As in other places abroad, so at Lucca, cloths of gold and of silver were often wrought, and the Lucchese cloths of this costly sort were, here in England, during the fourteenth century, in particular request. In all likelihood they were, both of them, not of the deadened but sparkling kind, afterwards especially known as “tissue.” Exeter Cathedral, A.D. 1327, had a cope of silver tissue, or cloth of Lucca:--“una capa alba de panno de Luk.”[226] At a later date, belonging to the same church, were two fine chasubles--one purple, the other red--of the same glittering stuff, “casula de purpyll panno,” &c.,[227] where we find it specified that not only was the textile of gold, but of that especial sort called tissue. York cathedral was particularly furnished with a great many copes of tissue shot with every colour required by its ritual, and among them were--“a reade cope of clothe of tishewe with orphry of pearl, a cope with orphrey, a cope of raised clothe of goulde,”[228] making a distinction between tissue and the ordinary cloth of gold. But at the court of our Edward II. its favour would seem to have been the highest. In the Wardrobe Accounts of that king, we see the golden tissue, or Lucca cloth, several times mentioned. Whether the ceremony happened to be sad or gay, this glistening web was used; palls made of Lucca cloth were, at masses for the dead, strewed over the corpse; at marriages the care-cloth was made of the same stuff; thus when Richard de Arundell and Isabella, Hugh le Despenser’s daughter, had been wedded at the door of the royal chapel, the veil held spread out over their heads as they knelt inside the chancel during the nuptial mass, for the blessing, was of Lucca cloth.[229] Richard II.’s fondness for this cloth of gold was lately noticed, p. xxx. Just about Edward II.’s time was it that velvet became known, and got into use amongst our churchmen for vestments, and our nobles for personal wear, and the likelihood is that Lucca was among the first places in Europe to weave it. The specimens here of this fine textile from Lucchese looms, though in comparison with those from Genoa, they be few and mostly after one manner--the raised or cut--still have now a certain historical value for the English workman: No. 1357, p. 72, with its olive green plain silken ground, and trailed all over with flowers and leaves in a somewhat deeper tone, and the earlier example, No. 8322, p. 192, with its ovals and feathering stopped with graceful cusps and artichokes, afford us good instances of what Lucca could produce in the way of artistic velvets. [226] Oliver, p. 315. [227] P. 344. [228] York Fabric Rolls, p. 308.