, must the historian seek for what remains of those gorgeous robes worn at some interesting ceremony, or on some stirring occasion, by personages celebrated in our national annals. For example, along with the several gifts bestowed upon the church of Ely, by king Edgar, we find mentioned his mantle of costly purple and gold, of which was made a vestment: “Enimvero chlamydem suam de insigni purpura ad modum loricæ auro undique contextam illuc (ecclesiæ Eliensi) contulit rex Ædgarus.”[374] Of a whole set of mass vestments at Windsor made out of the crimson and gold cloth powdered with birds, once the array worn by a royal princess when she was married, we have already spoken.
[371] Petri Blesensis Opera, ed. Giles, t. ii. p. 85.
[372] Geraldi Cambrensis De Instructione Principum, ed. J. S. Brewer, p. 168.