And with him twenty good gomes
Knightes’ and barons’ sons,
Of cloth of Tars and rich cendale
Was the dobbing in each deal.
The Roll of Caerlaverock tells us that among the grand array which joined Edward the first at Carlisle in 1300, there was to be seen many a rich caparison embroidered upon cendal and samit:
La ot meint riche guarnement
Brodé sur sendaus e samis:
and Lacy, earl of Lincoln, leading the first squadron, hoisted his banner made of yellow cendal blazoned with a lion rampant purpre
Baner out de un cendal safrin,
O un lioun rampant purprin.
When Sir Bevis of Southampton wished to keep himself unknown at a tournament, we thus read of him:
Sir Bevis disguised all his weed
Of black cendal and of rede,
Flourished with roses of silver bright, etc.
Of the ten silken albs which Hugh Pudsey left to Durham, two were made of samit and two of cendal, or as the bishop calls it, sandal. Exeter cathedral had a red cope with a green lining of sandal and a cape of sandaline: “Una capa de sandalin.” Piers Ploughman speaks thus to the women of his day:
And ye lovely ladies
With youre long fyngres,
That ye have silk and sandal
To sowe, whan tyme is.
Chesibles for chapeleyns,
Chirches to honoure, etc.
A stronger kind of cendal was wrought and called, in the Latin inventories of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, “cendatus afforciatus:” there was a cope of this material at St. Paul’s, and another cope of cloth of gold was lined with it.