‘The Pattern of All Patience’: Gender, Agency, and Emotions in Embroidery and Pattern Books in Early Modern England

Abstract

In sixteenth-century England, as elsewhere in Europe, embroidery was produced in vast quantities at enormous expense in both time and materials. Since the Reformation had moved the bulk of embroidery production away from the Church, there was room for ‘a remarkable expansion’ of this art form in the private sphere.¹ In the form of personal dress and household furnishings, it became a significant status symbol for royal courts and great households that aspired to wealth and power. Santina Levey makes the point that the textile furnishings, including a large number of embroideries, acquired for Hardwick Hall by Elizabeth Countess of Shrewsbury (Bess of Hardwick) were more valuable than the building itself.² Professional embroiderers, employed to fulfil commissions, produced many of these embroideries commercially, but at the same time, amateur embroidery also flourished, and was promoted as an appropriate leisure activity for women of rank, and those who aspired to it. Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603) and Bess of Hardwick (1527-1608) both embroidered, as did Mary Queen of Scots (1542-87), particularly during her period of captivity in England when she was in the custody of Bess of Hardwick’s husband, George Talbot, the Earl of Shrewsbury, from 1569 to 1584.