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TAPESTRIES
157

the days of Wolsey. The glass is also of various dates; a little of the old here and there has escaped the ravages of Puritanism, though all the chapel windows and all those in the hall have perished. Some new glass was put in in 1847, of which perhaps the less said the better, save that the shields in the windows in the great hall trace the descent of each of Henry VIII.'s wives from Edward I.

II

Of the decorative memorials of the Tudor age that now remain, the tapestries are the most important and the most conspicuous. Embroideries, the work of the hands of queens and fair ladies, have passed away: they have been mentioned in another connection.[1] One further word, however, may be allowed here. Embroidered curtains were made, with a curious and pleasing reverence, to veil pictures which might seem incongruous with a scene of revelry.[2] Beside the embroideries hung rich arras and tapestries. Skelton's bitter satire on Wolsey speaks of—

"Hanging about their wailes
Clothes of golde and palles,
Arras of ryche arraye,
Fresh as floures in Maye."


  1. Page 58.
  2. "It is interesting to find in an old catalogue of Hampton Court how pictures of sacred subjects were thus decently veiled in the profaner