William of Malmesbury says, "their father caused them in childhood to give their whole attention to letters and afterwards employed them in the labour of the distaff[2] and the needle."
The same authority says that Edgitha or Editha, the Queen of Edward the Confessor, was "perfect mistress of her needle," while the Saxon historian, Ingulphus, a scholar at Westminster Monastery, near to Edgitha's palace, relates of her that "she was skilful in the works of the needle, and that with her own hands she embroidered the garments of her royal husband."
As a proof of the high value set on good needlework the Anglo-Saxon Gudric gave Alcina a piece of land on condition that she instructed his daughters in embroidery and needlework.
It was the custom in feudal times for high families to send their daughters to the castles of their lords there to be taught spinning, weaving and needlework under the eye of the lady chatelaine.
It was also a practice for great ladies and their attendants to pass their mornings at needlework, singing and relating stories meanwhile.
It seems that William the Conqueror on his first appearance in public after the Battle of Hastings wore a richly worked cloak of Anglo-Saxon embroidery. It may have been this fact which roused his wife Matilda to produce a piece of work which was to live for long ages as a specimen of her industry and skill with the needle. She was a jealous woman and might not have been pleased at other hands than her own working her husband's apparel. It is difficult to understand the working of a woman's mind.
There is no doubt that the work she left behind, and which is still preserved in the Cathedral of Bayeux, is perfectly marvellous, or as Dibdin says "it is an exceedingly curious document."
It is a piece of canvas or coarse linen cloth two hundred and twenty-seven feet long and twenty inches wide; on it she has wrought with woollen thread of eight different colours a picture of her husband's exploits, from Harold's first landing in Normandy to his fall at Hastings.
It is a most important record of the history of the period, because the events, costumes, and warlike instruments are faithfully portrayed.
The canvas contains many hundreds of men, horses, trees, houses, castles, ships and churches, with names and descriptions over them to make the story clear; strangely enough there are only three women in the whole picture. Taken as a whole it affords a curious insight into the manners and customs of the Norman Period.