ous fashions (besides those already mentioned) to
disfigure and disgrace itself, as we have the mortification to see
every day."

And thus Chaucer, a few years later:--

"Alass! may not a man see as in our daies the sinnefull costlew array
of clothing, and namely in too much superfluite, or else in too
disordinate scantinese: as to the first, not only the cost of
embraudering, the disguysed indenting, or barring, ounding, playting,
wynding, or bending, and semblable waste of clothe in vanitie." The
common people also "were besotted in excesse of apparell, in wide
surcoats reaching to their loines, some in a garment reaching to their
heels, close before and strowting out on the sides, so that on the
back they make men seem women, and this they called by a ridiculous
name, _gowne_," &c. &c.

Before this time the legislature had interfered, though with little
success: they passed laws at Westminster, which were said to be made
"to prevent that destruction and poverty with which the whole kingdom
was threatened, by the outrageous, excessive expenses of many persons
in their apparel, above their ranks and fortunes."

Sumptuary edicts, however, are of little avail, if not supported in
"influential quarters." King Richard II. affected the utmost splendour
of attire, and he had one coat alone which was valued at 30,000 marks:
it was richly embroidered and inwrought with gold and precious stones.
It is not in human nature, at least in human nature of the "more
honourable" gender, to be outdone, even by a king. Gorgeous and
glittering was the raiment adopted by the satellites of the court,
and, heedless of "that destruction and poverty with which the whole
kingdom was threatened," they revelled in magnificence. Of one alone,
Sir John Arundel, it is recorded, that he had at one time fifty-two
suits of cloth of gold tissue. At this time, says the old Chronicle,

"Cut werke was great bothe in court and tounes,
Bothe in mens hoddes, and also in their gounes,
Brouder and furres, and gold smith werke ay newe,
In many a wyse, eche day they did renewe."

Unaccountable as it may seem, this rage of expense and show in apparel
reached even the (then) poverty-stricken sister country Scotland; and
in 1457 laws were enacted to suppress it.

It is told of William Rufus, that one morning while putting on his new
boots he asked his chamberlain what they cost; and when he replied
"three shillings," indignantly and in a rag