They are, as far as workmanship goes,
still more alike, similar thick silk is used for the ground, and threads
and braids of a thick nature, with metal interwoven, are used on both
for the ornamental work. Speaking of this British Museum book, the
Countess of Wilton says, 'there is little doubt that Elizabeth's own
needle wrought the ornaments thereon.'
_Books embroidered by the Princess Elizabeth._
It cannot be said that there is any actual authority for saying that the
two covers just described are really the work of Elizabeth's own hand,
although she is known to have been fond of embroidery, it being recorded
that she made and embroidered a shirt for her brother Edward when she
was six. There is little doubt, however, that the same designer and the
same workwoman worked both these covers, and the technique, as well as
the design, are peculiar for the time in which they were done. Canvas
bindings were rare--most of the embroidered work on books of that period
were splendid works on velvet--so that if these two manuscripts had been
'given out' to be bound in embroidered covers we should have expected to
find them in rich velvet, like Brion's _Holy Land_, or Christopherson's
_Historia Ecclesiastica_, instead of a very elementary braid work.
Without attaching too much importance to the various statements
concerning their royal origin, I am inclined to think that there is no
impossibility, or even improbability, in the supposition that the
Princess designed and worked them herself, thereby adding to her
exquisite manuscript the further charm of her clever needle.
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