[190] York Fabric Rolls, p. 230.
[191] Hist. Anglic. Script. X. t. i. p. 602, ed. Twysden.
[192] Rog. de Wendover, Chronica, t. iv. p. 127, ed. Coxe.
[193] P. 322.
[194] Fabric Rolls, p. 310.
Baudekin
Was a costly stuff much employed and often spoken of in our literature during many years of the mediæval period.
Ciclatoun, as we have elsewhere remarked, was the usual term during centuries throughout Western Europe, by which those showy golden textiles were called. When, however, Bagdad, or Baldak, standing where once stood the Babylon of old, took and held for no short length of time the lead all over Asia in weaving, every kind of fine silks and in especial golden stuffs shot, as now, in different colours, cloths of gold so tinted became every where known more particularly among us English as “baldakin,” “baudekin,” or “baudkyn,” or silks from Baldak. At last the earlier term “ciclatoun” dropped quite out of use. With this before him the reader will hereafter more readily understand several otherwise puzzling passages in many of our old writers in poetry and prose, as well as in the inventories of royal furniture and church vestments.
Our kings and our nobility affected much this rich stuff for the garments worn by them on high occasions. When, A.D. 1247, girding in Westminster Abbey William de Valence his uterine brother, a knight, our Henry III. had on a robe of baudekin, or cloth-of-gold, likely shot with crimson silk: “Dominus Rex veste deaurata facta de preciosissimo Baldekino et coronula aurea, quæ vulgariter garlanda dicitur redimitus, sedens gloriose in solio regio, fratrem suum uterinum, baltheo militari gaudenter insignivit.”[195] In the year 1259 the master of Sherborn Hospital in the north, bequeathed to that house a cope made of cloth-of-gold, or “baudekin:”—“Capam de panno ad aurum scilicet Baudekin cum vestimento plenario de panno Yspaniæ ad aurum.”[196]
But these Bagdad or Baldak silks, with a weft of gold known among us as “baudekins” were often wove very large in size, and applied here in England to especial ritual purposes. As a thanks-offering after a safe return home from a journey, they were brought and given to the altar; at all the solemn burials of our kings and queens, and other great ones, each of the many mourners, when offertory time came, went to the illuminated hearse,—one is figured in the “Church of Our Fathers,”[197]—and strewed a baudekin of costly texture over the coffin. Artists or others who wish to know the ceremonial for that occasion, will find it set forth in the descriptions of many of our mediæval funerals. At the obsequies of Henry VII. in Westminster Abbey:—“Twoe herauds came to the Duke of Buck. and to the Earles and conveyed them into the Revestrie where they did receive certen Palles which everie of them did bringe solemply betwene theire hands and comminge in order one before another as they were in degree unto the said herse, thay kissed theire said palles and delivered them unto the said heraudes which laide them uppon the kyngs corps, in this manner: the palle which was first offered by the Duke of Buck. was laid on length on the said corps, and the residewe were laid acrosse, as thick as they might lie.”[198] In the same church at the burial of Anne of Cleves, A.D. 1557, a like ceremonial of carrying cloth-of-gold palls to the hearse was followed.[199]