Painting and jewelry were sometimes introduced in connection with embroideries.  In the celebrated Cope of St. John Lateran, the faces and hands of the personages are rendered in painting; but this method was more generally adopted in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when sincerity counted for less than effect, and when genuine religious fervour for giving one’s time and best labour to the Lord’s service no longer dominated the workers.  Gold thread was used extensively in English work, and spangles were added at quite an early period, as well as actual jewels set in floral designs.  The finest work was accomplished in the Gothic period, before the Renaissance came with its aimless scrolls to detract from the dignity of churchly ornament.

In the sixteenth century the winged angels have often a degenerate similitude to tightly laced coryphees, who balance themselves upon their wheels as if they were performing a vaudeville turn.  They are not as dignified as their archaic predecessors.

Very rich funeral palls were in vogue in the sixteenth century.  A description of Prince Arthur’s burial in 1502 relates how numerous palls were bestowed, apparently much as friends would send wreaths or important floral tributes to-day.  “The Lord Powys went to the Queere Doore,” writes Leland, “where two gentlemen ushers delivered him a riche pall of cloth of gould of tissue, which he offered to the corpse, where two Officers of the Armes received it, and laid it along the corpse.  The Lord Dudley in like manner offered a pall... the Lord Grey Ruthen offered another, and every each of the three Earls offered to the corpse three palls of the same cloth of gould... all the palls were layd crosse over the corpse.”

The account of the obsequies of Henry VII. also contains mention of these funeral palls:  the Earls and Dukes came in procession, from the Vestry, with “certain palls, which everie of them did bring solemnly between their hands and coming in order one before another as they were in degree, unto the said herse, they kissed their said palls... and laid them upon the King’s corpse.”  At Ann of Cleves’ burial the same thing was repeated, in 1557.  Finally these rich shimmering hangings came to be known in England as “cloth of pall,” whether they were used for funerals or coronations, for bridals or pageants.

The London City Guilds possessed magnificent palls; especially well known is that of the Fishmongers, with its kneeling angels swinging censers; this pall is frequently reproduced in works on embroidery.  It is embroidered magnificently with angels, saints, and strange to say, mermaids.  The peacock’s wings of the angels make a most decorative feature in this famous piece of old embroidery.  The Arms of the Company are also emblazoned.