A few of the typical views of castle life in which the women figured conspicuously will serve to give a more particular setting to the general idea of their status and employments. While men gave themselves up to feats of arms, the women had the task of hospitably entertaining the guests who frequented the castles; in the interim of these festivities and the exacting care of a host of servants, they applied themselves assiduously to needlework, and in no other way does the woman of the times appear in so pleasant a light as when thus engaged. Her facility in lace and embroidery work is not attested alone by contemporary writers, but has come down to us in its finest expression. The famous Bayeux tapestry, possibly the most ingenious specimen of needlework that the world has known, calls up the most interesting of the castle scenes as related to woman. It is the expression of the artistic and historical sense of Matilda, the wife of William I. In some such lady's bower as has been described, the fair queen assembled the ladies of her court, and the Bayeux tapestry was created amid the interchange of small talk, becoming more serious as at times the figures of the pattern recalled some particular horror of personal loss on the part of some of the ladies present, entailed by the great battle whose glory was the central theme of their labors. With womanly self-effacement, they had in mind only those whose deeds were in this unique manner to be handed down to posterity, and had no thought of the monument to womanly devotion that they were erecting for the honor of the sex. Every scene involved the perpetuation of the memories and the valor of those who were dear to them; and as the record passed into the embroidered pattern, it was dwelt upon with words of glowing pride. In some such way took shape the picture-history of the event that found its consummation in the battle of Senlac. By its wealth and accuracy of detail, this monument of woman's skill became a historical document of the first order for the period to which it relates. But to the student of the English woman its chief value must lie in its revelation of the depth of the pride and devotion to husbands, brothers, and lovers that it reveals--devotion to the living and the dead alike, which is the secret of its reverent accuracy, excluding as it does vainglorious exaggeration. It thus becomes a memorial of deeds of valor and of defeat, of triumph and of death; a monument to the Norman, but, unwittingly, a monument to the defeated Saxon as well.