Imitated tapestry existed here long ago under the name of “stayned cloth,” and the workers of it were embodied into a London guild. At the beginning of the sixteenth century Exeter cathedral had several pieces of old painted or “stayned” cloth: “i front stayned cum crucifixo, Maria et Johanne, Petro et Paulo; viij panni linei stayned, etc.” The great use at that time of such articles in household furniture may be witnessed in the will, 1503, of Katherine lady Hastings who bequeaths, besides several other such pieces, “an old hangin of counterfeit arres of Knollys, which now hangeth in the hall and all such hangyings of old bawdekyn, or lynen paynted as now hang in the chappell.” We may also remember that Falstaff speaks of it as an illustration easily understood; he says that his troops are “as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth.” Carpets are akin to tapestry, and though the use of them may perhaps be not so ancient yet is very old. Here, again, we must look to the people of Asia for the finest as well as the earliest examples of this textile. Mediæval specimens are rare anywhere, and we are glad to recommend attention to two pieces of that period fortunately in the collection at South Kensington, no. 8649, of the fourteenth century, and no. 8357, of the sixteenth, both of Spanish make. [Illustration: Marriage of Louis XII. and Anne of Brittany.] The chambers of our royal palaces and the chancels of our parish churches used to be strewed with rushes. When however they could afford it the authorities of our cathedrals, even in very early times, spread the sanctuary with carpets; and at last old tapestry came to be so employed, as now in Italy. Among such coverings for the floor before the altar Exeter had a large piece of Arras cloth figured with the life of the duke of Burgundy, the gift of one of its bishops, Edmund Lacy, in 1420; besides two large carpets, one bestowed by bishop Nevill in 1456, the other, of a chequered pattern, by lady Elizabeth Courtney: “carpet et panni coram altari sternendi; i pannus de Arys de historia ducis Burgundie; i larga carpeta, etc.” In an earlier inventory we find that among the “bancaria” or bench-coverings in the choir of the same cathedral, one was a large piece of English-made tapestry with a fretted pattern. It is very probable that as the work of the Record Commission goes on, and our ancient historians are printed, evidence may be found that the looms at work in all our great monasteries among other webs wrought carpets. From existing testimony we believe that such must have been the practice at Croyland, where abbot Egelric (the second of the name) gave to that church, before the year 992, “two large foot-cloths [so carpets were then called] woven with lions to be laid out before the high altar on great festivals, and two shorter ones trailed all over with flowers, for the feast days of the apostles.” The quantity of carpeting in our palaces may be seen by the way in which