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.
This same rich golden stuff had a third and even better known name, to be found all through our early literature as Cloth of Pall.
The state cloak (in Latin pallium, in Anglo-saxon paell), 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 but oftener crimson, were sought for 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 or after what fashion. Vestments for sacred use and garments for knights and ladies were equally made of it. The word is common enough in the church inventories.
As to worldly use, the king’s daughter in the ‘Squire of low degree’ had
Mantell of ryche degre
Purple palle and armyne fre:
and 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.
For ceremonial receptions our kings used to order that every house should be “curtained” along the streets which the procession would have to take through London, “incortinaretur.” How this was done we learn from Chaucer in the ‘Knight’s tale’;
By ordinance, thurghout the cite large
Hanged with cloth of gold, and not with sarge;