Rene d'Anjou had in his employ a worker in embroidery, named Pierre du Villant. This artist executed a set of needlework pieces for the Cathedral of Angers, of such important proportions that they were known collectively as "La Grande Broderie." In 1462, when they were put in place, a special mass was performed by way of a dedication. The letter which accompanied this princely donation contained the following sentences: "We, Rene, by the Grace of God... give... to this church... the adornments for a chapell all composd of golden embroidery, comprising five pieces" (which are enumerated) "and an altar cloth illustrated with scenes from the Passion of Our Saviour.... Given in our castle in Angers, the fourth day of March, 1462. Rene." [Illustration: EMBROIDERY, 15TH CENTURY, COLOGNE] In 1479 another altar frontal was presented. Two other rich chapels were endowed by Rene. One was known as La Chapelle Joyeuse, and the other as La Grande Chapelle des Trepasses. It is likely that the same embroiderer executed the pieces of all these. A guild of embroiderers was in standing in Seville in 1433, where Ordinances were enforced to protect from fraud and otherwise to regulate this industry. The same laws were in existence in Toledo. One of the finest and largest pieces of embroidery in Spain is known as the Tent of Ferdinand and Isabella. This was used in 1488, when certain English Ambassadors were entertained. The following is their description of its use. "After the tilting was over, the majesties returned to the palace, and took the Ambassadors with them, and entered a large room... and there they sat under a rich cloth of state of crimson velvet, richly embroidered, with the arms of Castile and Aragon." A curious effect must have been produced by a piece of embroidery described in the inventory of Charles V., as "two little pillows with savage beasts having the heads of armed men, and garnished with pearls." After the Reformation it became customary to use ecclesiastical ornaments for domestic purposes. Heylin, in his "History of the Reformation," makes mention of many "private men's parlours" which "were hung with altar cloths, and their tables and beds covered with copes instead of carpetts and coverlids." Katherine of Aragon, while the wife of Henry VIII., consoled herself in her unsatisfactory life by needlework: it is related that she and her ladies "occupied themselves working with their own hands something wrought in needlework, costly and artificially, which she intended to the honour of God to bestow upon some churches." Katherine of Aragon was such a devoted needlewoman, in fact, that on one occasion Burnet records that she stepped out to speak to two ambassadors, with a skein of silk about her neck, and explained that she had been embroidering with her ladies when they were announced. In an old sonnet she is thus commemorated: