Corsse for a cloth of an estate conteyning 47-1/2 yerds, £11 the yerd, £522 10s."[1]
About the feudal right, still kept up in Rome, to a cloth of estate, among the continental nobility, we have spoken, p. 107 of this catalogue, where a fragment of such a hanging is described.
The custom itself is thus noticed by Chaucer:—
Yet nere and nere forth in I gan me dress
Into an hall of noble apparaile,
With arras spred, and cloth of gold I gesse,
And other silke of easier availe:
Under the cloth of their estate sauns faile
The king and quene there sat as I beheld.[2]
This same rich golden stuff asks for our notice under a third and even better known name, to be found all through our early literature as
Cloth of Pall.
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."[3]
In worldly use, if the king's daughter was to have a
Mantell of ryche degre
Purple palle and armyne fre.[4]
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.[5]
