“All the nations of the world, says Matthew of Westminster, were kept warm by the wool of England, made into cloth by the men of Flanders. And while we gave useful clothing to other countries, we received festive garments from them in return. For most of our information on these subjects we are indebted to Matthew Paris, who tells us that when Alexander III. of Scotland was married to Margaret, daughter of Henry III., one thousand English knights appeared at the wedding in cointises of silk, and the next day each knight donned a new robe of another kind. This grand entertainment was fatal to sixty oxen, and cost the then Archbishop of York no less a sum than 4000 marks. Macpherson remarks on this great display of silk as a proof of the wealth of England under the Norman kings, a point which has not been sufficiently elaborated. In 1242 the streets of London were covered or shaded with silk, for the reception of Richard, the King’s brother, on his return from the Holy Land. Few Englishmen
are aware of the existence of such magnificence at that early period; while every story-book of history gives us the reverse of the picture, telling us of straw-covered floors, scarcity of body linen, and the like. Long after this, in 1367, it is recorded, as a special instance of splendour of costume, that 1000 citizens of Genoa were clothed in silk; and this tale has been repeated from age to age, while the similar display, at an earlier date, in England, has passed unnoticed.”
[For a notice of the several pieces in the present volume], I refer the reader to the Preface to Russell’s Boke of Nurture, which follows here.
It only remains for me to say that the freshness of my first interest in the poems which I once hoped to re-produce in these Forewords, has become dulled by circumstances and the length of time that the volume has been in the press—it having been set aside (by my desire) for the Ayenbite, &c.;—and that the intervention of other work has prevented my making the collection as complete as I had desired it to be. It is, however, the fullest verse one that has yet appeared on its subject, and will serve as the beginning of the Society’s store of this kind of material.[86] If we can do all the English part of the work, and the Master of the Rolls will commission one of his Editors to do the Latin part, we shall then get a fairly complete picture of that Early English Home which, with all its shortcomings, should be dear to every Englishman now.
3, St George’s Square, N.W.,
5th June, 1867.
General Preface: Footnotes
[1.] The first sentence of Aristotle’s Metaphysics is ‘All men by nature are actuated by the desire of knowledge.’ Mr Skeat’s note on l. 78 of Partenay, p. 228.
[2.] Lawrens Andrewe. The noble lyfe & natures of man, of bestes, &c. Johñes Desborrowe. Andewarpe.
[3.] The woodcuts are Messrs Virtue’s, and have been used in Mr Thomas Wright’s History of Domestic Manners and Customs, &c.