Kent, and rendered remarkable by the unflinching steadfastness of the faithful Jenico in wearing it as his royal master’s badge after Richard’s downfal. Sometimes, did that king take as a device a white falcon, for, at a tournament held by him at Windsor, forty of his knights came clothed in green with a white falcon on the stuff. During a foppish reign, Richard was the greatest fop. When he sat to those two London citizens for his monument, which they so ably wrought, and which still is at Westminster, our own belief is that he wore a dress of silk which had been expressly woven for him at Palermo. We think, too, that the couple of specimens here, Nos. 1310, p. 53, and 8624, p. 239, were originally wrought in Sicily, after designs from England, and for the court of Richard: they quite answer the period, and show those favourite devices, the chained hart, sunbeams issuing from a cloud, the falcon or eagle--a group in itself quite peculiar to that monarch. For the slight variations in these stuffs from those upon the Westminster monument, we will account, a little further on, while treating the subject of symbolism, Section VII. [375] Anglia Sacra, ed. Wharton, t. i. p. 650. [376] Mon. Anglic. ed. Caley, t. ii. p. 223. The seemliness, not to say comfort, of private life, was improved by the use, after several ways, of textiles. Let the historian contrast the manners, even in a royal palace during the twelfth century, with those that are now followed in every tradesman’s home. Then, rich barons and titled courtiers would sprawl amid the straw and rushes, strewed in the houses even of the king, upon the floor in every room, which, as Wendover says: “junco solent domorum areæ operiri;”[377] and, platting knots with the litter, fling them with a gibe at the man who had been slighted by the prince.[378] Not quite a hundred years later, when Eleanor of Castile came to London for her marriage with our first Edward, she found her lodgings furnished, under the directions of the Spanish courtiers who had arrived before her, with hangings and curtains of silk around the walls, and carpets spread upon the ground. This sorrowed some of our people; more of them giggled at the thought that some of these costly things were laid down to be walked upon, as we learn from Matthew Paris: “Cum venisset illa nurus nobilissima (Alienora) ad hospitium sibi assignatum invenit illud ... holosericis palliis et tapetiis, ad similitudinem templi appensis; etiam pavimentum aulæis redimitum, Hispanis, secundum patriæ suæ forte consuetudinem hoc procurantibus.”[379] Now, our houses have a carpet for every room as well as on its stair-case, and not a few of our shops are carpeted throughout. [377] T. iii. p. 109. [378] Vita S. Thomæ, auct. Eduardo Grim. ed. Giles, p. 47. [379] Hist. Ang. in A.D. 1255, p. 612, col. b.