The seemliness, not to say comfort, of private life was improved by the use of textiles. Let the historian contrast the custom even in a royal palace, during the middle ages, with that now followed in every tradesman’s home. Then straw and rushes were strewed in houses upon the floor in every room; and Wendover, in his life of St. Thomas, speaks of the king’s courtiers platting knots with the litter, and flinging them with a gibe at a man who had been slighted by the prince. Not quite a hundred years later when Eleanor of Castile came to London for her marriage with our first Edward she found her lodgings furnished, under the directions of the Spanish courtiers who had arrived before her, with hangings and curtains of silk around the walls, and carpets spread upon the ground. This offended some of the people; more of them, as Matthew Paris records, laughed at the thought that such costly things were laid down to be walked upon. Take, again, the famous Syon cope. Not only is it full of interest to writers upon liturgies and rituals but of even more to the herald and genealogist. Covered as its orphreys are with armorial bearings, this cope carries with it evidences as important and as valuable as any contemporary roll of arms; and no inquirer into the pedigrees of the ancient families of the Percies or Ferrers, of Cliffords or Botelers, and of many others, can afford to neglect it. We have several records of evidence in courts of law taken from heraldic embroideries upon robes and vestments. In the famous controversy between the houses of Scrope and Grosvenor, in the fourteenth century, inquiries were made and proofs were offered on both sides as to the right of bearing upon their shields the bend _or_ upon a field _azure_. Witnesses produced at Westminster corporas cases, copes, and albs embroidered with the arms of Scrope. Chaucer was one of the witnesses; and said he had seen those arms on banners and vestments and commonly called the arms of Scrope. Again; the fact that in her wardrobe was found a vestment embroidered with the royal arms was brought forward to prove the charge of treason against the old countess of Salisbury, the mother of cardinal Pole; and for which crime she was condemned. Collections of ancient textiles are of still greater use to students of ecclesiastical history and church rituals than even to the secular historian. It is probable that the greater number of the specimens which now exist formed originally portions of sacred vestments and furniture for altars. Formerly so common, fragments even of such cloths and robes have become of very great rarity, especially in England; where for the last two or three centuries the use of the numerous old church vestments and decorations has entirely ceased.