The early pattern-books contain designs to be worked in gold and silver,[269] a manufacture said to have been carried on chiefly by the Jews,[270] as indeed it is in many parts of Europe at the present time; an idea which strengthens on finding that two years after the expulsion of that persecuted tribe from the country, in 1492, the most Catholic kings found it necessary to pass a law prohibiting the importation of gold lace from Lucca and Florence, except such as was necessary for ecclesiastical purposes. Mrs. Palliser was of opinion that thread lace was manufactured in Spain at this epoch, for, "in the cathedral of Granada is preserved a lace alb presented to the church by Ferdinand and Isabella, one of the few relics of ecclesiastical grandeur still extant in the country." The late Cardinal Wiseman stated to Mrs. Palliser that he had himself officiated in this vestment, which was valued at 10,000 {93}crowns. But the following passage from Señor Riano greatly affects the value of what would otherwise be a fact of importance adduced by Mrs. Palliser. "Notwithstanding the opinion of so competent an authority as Mrs. Palliser, I doubt the statement, finding no evidence to support it, that thread lace of a very fine or artistic kind was ever made in Spain, or exported as an article of commerce during early times. The lace alb which Mrs. Palliser mentions to prove this as existing at Granada, a gift of Ferdinand and Isabella in the fifteenth century, is Flemish lace of the seventeenth."[271]