Wilton, Mary Margaret Stanley Egerton; Wilton, Mary Margaret Stanley Egerton [Hrsg.]: The art of needle-work from the earliest ages: including some notices of the ancient historical tapestries (London: Henry Colburn Publishers, 1841)

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CHAPTER VI.
THE DARK AGES.—“ SHEE-SCHOOLS.-’

There was an auncient house not far away,
Renown’d throughout the world fur sacred lore
And pure unspotted life : so well they say
It govern’d was, and guided evermore
Through wisedome of a matrone grave and hore,
Whose onely joy was to relieve the needes
Of wretched soules, and helpe the helplesse pore :
All night she spent in bidding of her bedes,
And all the day in doing good and godly dedes.”
Faerie Queene.

“ Meantime, whilst monks’ pens were thus employed, nuns with
their needles wrote histories also : that of Christ his passion for their
altar-clothes ; and other Scripture- (and more legend-) stories in hang-
ings to adorn their houses.’’ Fuller, Ch. Hist., B. 6.

Needlework is an art so indissolubly connected
with the convenience and comfort of mankind at
large, that it is impossible to suppose any state of
society in which it has not existed. Its modes varied,
of course, according to the lesser or greater degrees