English embroidery afterwards lost its first high reputation. Through those years wasted with the wars of the Roses the work of the English needle was very poor, very coarse, and, so to say, ragged; as, for instance, the chasuble at South Kensington, no. 4045. Nothing of the celebrated chain-stitch with dimpled faces in the figures can be found about it: every part is worked in the feather-stitch, slovenly put down. During the early part of the seventeenth century our embroiderers again struck out a new style, which consisted in throwing up the figures a good height above the grounding. Of this raised work there is a fine specimen in the fourth of the copes preserved in the chapter library at Durham. It is said to have been wrought for and given by Charles the first to that cathedral. This red silk vestment is well sprinkled with bodiless cherubic heads crowned with rays and borne up by wings; while upon the hood is David, holding in one hand the head of Goliah; the whole done in highly raised embroidery. Bibles of the large folio size, covered in rich silk or satin and embroidered with the royal arms done in bold raised-work, are still to be found in our libraries. More than one of these volumes is said to have been a gift from the king to a forefather of the present owner. This style of raised embroidery remained in use for many years. Not only large Bibles but smaller volumes, especially prayer-books, had bindings enriched with it. Generally such examples are attributed, and in most cases wrongly, to the so-called nuns of Little Gidding. The same kind of work is sometimes found on the broad frames of old looking-glasses: setting forth perhaps, as in the specimen no. 892, the story of Ahasuerus and Esther, or a passage in some courtship carried on after the manners of Arcadia.