3. In the fifteenth century, when the pendent tails became common, we find two brasses at Cobham, Kent, one showing the almuce clasped on the breast by a brooch, the other showing it open all down the front under the cope.
4. In a drawing at New College, Oxford, executed about 1446, the Warden of Winchester College is represented in a furred almuce not open in front, but the Fellows who stand near him wear almuces laced up the front. This drawing is reproduced in 'Archaeologia,' vol. liii, plate 14.
5. An effigy dating from the very end of the fifteenth century in St Martin's, Birmingham, illustrates the almuce as it appeared when the cape was joined completely across the breast.
To these facts we may add that as a general rule the two front tails in the earlier representations of almuces have plain ends; in those of later representations (from circa 1450) the tails have a small ornamental tassel, or tuft, attached to their ends.
VI. The Cope.—The cope may date back, as a vestment, to the ninth century, but in that form it is certainly not older. Before that time it was nothing more or less than an overcoat, which the clergy kept on in their cold and draughty churches or in open-air processions. It is represented in an Anglo-Saxon pontifical of circa 900 as a plain cloth vestment, fastened at the neck by a brooch or morse; the shape is similar to that which we find in later times. The shape of the cope was very much that of half the chasuble. It was secured at the neck by a brooch, and suffered to drape on the person. The material, at least in mediaeval times, was silk, cloth of gold, velvet, or other precious stuffs. It was magnificently embroidered, jewelled, and enriched with precious metals, the embroideries consisting either of strips along the straight edges, which hung down in front, or else of these strips combined with patterns running over the entire surface of the vestment, or confined to the lower border. It is hard to say whether the cope or the chasuble was the richer vestment in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
Fig. 13.—Brass of Archdeacon Magnus, Sessay, Yorkshire, 1550 (showing Processional vestments, including hooded cope).
The cope, being originally a costume for outdoor processions, was furnished with a hood at the back; but when the almuce took its place, it degenerated, like so many other vestments, or parts of vestments, into a mere ornamental appendage; it lost its hood form (which would somewhat have interfered with the appearance of the almuce) and became a triangular flap, usually embroidered with some scene in sacred or legendary history. In many copes these hoods were absent, while to others there were several hoods, so that subjects appropriate to the day could be hooked on. This triangular flap gradually assumed curvilinear sides, till ultimately the angle disappeared altogether and the flap became semicircular.
The 'morse,' or brooch, with which the cope was fastened, was the counterpart of the rational. It was made of gold or of silver, or else of wood overlaid with one of these metals. It was often enamelled and jewelled, and was of a great variety of shapes.