Pl. 62.
1. From Tomb in Worcester Cathedral, of Bishop Walter de Cantilupe, consecrated 1236.
2. Embroidered Cope at Aix in Switzerland.
Pl. 63.
Mitre of Thomas à Becket at Sens, showing the Scandinavian Fylfot Cross (thirteenth century).
Jewelled Cross on Rose-coloured Cope at Rheims (twelfth century).
In the tomb of Walter de Cantilupe (eighteenth century) at Worcester, were found the remains of a dress which is decidedly of an earlier date—evidently of Oriental material, but Anglo-Saxon work—so exactly resembling in style that at Aix given by Bock,[511] that we can hardly doubt that they proceeded from the same workshop, or at least are of coeval design. Both are worked with a dark red outline on a red silk ground. The faces and hands are in white silk—all the rest between the outlines is gold thread, flat stitch. Bock places its date as antecedent to the tenth century, and indeed there is no reason to doubt that this is correct, though the Worcester fragment was taken out of a tomb of two centuries later. As these garments were stored in the church treasuries; and as antiquity (without an historical interest) was then of no value, these old clothes, holy by their use and office, yet by their shabbiness unfit for public show, may have been reverently disposed of in clothing the bodies of departed priests, who probably had worn those very vestments, when officiating at the altar near which they were laid to rest. When the date of the wearer of the garment is ascertained, the dress cannot be of a later period, but it may have belonged to a much earlier one. The architectural part of these two embroideries, i.e. the canopy work, resembles that of the Bayeux tapestry. Both appear to be English. (Plate [62].)