sly
taken was a sufficient acknowledgment of their subjection. And, as it
owned Rome's power, so in after ages it increased their profit. For,
though now such palls were freely given to archbishops, whose places
in Britain for the present were rather cumbersome than commodious,
having little more than their paines for their labour; yet in after
ages the archbishop of Canterburie's pall was sold for five thousand
florenes:[13] so that the Pope might well have the Golden Fleece, if
he could sell all his lamb's-wooll at that rate."[14]

The accounts of the rich embroidered ecclesiastical vestments--robes,
sandals, girdles, tunics, vests, palls, cloaks, altar-cloths, and
veils or hangings of various descriptions, common in churches in the
dark ages--would almost surpass belief, if the minuteness with which
they are enumerated in some few ancient authors did not attest the
fact. Still these in the most diffuse writers are a mere catalogue of
church properties, and, as such, would, in the dry detail, be but
little interesting to our readers. There is enough said of them,
however, to attest their variety, their beauty, their magnificence;
and to impress one with a very favourable idea of the female ingenuity
and perseverance of those days. The cost of many of these garments was
enormous, for pearls and precious jewels were literally interwrought,
and the time and labour bestowed on them was almost incredible. It was
no uncommon circumstance for three years to be spent even by these
assiduous and indefatigable votaries of the needle on one garment. But
it is only casually, in the pages of the antiquarian, that there is
any record of them:--

"With their names
No bard embalms and sanctifies his song:
And history, so warm on meaner themes,
Is cold on this."

"Noi" (says Muratori) "che ammiriamo, e con ragione, la belta e
varieta di tante drapperie dei nostri tempi, abbiam nondimeno da
confessare un obbligo non lieve agli antichi, che ci hanno prima
spianata la via, e senza i lumi loro non potremmo oggidi vantare un si
gran progresso nell'Arti."

And that this was the case a few instances may suffice to show; and it
may not be quite out of place here to refer to one out of a thousand
articles of value and beauty which were lost in the great
conflagration ("which so cruelly laid waste the habitations of the
servants of God") of the doomed and often suffering, but always
magnificent, Croyland