[Illustration: MATILDA OF FLANDERS.] Cleopatra and Zenobia are illustrious for their warlike valor and remarkable learning; but Matilda of Flanders has made famous the needle, rather than the sword; and with that little domestic instrument, the industrious fingers of the first Norman queen, assisted by her attendant ladies, gave to the world a very important historical document, whereon was pictorially chronicled the famous Norman conquest of England. And thus the sword of the king and the needle of the queen have become indissolubly associated in the history of this momentous mediæval event. Matilda was directly descended from Alfred the Great. She was the daughter of Baldwin V., count of Flanders. Her mother was Adelais, daughter of Robert I., king of France. Matilda was born about the year 1031, and was possessed of much grace of form, as well as an attractive face. In those days, skill in needle-work was held as the highest accomplishment for ladies of rank, and the remarkable skill in this handicraft, displayed by the four sisters of King Athelstan, is said to have secured for them the addresses of the most eligible princes in Europe. Matilda had several suitors, but she fixed her heart upon a young Saxon noble named Brihtric, who on account of the fairness of his complexion was called _Meaw_, meaning “snow.” He was the Lord of Gloucester, and was made envoy at the court of Flanders by King Edward the Confessor. But he did not return Matilda’s love, and he afterwards married another; this slight Matilda never forgot, and in time she retaliated. But Matilda, though ignored by the Saxon, was most chivalrously loved by the bravest prince of all the courts—William of Normandy. This prince was the son of Duke Robert, though his mother was of humble birth; but as his father had no other heirs, he declared this child his lawful successor to the ducal throne, and then Duke Robert departed upon his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, from which he never returned. William was educated at the court of Henry I. of France, where he remained until the Normans sent to claim him as their duke. At the time when William sought the hand of Matilda of Flanders in marriage, he asserted that Edward of England had named him his heir; but some looked upon this as an idle boast, and fair Matilda seems to have been so little in love with her warlike cousin, that he sued for her for seven years in vain. At last, determining to prove that a “faint heart never won a fair lady,” he resorted to a most uncommon and hazardous mode of courting. For seven long years he had wooed Matilda, who, absorbed in her vain fancy for the indifferent Lord of Gloucester, turned a deaf ear to brave William’s glowing ardor, until at length he was roused to desperate boldness.