of a multitude of the richest offerings, the pope retained;[11]
or if it were in England (for our domestic scene will apply to all the
Christian world) it might be a magnificent covering for the high
altar, with a scripture history embroidered in the centre, and the
border, of regal purple, inwrought with gold and precious stones. We
say, _if in England_, because so celebrated was the English work, the
Opus Anglicum,[12] that other nations eagerly desired to possess it.
The embroidered vestments of some English clergymen were so much
admired at the Papal Court, that the Pope, asking where they had been
made, and being told "in England," despatched bulls to several English
abbots, commanding them to procure similar ones for him. Some of the
vestments of these days were almost covered with gold and precious
stones.

Or it might be a magnificent pall, in the days in which this garment
had lost its primitive character, that taxed the skill and the
patience of the fair needlewoman. It was about the year A.D. 601 that
Pope Gregory sent two archbishop's palls into England; the one for
London, which see was afterwards removed to Canterbury, and the other
to York. Fuller gives the following account of this garment
primitively:--

"The pall is a pontificall vestment, considerable for the matter,
making, and mysteries thereof. For the matter, it is made of
lamb's-wooll and superstition. I say, _of lamb's-wooll, as it comes
from the sheep's back, without any other artificiall colour_, spun
(say some) by a peculiar order of nunnes, _first cast into the tombe
of St. Peter_, taken from his body (say others); surely most sacred if
from both; and (superstitiously) adorned with little black crosses.
For the form thereof, the _breadth exceeded not three fingers_ (one of
our bachelor's lamb-skin hoods in Cambridge would make three of them),
_having two labells hanging down before and behind_, which the
archbishops onely, when going to the altar, put about their necks,
above their other pontificall ornaments. Three mysteries were couched
therein. First, humility, which beautifies the clergy above all their
costly copes; secondly, innocency, to imitate lamb-like simplicitie;
and thirdly, industry, to follow him who fetched his wandering sheep
home on his shoulders. But to speak plainly, the mystery of mysteries
in this pall was, that the archbishops receiving it showed therein
their dependence on Rome; and a mote in this manner ceremoniou