Although the actual execution of the Tapestry devolved upon the ladies of Matilda’s court, there can be no doubt that they wrought from a design prepared by some draftsman. The priests were the principal artists of that day. The Latin inscriptions prove that in that part of their work, at least, the ladies had the assistance of some educated person. The name of the designer has not come down to us; unless indeed there be truth in the following statement made by Miss Agnes Strickland:--“This pictorial chronicle of her mighty consort’s achievements appears to have been, in part at least, designed for Matilda by Turold, a dwarf artist, who moved by a natural desire of claiming his share in the celebrity which he foresaw would attach to the work, has cunningly introduced his own effigies and name,[17] thus authenticating the Norman tradition, that he was the person who illuminated the canvas with the proper outlines and colours.”[18] Though ignorant of the individual who designed the Tapestry, the style of the work induces us to believe that the artist was an Italian. The postures into which many of the figures are thrown are not English or French, but Italian.[19] The cordiality subsisting at the time of the Conquest between the courts of Normandy and Rome, and the successful exhibition of Norman prowess for some time previously on the plains of the Italian peninsula, sufficiently account for the introduction of the peculiarities of southern Europe into the Tapestry. Perhaps, however, we have acted rashly in having ventured even thus cursorily to touch upon the antiquity of the Tapestry. Miss Agnes Strickland, who, in her _Lives of the Queens of England_, shows how vigorously she can wield the pen, is rather indignant that any one who is not learned in cross-stitch, should venture to discuss the subject. Before we argue, she wants to know if we can sew. She says, “With due deference to the judgment of the lords of the creation on all subjects connected with policy and science, we venture to think that our learned friends, the archæologists and antiquaries, would do well to direct their intellectual powers to more masculine objects of inquiry, and leave the question of the Bayeux Tapestry (with all other matters allied to needle-craft) to the decision of the ladies, to whose province it belongs. It is matter of doubt to us whether one, out of the many gentlemen who have disputed Matilda’s claims to that work, if called upon to execute a copy of either of the figures on canvas, would know how to put in the first stitch.”[20] Few of the rougher sex would like to be put to the_experimentum acus_, and therefore it may be as well at once to exercise the best part of valour, and beat a hasty retreat.