In some few instances, gold and silver gilt star-like flowers are to be found sewed upon the silks or amid the embroidery from Venice and other provinces in Italy, and from southern Germany. Some fragments of silk damask, no. 8612, are curious examples of Italian taste. These at one time have been thickly strewed with trefoils cut out of gilt metal but very thin, and not sewed but glued on to the silk: many of the leaves have fallen off, and those remaining turned black. Precious stones also, coral, and seed pearls were sewed upon textiles; and, not uncommonly, small coloured beads and bugles of glass. Belonging to St. Paul’s, in 1295, among many other amices there was one having glass stones upon it, both large and small. Another form of glass fastened by heat to gold and copper, enamel, was extensively employed as an adornment upon textiles. The gorgeous “chesable of red cloth of gold with orphreys before and behind set with pearls, blue, white, and red, with plates of gold enamelled, wanting fifteen plates, etc.,” described in Dugdale’s Monasticon, and given by John of Gaunt’s duchess to Lincoln cathedral, shows how this rich ornamentation was applied to garments, especially for church use, in very large quantities. In England the old custom was to sew a great deal of goldsmith’s work, for enrichment, upon articles meant for personal wear. When our first Edward’s grave in Westminster abbey was opened in 1774 there was seen upon the body, besides other silken robes, a stole-like band of rich white tissue about the neck and crossed upon the breast: it was studded with gilt quatrefoils in filigree work and embroidered with pearls. From the knees downwards the body was wrapped in a pall of cloth of gold. Henry the third gave a frontal to the high altar in Westminster abbey upon which, besides carbuncles in golden settings and several large pieces of enamel, were as many as 866 smaller ones: perhaps the “esmaux de plique” of the French. In the Norman-French silken stuffs thus ornamented were said to be “batuz,” that is, beaten with hammered-up gold. The Treasury calendars, edited by Palgrave, tell us that Richard the second gave to the chapel in the castle of Haverford “ii rydell batuz;” two altar-curtains beaten (probably with ornaments in gilt silver; like an amice so described which belonged to St. Paul’s). For the secular employment of this same sort of decoration we have several curious examples. Ladies’ dresses were so adorned, as we may see in these verses: A coronell on hur hedd sett, Hur clothys wyth bestes and byrdes wer bete, All abowte for pryde. [Illustration: Ancient banner of the city of Strasburg: see next page.]