“Fair Philomel, she but lost her tongue,
And in a tedious sampler sewed her mind.”
Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86), in his “Arcadia,” introduces a sampler as follows:—
“And then, O Love, why dost thou in thy beautiful sampler set such a work for my desire to take out?”
And Milton in “Comus” (1634):—
“And checks of sorry grain will serve to ply
The sampler, and to tear the housewife’s wool.”
In “The Crown Garland of Golden Roses,” 1612, is “A short and sweet sonnet made by one of the Maides of Honor upon the death of Queene Elizabeth, which she sowed upon a sampler, in red silk, to a new tune of ‘Phillida Flouts Me’”; beginning
“Gone is Elizabeth whom we have lov’d so dear.”
In the sixteenth century samplers were deemed worthy of mention as bequests; thus Margaret Tomson, of Freston in Holland, Lincolnshire, by her will proved at Boston, 25th May 1546, gave to “Alys Pynchbeck, my systers doughter, my sampler with semes.”
In Lady Marian Cust’s work on embroidery, mention is made of a sampler of the reign of Henry VIII., and a rough illustration is given of it; we have endeavoured to trace this piece, but have been unable to find it either in the possession of Viscount Middleton or of Lord Midleton, although both of them are the owners of other remarkable specimens of needlework.
It is evident from these extracts that samplers were common objects at least as early as the sixteenth century.