The excellence of the English work was maintained as time went on, and a proof of this is found in an anecdote preserved by Matthew of Paris.[24] "About this time (1246) the Lord Pope (Innocent IV.) having observed the ecclesiastical ornaments of some Englishmen, such as choristers' copes and mitres, were embroidered in gold thread after a very desirable fashion, asked where these works were made, and received in answer, in England. 'Then,' said the Pope, 'England is surely a garden of delights for us. It is truly a never-failing spring, and there, where many things abound, much may be extracted.' Accordingly, the same Lord Pope sent sacred and sealed briefs to nearly all the abbots of the Cistercian order established in England, requesting them to have forthwith forwarded to him those embroideries in gold which he preferred to all others, and with which he wished to adorn his chasuble and choral cope, as if these objects cost them nothing," an order which, adds the chronicler, "was sufficiently pleasing to the merchants, but the cause of many persons detesting him for his covetousness." Perhaps the finest examples of the _opus anglicanum_ extant are the cope and maniple of St. Cuthbert, taken from his coffin in the Cathedral of Durham, and now preserved in the Chapter library. One side of the maniple is of gold lace stitched on, worked apparently on a parchment pattern. The Syon Monastery cope, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, is an invaluable example of English needlework of the thirteenth century. "The greater portion of its design is worked in a chain-stitch (modern tambour or crochet), especially in the faces of the figures, where the stitch begins in the centre, say, of a cheek, and is then worked in a spiral, thus forming a series of circular lines. The texture so obtained is then, by means of a hot, small and round-knobbed iron, pressed into indentations at the centre of each spiral, and an effect of relief imparted to it. The general {8}practice was to work the draperies in feather-stitch (_opus plumarium_)."[25] In the tenth century the art of pictorial embroidery had become universally spread. The inventory of the Holy See (in 1293) mentions the embroideries of Florence, Milan, Lucca, France, England, Germany, and Spain, and throughout the Middle Ages embroidery was treated as a fine art, a serious branch of painting.[26] In France the fashion continued, as in England, of producing groups, figures and portraits, but a new development was given to floral and elaborate arabesque ornament.[27]