Though, in the reign of our Henry II. London was the head city of this kingdom, and the chief home of royalty, some reader may perhaps be startled on hearing that while its churches were 120, the inhabitants amounted only to the number of 40,000, as we learn from Peter, its then archdeacon: “nam quum sint in illa civitate (Londinensi) quadra-ginta millia hominum, atque centum et viginti ecclesiæ,” &c.[371]--yet, at that very time, the capital of Sicily--Palermo--by itself was yielding to its king a yearly revenue quite equal in amount to the whole income of England’s sovereign, as we are told by Gerald Barry the learned Welsh writer then living: “Urbs etenim una Siciliæ, Palernica scilicet, plus certi redditus regi Siculo singulis annis reddere solet, quam Anglorum regi nunc reddit Anglia tota.”[372] This great wealth was gathered to Sicily by her trade in silken textiles, first with the Byzantines and the coasts of Asia Minor and Alexandria, where those stuffs were at the time wrought; and secondly, with Europe, and the products of her own looms somewhat later. Many of the pieces in this collection were woven at Palermo and other cities in that island. She herself was not the least consumer of her own industry, and of the profuse employment of silk for royal awnings, during the twelfth century in the kingdom of the two Sicilies. We have an example in the silken tent, made for queen Joan, and given her by her husband king William, large enough to hold two hundred knights sitting down to dinner; and which, along with her chair of gold, and golden table twelve feet long and a foot and a-half wide, her brother, our Richard I. got back for his sister from Tancred: “Ipse (Richardus rex) enim a rege Tancredo exigebat--cathedram auream ad opus ejusdem Johannæ de consuetudine reginarum illius regni et ad opus sui ipsius mensam auream de longitudine duodecim pedum, et de latitudine unius pedis et semis et quoddam tentorium de serico magnum adeo quod ducenti milites in eo possint simul manducare.”[373] Among the old copes, dalmatics and chasubles which, one after the other, find their way at last to collections such as this, must the historian seek for what remains of those gorgeous robes worn at some interesting ceremony, or on some stirring occasion, by personages celebrated in our national annals. For example, along with the several gifts bestowed upon the church of Ely, by king Edgar, we find mentioned his mantle of costly purple and gold, of which was made a vestment: “Enimvero chlamydem suam de insigni purpura ad modum loricæ auro undique contextam illuc (ecclesiæ Eliensi) contulit rex Ædgarus.”[374] Of a whole set of mass vestments at Windsor made out of the crimson and gold cloth powdered with birds, once the array worn by a royal princess when she was married, we have already spoken. [371] Petri Blesensis Opera, ed. Giles, t. ii. p. 85. [372] Geraldi Cambrensis De Instructione Principum, ed. J. S. Brewer, p. 168.