Chapter XXIX: Appendix: V., to Page 320

The Hon. and Rev. Ignatius Clifford has permitted me to make extracts from his "Memoranda of some remarkable Specimens of Ancient Church Embroidery." First on his list is the Cope now in the possession of Colonel Butler Bowden, of Pleasington, near Blackburn, Lancashire. I give his account of the mutilated condition, from which he has made his beautifully drawn restoration. "Formerly," he says, "portions of this cope, some made up into chasuble, stole, maniple, and some scraps detached, were at Mount St. Mary's College, Spink Hill, near Chesterfield, Derbyshire."

The well-known architect, the late Augustus Welby Pugin, having seen them (or at least the chasuble), wrote on the 20th April, 1849, to the Rector of the College, "I found it to be of English work of the time of Edward I., and have no hesitation in pronouncing it to be the most interesting and beautiful specimen of church embroidery I have ever seen."

Other portions of the cope had been made up into an altar-frontal, and were in the possession of Henry Bowden, Esq., of Southgate House, Derbyshire, some four or five miles from the college.

The ground is crimson velvet. The designs are wrought in gold, silver, silk, and seed pearls. The silks are worked in chain, or rather in split stitch. It contains between seventy and eighty figures.

Only two small fragments remain of the quasi-hood.

In the orphrey are kings, queens, archbishops, and bishops. In the body of the cope are the Annunciation--Adoration of the Magi--Our Lady enthroned at the right of her Divine Son. _Lowest row_ of single figures--St. Simon, St. Jude, St. James, St. Thomas, St. Andrew, St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Barnabas, St. Matthew, St. Philip, St. James, St. Bartholomew. _Middle row_--St. Edward the Confessor--a Bishop--St. Margaret, St. John the Evangelist, St. John the Baptist, St. Catherine, an Archbishop, St. Edmund king and martyr. _Top row_--St. Lawrence, St. Mary Magdalene, St. Martha (or St. Helen?), St. Stephen. In the intervals, angels seated on faldstool thrones, and bearing stars; also two popinjays.

Mr. Clifford describes the Steeple Aston Cope. The ground is of a richly ribbed faded silk. The design worked in gold and silks is enclosed in quatrefoils of oak and ivy. The Syon Cope he refers to Rock's "Textile Fabrics." See Appendix.

The Dalmatic from Anagni, exhibited at Rome in 1870, he thinks is probably English.

The Pluvial in the Basilica of St. John Lateran at Rome, he speaks of as "having much the appearance of the celebrated Opus Anglicanum."

He describes the subjects embroidered on it thus: "No border round the curved edge. The orphrey is divided into tabernacles containing an archbishop, two bishops, and three kings and queens. Between the tabernacles are four angels, each accompanied by one of the evangelistic symbols. The body of the cope is cut into a most elaborate system of tabernacles, with a centre compartment of a different form for the group of the Crucifixion. The subjects are chiefly from the life of our Lord and the Blessed Virgin. The small quasi-hood is embroidered with two wyverns or griffin-like creatures. The pelican and the phœnix are introduced over the top central group of the enthronement of our Lady."

Mr. Clifford gives the history of the Cope of Pius II. (Bartolomeo Piccolomini, "Æneas Silvius") fifteenth century. It is a masterpiece of Italian embroidery of the early Renaissance. The material was gold brocade, covered with wonderful designs carried out in needlework, representing saints and angels, trees and birds, and arabesques. The whole was adorned with pearls and precious stones valued at £80,000. At his death the pope bequeathed this vestment to the cathedral of his native town. The cope was stolen in March, 1884, from the treasury at Pienza; and shortly afterwards discovered in the shop of a dealer in antiquities at Florence, but completely stripped of its precious stones and of some of its more valuable embroidery. After magisterial investigation, the cope was restored to Pienza.

The cope at Bologna is thus described: "Subjects from the New Testament contained in two rows of tabernacle compartments, twelve in lower, seven in upper row. Spandrils occupied by angels playing on various musical instruments. After each row, a border containing medallions with heads (of angels, prophets, &c.), twenty-three in lower, nine in upper row. No orphrey; no border or outside curve; quasi-hood very small."