The cloak (in Latin pallium, in Anglo-Saxon paell) of state for regal ceremonies and high occasions, worn alike by men as well as women, was always made of the most gorgeous stuff that could be found. From a very early period in the mediæval ages, golden webs shot in silk with one or other of the various colours--occasionally blue, oftener crimson--were sought out, as may be easily imagined, for the purpose, through so many years, and everywhere, that at last each sort of cloth of gold had given to it the name of “pall,” no matter the immediate purpose to which it might have to be applied, and after so many fashions. Vestments for church use and garments for knights and ladies were made of it. Old St. Paul’s had chasubles and copes of cloth of pall: “Casula de pal, capa chori de pal, &c.”[205] In worldly use, if the king’s daughter was to have a Mantell of ryche degre Purple palle and armyne fre.[206] So in the poem of Sir Isumbras-- The rich queen in hall was set; Knights her served, at hand and feet In rich robes of pall.[207] [205] Hist. ed. Dugdale, p. 336. [206] The Squire of Low Degree. [207] Ellis’s Metrical Romances, t. iii. p. 167. For state receptions, our kings used to send out an order that the houses should be “curtained” all along the streets which the procession would have to take through London, “incortinaretur.”[208] How this was done we learn from Chaucer in the “Knight’s Tale,”[209] By ordinance, thurghout the cite large Hanged with cloth of gold, and not with sarge; as well as from the “Life of Alexander:”-- Al theo city was by-hong Of riche baudekyns and pellis (palls) among.[210] Hence, when Elizabeth, our Henry VII.’s queen, “proceeded from the Towre throwge the Citie of London (for her coronation) to Westminster, al the strets ther wich she shulde passe by, were clenly dressed and besene with clothes of Tappestreye and Arras. And some strets, as Cheepe, hangged with riche clothes of gold, velvetts, and silks, &c.[211] “As late as A.D. 1555, at Bow chyrche in London was hangyd with cloth of gold and with ryche hares (arras).”[212] Those same feelings which quickened our doughty knights and high-born ladies to go and overspread the bier of each dead noble friend, with costly baudekins or cloths of gold, so the church whispered and she whispers us still to do, in due degree, the same to the coffin in which the poor man is being carried to the grave beneath a mantle of silk and velvet. The brother or the sister belonging to any of our old London gilds had over them, however lowly they might have been in life, one or other of those splendid hearse-cloths which we saw in this museum, among the loans, in the ever memorable year 1862.