Those two pyx-cloths at No. 8342, p. 202, and No. 8691, p. 260, will have an interest for the student of mediæval liturgy as we have already pointed out, p. 202. While in Italy the custom, during the middle ages at least, never prevailed, here in England as well as all over France, and several countries on the Continent, it did, of keeping the Eucharist under one form, hung up over the high altar beneath a beautiful canopy within a pyx of gold, silver, ivory, or enamel, and mantled with a fine linen embroidered cloth or veil. At present this “velum pyidis” overspreading the ciborium or pyx in the tabernacle, is of silk. In olden days the veil for the pyx was, here in England, beautifully embroidered with golden thread and coloured silks, and usually carried three crowns of gold or silver, as is shown in the woodcut, “Church of our Fathers,”[390] and often mentioned in many of our national documents which, without some such notice as this, could not be rightly understood. Among the things once belonging to Richard II. in Haverford castle and sent by the sheriff of Hereford to the exchequer, at the beginning of Henry IV.’s reign, are three crowns of gold, a gold cup, and one of the pyx-veils like these: “iij corones d’or pour le Corps Ihu Cryst. i coupe d’or pour le Corps Ihu Cryst. i towayll ove (avec) i longe parure de mesure la suyte.”[391] [389] Monasticon Anglicanum, t. viii. p. 1285, ed. Caley. [390] T. iv. p. 206. [391] The Ancient Kalendars and Inventories of His Majesty’s Exchequer, t. iii. p. 361. ed. Palgrave. By different people, and at various periods, a variety of names was given to this fine linen covering. Describing in his will, one made in this country and so valuable for its English needlework, a bishop of Tournay (see before p. xcix) calls it a corporal: in the inventory of things taken from Dr. Caius, and in the college of his own founding at Cambridge, are: “corporas clothes, with the pix and ‘sindon’ and canopie,” &c.[392] This variety in nomenclature doubtless led writers unacquainted with ritual matters to state that before Mary Queen of Scots bent her head upon the block, she had a “corporal,” properly so called, bound over her eyes. What to our seeming this bandage really was, must have been a large piece of fine linen embroidered by her own hands--Mary wrought much with her needle, as specimens of her doing yet remain at Chatsworth, and at Greystock show--meant for, perhaps too once used as a pyx-cloth, and not an altar corporal. [392] Munk’s Roll of the Royal College of Physicians, t. i. p. 37.