This vestment has been much mutilated, and
it is now of the degenerate fiddle-shaped
pattern which has become popular in modern
times. The material is a blue satin with
embroidery of gold thread and coloured silks.
There is on the back a broad orphrey having
four quatrefoil compartments enclosing the
following subjects : The Crucifixion of our
Lord, the Virgin and Child, SS. Peter and
Paul, and the Stoning of St. Stephen. The
intervening spaces are covered with scroll-
work of the beautiful type characteristic of
the early Gothic period. The rest of the
back and the whole of the front are em-
broidered with lions and griffins enclosed by
scrollwork.
The chasuble can be traced back as far
as the year 1786, when it formed the subject
of some correspondence in the Gentleman's
Magazine* There were then a stole and a
maniple belonging to it, embroidered with
heraldry, apparently indicating that they were
made for Margaret de Clare, wife of Edmund
Plantagenet, Earl of Cornwall. The possessor
at the time of the correspondence had received
them from a gentleman in Wales
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