Gold cloth was of varying excellence, however:  among the items in an inventory for the Earl of Warwick in the time of Henry VI., there is allusion to “one coat for My Lord’s body, beat with fine gold; two coats for heralds, beat with demi-gold.”

It is generally assumed that the first wire-drawing machines were made about 1360 in Germany; they were not used in England until about 1560.  Theophilus, however, in the eleventh century, tells “Of the instruments through which wires are drawn,” saying that they consist of “two irons, three fingers in breadth, narrow above and below, everywhere thin, and perforated with three or four ranges, through which holes wires are drawn.”  This would seem to be a primitive form of the more developed instrument.  Wire drawing was introduced into England by Christian Schutz about 1560.  In 1623 was incorporated in London, “The Worshipful Company of Gold and Silver Wire-Drawers.”  The preamble of their charter reads thus:  “The Trade Art of Drawing and flattening of gold and silver wire, and making and spinning of gold and silver thread and stuffe.”  It seems as though there were some kind of work that corresponded to wire-drawing, earlier than its supposed introduction, for a petition was sent to King Henry VI. in 1423, by the “wise and worthy Communes of London, & the Wardens of Broderie in the said Citie,” requesting protection against “deceit and default in the work of divers persons occupying the craft of embroidery;” and in 1461 “An act of Common Council was passed respecting the gold-drawers,” showing that the art was known to some extent and practised at that time.  In the reign of George II., in 1742, “An act to prevent the counterfeiting of gold and silver lace and for the settling and adjusting the proportions of fine silver and silk, and for the better making of gold and silver lace,” was passed.

Ecclesiastical vestments were often trimmed with heavy gold fringe, knotted “fretty wise,” and the embroideries were further enriched with jewels and small plaques of enamel.  Matthew Paris relates a circumstance of certain garments being so heavily weighted with gold that the clergy could not walk in them, and, in order to get the solid metal out again, it was necessary to burn the garments and thus melt the gold.

Jewelled robes were often seen in the Middle Ages; a chasuble is described as having been made for the Abbot of St. Albans, in the twelfth century, which was practically covered with plaques of gold and precious stones.  Imagine the unpleasant physical sensation of a bishop in 1404, who was obliged to wear a golden mitre of which the ground was set with large pearls, bordered with balas rubies, and sapphires, and trimmed with indefinite extra pearls!

The body of St. Cecilia, who was martyred in 230, was interred in a garment of pure woven gold.

The cloth of solid gold which was used for state occasions was called “tissue;” the thin paper in which it was wrapped when it was laid away was known as tissue paper, and Mr. William Maskell states that the name has clung to it, and that is why thin paper is called “tissue paper” to-day.