A textile used in England during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is imperial, wrought with gold, and credited with being woven at the workshops kept by the Byzantine Emperors; and gold also gave its assistance to the making of a well-known stuff in the Middle Ages christened baudekin, which later came to be a term signifying any rich silk. A variety of the cloth of gold was plunket cloth of gold—plunket, however, being more properly described as a coarse woollen cloth; yet it is authentic that Richard III. had a gown lined with this, and in revels held by Henry VIII. at Greenwich it was registered that there were six ladies in "crimosin plunket" embroidered with gold and pearls, so that fashion seems to have idealised the homely plunket, which in its original state would have been more suitably classed with home-spuns, burnet, russet, and frieze. In the fourteenth century taffeta was introduced into England, and taffy was the name of a watered edition of this, which we owe to the refugees, who crowded here in their numbers, and made us familiar with brocade amongst other novelties. Satin was known in England as early as the thirteenth century, having been imported into Europe from China, but not achieving much popularity owing to its exorbitant price, though later Henry VIII. had a great predilection for it in red. Amongst stuffs associated immortally with history and romance are sackcloth and samite, and the latter, besides bearing its fame down from biblical days, has been credited with possessing every known virtue that the textile is heir to; it was originally, no doubt, a heavy silk material woven with a thread of six fibres, and carrying thick upon its surface most glossy honours. When Sir Launcelot came to King Arthur, the poet says:
Lancelot and the queene were clede,
In robes of a rich weede,
Of samit white, with silver shredde.
And it is in white we invariably picture it, yet more constantly in olden days it was made in red. Suffering much change in its orthography, it was originally written "samits," later "samit," and finally invested with the final "e," and yet while every record grants it a silken surface, some German scholar, owing to the circumstance that to this day their word "samt" expresses velvet, is quite convinced that the samit of old was of velvet substance.
To China was accorded the privilege of persuading us permanently of the charms of brocade and velvet, and the descriptions of the mediæval velvets suggest that this could have been no difficult task, for they include diapered velvets, figured velvets, changeable velvets, velvets figured with white, and velvets worked upon gold, while the Genoese and the French rivalled each other in the best manufacture of these.
The making of linen has been traced back to the early Egyptians, and the art was brought to England by the Romans, but a very fine linen dedicated to altar cloths and shirts in the middle ages was first manufactured at Rennes in Brittany. The English linen trade made no great stride until the reign of Charles I., and lawn and cambric were first greatly used in England in the sixteenth century.
Fur as a trimming appears to have had no popular existence previous to the thirteenth century, but after the reign of Henry III. it bears its part bravely in romance and chronicles, ermine being pre-eminent together with a fur known as lettice, which closely resembles it; there were lettice caps worn by ladies in the reign of Elizabeth, who indeed forbade their wear to any but "a gentlewoman born, having arms," and sable was permitted only to the nobility and to certain officers of the Royal household in the Middle Ages.
Lace has paid for its success in a disputed birthplace, for both Flanders and Italy claim its first manufacture, the experts declaring in favour of the latter, and asserting that Italy bore the art to Spain and passed it on to Flanders. In any case Venice must be granted the first prize for the beauty of its lace, which in early days was enriched with gold and silver. Caen is accorded the honour of having first introduced blonde lace, while France and Switzerland and Belgium have all contributed their share towards the perfecting of "the most fascinating of all fabrics," and different events of history have brought no small influence to bear on the popularity of different laces in different periods, the foreign-made bone-lace obtaining the distinction of being banished from England by royal order. In the reigns of the Stuarts, lace adorned alike feminine and masculine attire, and the collar of the luckless King Charles I. in his many pictures by Vandyke has stamped the fact indelibly on our minds. The Commonwealth greatly affected the manufacture of lace in England, though some of the most rigid Puritans continued to wear Flanders lace, and the dead body of the Protector was "robed in purple velvet, ermine, and richest Flanders lace"—not so bad for the simple cerements of the greatest socialist who ever lived! The passion for wearing lace reached its height in England in the reign of William and Mary, when lace was indispensable to the most exalted wearers of the commodes, and its influence was essential on the full cravats and ruffles. In the reigns of George I. and George II., Brussels lace grew especially popular; but English lace reached a pitch of perfection at this period, Devonshire being especially famous for the industry. In its delicate meshes lace has held captive to its charms many earnest students who have set down its biography in various volumes, and to skim these hurriedly is to do them wrong; so in passing I would recommend their pages to the leisured, while chronicling that we have known lace needle-run or pillow-made for nearly four centuries, and that it was preceded by the "cut out," the appliqué, and an embroidery worked in stiffly conventional design on net with cords of thread.