“Opus plumarium” was the then usual term for what is now commonly called embroidery; and was given to needlework of this kind because the stitches were laid down longwise and not across: that is, so put together that they seemed to overlap one another like the feathers in the plumage of a bird. This style was aptly called “feather-stitch” work, in contradistinction to that done in cross and tent stitch, or the “cushion-style.” The “opus pulvinarium,” or “cushion-style,” was like the modern so-called Berlin work. As now, so then it was done in the same stitching with pretty much the same materials and generally, if not always, put to the same purpose; for cushions, to sit or to kneel upon in church or to uphold the mass-book at the altar; hence its name of “cushion-style.” In working it silken thread is known to have been often used. Among other specimens, and in silk, there is a beautiful cushion of a date corresponding to the London inventory at South Kensington, no. 1324. Being well adapted for working heraldry this stitch has been used from an early period for the purpose; and emblazoned orphreys, like the narrow hem on the Syon cope, were wrought in it. The “opus pectineum” was a kind of woven work imitative of embroidery, and employed to supply it. John Garland, in his dictionary, explains that it was made by means of a comb, or some comb-like instrument: and from this the work itself received the distinctive appellation of “pectineum,” or comb-wrought. Before John Garland left England for France, to teach a school there, he must have often seen his countrywomen at such an occupation; and the amice given by Katherine Lovell to St. Paul’s, “de opere pectineo,” may perhaps have been the work of her own hands. Women in the middle ages were so ready at the needle that they could make their embroidery look as if it had been done in the loom, really woven. A shred of crimson cendal figured in gold and silver thread with a knight on horseback, armed as of the latter time of Edward the first, was shown to us some time ago. At first sight the mounted warrior seemed to have been not hand-worked but woven; so flat, so even was every thread. Looking at it however through a glass and turning it about, we found it to have been embroidered by the finger in such a way that the stitches laid down upon the surface were carried through into the canvas lining at the back of the thin silk. In this same manner all the design, both before and behind, upon the fine English-wrought chasuble at South Kensington, no. 673, was probably worked.