removed
from the sturdy simplicity of Chaucer's "Knight," and inwardly often
rotten in more than one vital part. In show and splendour a higher
point was probably reached in Edward III's than in any preceding reign.
The extravagance in dress which prevailed in this period is too well
known a characteristic of it to need dwelling upon. Sumptuary laws in
vain sought to restrain this foible; and it rose to such a pitch as
even to oblige men, lest they should be precluded from indulging in
gorgeous raiment, to abandon hospitality, a far more amiable species of
excess. When the kinds of clothing respectively worn by the different
classes served as distinctions of rank, the display of splendour in one
class could hardly fail to provoke emulation in the others. The
long-lived English love for "crying" colours shows itself amusingly
enough in the early pictorial representations of several of Chaucer's
Canterbury pilgrims, though in floridity of apparel, as of speech, the
youthful "Squire" bears away the bell:--

Embroidered was he, as it were a mead
All full of freshest flowers, white and red.

But of the artificiality and extravagance of the costumes of these
times we have direct contemporary evidence, and loud contemporary
complaints. Now, it is the jagged cut of the garments, punched and
shredded by the man-milliner; now, the wide and high collars and the
long-pointed boots, which attract the indignation of the moralist; at
one time he inveighs against the "horrible disordinate scantness" of
the clothing worn by gallants, at another against the "outrageous
array" in which ladies love to exhibit their charms. The knights'
horses are decked out with not less finery than are the knights
themselves, with "curious harness, as in saddles and bridles, cruppers,
and breast-plates, covered with precious clothing, and with bars and
plates of gold and silver." And though it is hazardous to stigmatize
the fashions of any one period as specially grotesque, yet it is
significant of this age to find the reigning court beauty appearing at
a tournament robed as Queen of the Sun; while even a lady from a
manufacturing district, the "Wife of Bath," makes the most of her
opportunities to be seen as well as to see. Her "kerchiefs" were "full
fine" of texture, and weighed, one might be sworn, ten pound--

That on a Sunday were upon her head.
Her hosen too were of fine scarlet red,
Full straight y-tied, and shoes full moist an