A guild of embroiderers was in standing in Seville in 1433, where Ordinances were enforced to protect from fraud and otherwise to regulate this industry.  The same laws were in existence in Toledo.  One of the finest and largest pieces of embroidery in Spain is known as the Tent of Ferdinand and Isabella.  This was used in 1488, when certain English Ambassadors were entertained.  The following is their description of its use.  “After the tilting was over, the majesties returned to the palace, and took the Ambassadors with them, and entered a large room... and there they sat under a rich cloth of state of crimson velvet, richly embroidered, with the arms of Castile and Aragon.”

A curious effect must have been produced by a piece of embroidery described in the inventory of Charles V., as “two little pillows with savage beasts having the heads of armed men, and garnished with pearls.”

After the Reformation it became customary to use ecclesiastical ornaments for domestic purposes.  Heylin, in his “History of the Reformation,” makes mention of many “private men’s parlours” which “were hung with altar cloths, and their tables and beds covered with copes instead of carpetts and coverlids.”

Katherine of Aragon, while the wife of Henry VIII., consoled herself in her unsatisfactory life by needlework:  it is related that she and her ladies “occupied themselves working with their own hands something wrought in needlework, costly and artificially, which she intended to the honour of God to bestow upon some churches.”  Katherine of Aragon was such a devoted needlewoman, in fact, that on one occasion Burnet records that she stepped out to speak to two ambassadors, with a skein of silk about her neck, and explained that she had been embroidering with her ladies when they were announced.  In an old sonnet she is thus commemorated: 

  “She to the eighth king Henry married was
   And afterwards divorced, when virtuously,
   Although a queen, yet she her days did pass
   In working with the needle curiously.”

Queen Elizabeth was also a clever embroiderer; she worked a book-cover for Katherine Parr, bearing the initials K. P., and it is now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.

Mary Queen of Scots was also said to be skilful with her needle; in fact it seems to have been the consolation of most queens in their restricted existence in those centuries.  Dr. Rock considers that the “corporal” which Mary Queen of Scots had bound about her eyes at the time of her execution, was in reality a piece of her own needle-work, probably wrought upon fine linen.  Knight, in describing the scene in his “Picturesque History of England,” says:  “Then the maid Kennedy took a handkerchief edged with gold, in which the Eucharist had formerly been enclosed, and fastened it over her eyes;” so accounts differ and traditions allow considerable scope for varied preferred interpretation.

It is stated that Catherine de Medicis was fond of needlework, passing her evenings embroidering in silk “which was as perfect as was possible,” says Brantome.