[6] This sampler is interesting owing to its drawn-work figures, which are directly copied from two effigies of the reign of James I., and may stand for that Monarch and his Queen. This portion of the sampler might readily be mistaken for that date were it not that it bears on the bar which divides the figures the letters S.W., 1700. The border at the side of the figures is in red silk, that at the top and the alphabet are in the motley array of colours to which we are accustomed in specimens of this date. [7] A map of Europe, formerly in the author's possession, had the degrees marked as so many minutes or hours east or west of Clapton! [8] "Samplers," by Alice Morse Earle. [9] It first appeared in the _Lady's Magazine_, 1819, and in the first collected edition, 1824, Vol. I. pp. 67, 68; also in Bohn's Classics, 1852, pp. 138, 139. [10] These latter, with their figures standing out in relief, could never have been used for cushions, and can only have been employed as pictures. [11] The difficulty of assigning a close date to tapestry embroideries is a considerable one, for dress is practically the only guide, and this is by no means a reliable one, for a design may well have been taken from a piece dated half a century previously, as, for instance, when the marriage of Charles I. is portrayed on an embroidery bearing date 1649, the year of his death. Those, therefore, which have a genuine date have this value, that they can only represent a phase of art or a subject coeval with, or precedent to, that date. Hence the importance of the pieces illustrated in Fig. 60 and in Fig. 68, dated six years later. [12] Mr Davenport considers that this rounded, padded work is a caricature of the raised embroidery of the _opus Anglicanum_, and that the earliest specimens of it are to be found at Coire, Zurich, and Munich. [13] The fondness for decking the dress with pearls is quaintly portrayed in these pictures, where they are imitated by seed pearls. As to these there is an interesting extract extant, from the inventory of St James's House, nigh Westminster, in 1549, wherein among the items is one of "a table [or picture] whereon is a man holding a sword in one hand and a sceptre in the other, of needlework, prettily garnished with seed pearls." [14] A very good example of a sampler in drawn-work, in which the floral form of decoration is entirely absent, save in the sixth row (the pinks), which is in green silk, the rest being in white. That the sampler was intended as a pattern is evident from some of the rows being unfinished.