frequency from this time until the middle of the seventeenth century.
The majority of these bindings are worked in tapestry-stitch, or
tent-stitch, in designs illustrating Scriptural subjects in differently
coloured threads.

Very often the outlines of these designs are marked by gold threads and
cords, of various kinds, and parts of the work are also frequently
enriched with further work upon them in metal threads. Spangles are very
rarely found on canvas-bound books. The backgrounds of several of the
later specimens are worked in silver threads, sometimes in chain-stitch
and sometimes in tapestry-stitch; others again have the groundwork of
silver threads laid along the surface of the canvas and caught down at
regular intervals by small stitches--this kind of work is called 'laid'
or 'couched' work. Books bound with this metal ground have always strong
work superimposed, usually executed in metal strips, cords, and thread.
The silver is now generally oxidised and much darkened, but when new
these bindings must have been very brilliant.

[Illustration: 3--The Felbrigge Psalter. 13th-century MS.]


_The Felbrigge Psalter._ 13th-century MS. Probably bound in the
14th century.

The earliest example of an embroidered book in existence is, I believe,
the manuscript English Psalter written in the thirteenth century, which
afterwards belonged to Anne, daughter of Sir Simon de Felbrigge, K. G.,
standard-bearer to Richard II. Anne de Felbrigge was a nun in
the convent of Minoresses at Bruisyard in Suffolk, during the latter
half of the fourteenth century, and it is quite likely that she herself