One of these old English pyx or Corpus Christi cloths, was found a few years ago at the bottom of a chest in Hessett church, Suffolk. As it is a remarkable specimen of the ingenious handicraft of our mediæval countrywomen it deserves description. To make this pyx-cloth a piece of thick linen, about two feet square, was chosen, and being marked off into small equal widths on all its four edges, the threads at every other space were, both in the warp and woof, pulled out. The checquers or squares so produced were then drawn in by threads tied on the under side, having the shape of stars, so well and delicately worked that, till it had been narrowly looked into, the piece was thought to be guipure lace. An old alb, no. 8710, and an amice, 8307, having the apparels yet remaining upon both, are well worth attention on account of somewhat similar curious ornamental needlework in an intricate manner. In the middle ages in England it was not unusual to suspend upon pastoral staffs, just below the crook, a piece of fine linen. We see them represented on effigies and in illuminations; but existing examples are of the utmost rarity. Two are at South Kensington: nos. 8279 A, and 8662. There are also there several specimens of the christening cloaks, anciently in use. These were not only conspicuous in royal christenings but, varying in costliness according to the parent’s rank, were handed down in inventories and wills. At the christening of Arthur prince of Wales, eldest son of Henry the eighth, “my lady Cecill, the queen’s eldest sister, bare the prince wrapped in a mantell of cremesyn clothe of golde furred with ermyn,” etc. Shakespeare makes the shepherd, in the Winter’s tale, cry out, “Here’s a sight for thee; look thee, a bearing cloth for a squire’s child!” A well-to-do tradesman, whose will is printed among the Bury wills, bequeathed in 1648 to his daughter Rose his “beareing cloath, such ... linnen as is belonginge to infants at their tyme of baptisme.” Small square pieces of embroidered linen are sometimes found in country houses in some old chest, of which the original use is said not to be now known. But in most cases these were made for children’s quilts; and very often have the emblems of the evangelists figured at the corners: reminding us of the nursery rhyme, once common both in England and abroad-- “Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Bless the bed that I lie on.” The quilts also for grown people were ornamented in the same way. At Durham, in 1446, in the dormitory of the priory was a quilt “cum iiij or evangelistis in corneriis.”