It certainly was not necessarily linen.  Giovanni Villani, in a passage which is curious in more ways than one, tells how the citizens of Florence established races for their troops, and, among other prizes, was one which consisted of a Bucherame di bambagine (of cotton).  Polo, near the end of the Book (Bk.  III. ch. xxxiv.), speaking of Abyssinia, says, according to Pauthier’s text:  “Et si y fait on moult beaux bouquerans et autres draps de coton.”  The G. T. is, indeed, more ambiguous:  “Il hi se font maint biaus dras banbacin e bocaran” (cotton and buckram).  When, however, he uses the same expression with reference to the delicate stuffs woven on the coast of Telingana, there can be no doubt that a cotton texture is meant, and apparently a fine muslin. (See Bk.  III. ch. xviii.) Buckram is generally named as an article of price, chier bouquerant, rice boquerans, etc, but not always, for Polo in one passage (Bk.  II. ch. xlv.) seems to speak of it as the clothing of the poor people of Eastern Tibet.

Plano Carpini says the tunics of the Tartars were either of buckram (bukeranum), of purpura (a texture, perhaps velvet), or of baudekin, a cloth of gold (pp. 614-615).  When the envoys of the Old Man of the Mountain tried to bully St. Lewis, one had a case of daggers to be offered in defiance, another a bouqueran for a winding sheet (Joinville, p. 136.)

In accounts of materials for the use of Anne Boleyn in the time of her prosperity, bokeram frequently appears for “lyning and taynting” (?) gowns, lining sleeves, cloaks, a bed, etc., but it can scarcely have been for mere stiffening, as the colour of the buckram is generally specified as the same as that of the dress.

A number of passages seem to point to a quilted material.  Boccaccio (Day viii.  Novel 10) speaks of a quilt (coltre) of the whitest buckram of Cyprus, and Uzzano enters buckram quilts (coltre di Bucherame) in a list of Linajuoli, or linen-draperies.  Both his handbook and Pegolotti’s state repeatedly that buckrams were sold by the piece or the half-score pieces—­never by measure.  In one of Michel’s quotations (from Baudouin de Sebourc) we have: 

  “Gaufer li fist premiers armer d’un auqueton
  Qui fu de bougherant et plaine de bon coton.”

Mr. Hewitt would appear to take the view that Buckram meant a quilted material; for, quoting from a roll of purchases made for the Court of Edward I., an entry for Ten Buckrams to make sleeves of, he remarks, “The sleeves appear to have been of pourpointerie,” i.e. quilting. (Ancient Armour, I. 240.)