The works of Scotland's Mary, who early studied all female accomplishments under her governess, Lady Fleming, {11}are too well known to require notice. In her letters are constant demands for silk and other working materials wherewith to solace her long captivity. She had also studied under Catherine de Médicis, herself an unrivalled needlewoman, who had brought over in her train from Florence the designer for embroidery, Frederick Vinciolo. Assembling her daughters, Claude, Elizabeth and Margaret, with Mary Stuart, and her Guise cousins, "elle passoit," says Brantôme, "fort son temps les apres-disnées à besogner apres ses ouvrages de soye, où elle estoit tant parfaicte qu'il estoit possible."[35] The ability of Reine Margot[36] is sung by Ronsard, who exalts her as imitating Pallas in the art.[37] Many of the great houses in England are storehouses of old needlework. Hatfield, Penshurst, and Knole are all filled with the handiwork of their ladies. The Countess of Shrewsbury, better known as "Building Bess," Bess of Hardwick, found time to embroider furniture for her palaces, and her samplar patterns hang to this day on their walls. Needlework was the daily employment of the convent. As early as the fourteenth century[38] it was termed "nun's work"; and even now, in secluded parts of the kingdom, ancient lace is styled by that name.[39] Nor does the occupation appear to have been solely {12}confined to women. We find monks commended for their skill in embroidery,[40] and in the frontispieces of some of the early pattern books of the sixteenth century, men are represented working at frames, and these books are stated to have been written "for the profit of men as well as of women."[41] Many were composed by monks,[42] and in the library[43] of St. Geneviève at Paris, are several works of this class, inherited from the monastery of that name. As these books contain little or no letterpress, they could scarcely have been collected by the monks unless with a view to using them. At the dissolution of the monasteries, the ladies of the great Roman Catholic families came to the rescue. Of the widow of the ill-fated Earl of Arundel it is recorded: "Her gentlewomen and chambermaids she ever busied in works ordained for the service of the Church. She permitted none to be idle at any time."[44] Instructions in the art of embroidery were now at a premium. The old nuns had died out, and there were none to replace them. Mrs. Hutchinson, in her _Memoirs_, enumerates, among the eight tutors she had at seven years of age, one for needlework, while Hannah Senior, about the same period, entered the service of the Earl of Thomond, to teach his daughters the use of their needle, with the salary of £200 a year. The money, however, was never paid; so she petitions the Privy Council for leave to sue him.[45]