There is also a little French poem quoted and translated by Wright, which runs thus: Much ought woman to be held dear, By her is everybody clothed. Well know I that woman spins and manufactures The cloths with which we dress and cover ourselves, And gold tissues, and cloth of silk; And therefore say I, wherever I may be, To all who shall hear this story, That they say no ill of womankind. Spinning and weaving, as ordinarily carried on in the mediaeval home, were, Mr. Andrews thinks, backward, wasteful, and comparatively unskilled in technique. It is uncertain exactly at what period the spinning-wheel came into existence--certainly before the sixteenth century, and it may be a good deal earlier; but doubtless the use of the distaff lingered on in country places and among older-fashioned people long after the wheel was in use in the centres of the trades. Thus Aubrey speaks of nuns using wheels, and adds, "In the old time they used to spin with rocks; in Somersetshire they use them still." Yet weaving among the Anglo-Saxons had been carried to a considerable degree of excellence in the cities and monasteries. Mr. Warden says that even before the end of the seventh century the art of weaving had attained remarkable perfection in England, and he quotes from a book by Bishop Aldhelm, written about 680, describing "webs woven with shuttles, filled with threads of purple and many other colours, flying from side to side, and forming a variety of figures and images in different compartments with admirable art." These beautiful handiworks were executed by ladies of high rank and great piety, and were designed for ornaments to the churches or for vestments to the clergy. St. Theodore of Canterbury thought it necessary to forbid women to work on Sunday either in weaving or cleaning the vestments or sewing them, or in carding wool, or beating flax, or in washing garments, or in shearing the sheep, or in any such occupations.