It was an ancient custom, where children were born out of lawful wedlock, and their parents were afterwards married, that those children, together with the father and mother, should stand pallio cooperiti, under a cloth, while the marriage was solemnizing; which was a kind of adoption, and had the effect of a legitimation. Thus Robert Grotthead, the famous bishop of Lincoln, in one of his letters says: In signum legitimationis, nati ante matrimonium coeuerunt verunt poni sub pallio super parentes eorum extento in matrimonii solemnizatione.

Selden, in his notes on Fleta, adds, that the children of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, by Catharine Swinford, though legitimated by act of parliament, yet were covered with the pall when the parents were married.