Perhaps, however, we have acted rashly in having ventured even thus cursorily to touch upon the antiquity of the Tapestry. Miss Agnes Strickland, who, in her _Lives of the Queens of England_, shows how vigorously she can wield the pen, is rather indignant that any one who is not learned in cross-stitch, should venture to discuss the subject. Before we argue, she wants to know if we can sew. She says, “With due deference to the judgment of the lords of the creation on all subjects connected with policy and science, we venture to think that our learned friends, the archæologists and antiquaries, would do well to direct their intellectual powers to more masculine objects of inquiry, and leave the question of the Bayeux Tapestry (with all other matters allied to needle-craft) to the decision of the ladies, to whose province it belongs. It is matter of doubt to us whether one, out of the many gentlemen who have disputed Matilda’s claims to that work, if called upon to execute a copy of either of the figures on canvas, would know how to put in the first stitch.”[20] Few of the rougher sex would like to be put to the_experimentum acus_, and therefore it may be as well at once to exercise the best part of valour, and beat a hasty retreat.
The attention of the learned world was first, in modern times, called to the Bayeux Tapestry by M. Lancelot, who in 1724 found a drawing of a portion of it in the Cabinet of Antiquities at Paris. He was struck with its appearance, and at once pronounced it to be of the age of William the Conqueror, and intended to commemorate his exploits; but he was unable to conjecture whether the drawing represented a bass-relief, a piece of sculpture surrounding a choir of a church or a tomb, a painting in fresco or upon a glass window, or even, he adds, if it be a piece of tapestry. He conceived that the original would be found at Caen. In consequence of his suggestion, Father Montfaucon made diligent inquiries, and, after some trouble, found the Tapestry, not at Caen, but at Bayeux. He ascertained that it was there popularly ascribed to Queen Matilda.[21] M. Lancelot further informs us that it was ordinarily called in the country _La Toilette de Duc Guillaume_. At that period, and for long afterwards, it was kept in a side chapel of the cathedral, rolled upon a kind of winch, and was exposed to public view only once a year, on the festival of the relics (July 1), and during the octave. On these occasions it was hung up in the nave of the church, which it completely surrounded.