th bells.

The shoes of the women were not very exaggerated in length, but, as a
rule, fitted well to the foot and came out in a slight point. You may
use for this reign shoes buckled across the instep, laced at the side,
or buttoned up the front.

For riding and sport the ladies wore the hood, and sometimes a broad
round hat over it, or the peaked hat. The countrywoman wore an
ill-fitting gown with tight sleeves, an apron, and an open hood.

[Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF EDWARD III. (1327-1377)

You will notice that the woman also wears the tippet on her arm. The
gorget is high about her neck, and is held up by pins to her plaited
hair.]

Imagine London in the year of the third great pestilence, 1369. It is
October, and the worst of the pestilence is over; John Chichester,
the Mayor, is riding through the streets about some great affairs;
many knights and ladies pass by. It is raining hard after the long
drought of the summer, but, despite the rain, many citizens are abroad
to see the doings in the City, and one may see the bright
parti-coloured clothes of the lords and ladies, and here and there, as
a cloak is blown back, a glimpse of rich-patterned cloth of gold.

Perhaps Will Langland--Long Will--a gaunt man of thirty-seven, is
brushing past a young man of twenty-nine, Chaucer, going to his work.

Silk dresses and frieze gowns, velvet and homespun, hurry along as the
rain falls more heavily, and after a while the street becomes quite
deserted. Then nothing but the dreary monotony of the rain falling
from the gables will come to the room of the knight's lady as she lies
sick of small-pox. John de Gaddesden, the King's doctor, has
prescribed for her that she must lie clothed in scarlet red in a room
of that colour, with bed-hangings of that same colour, and so she must
lie, without much comfort, while the raindrops, falling down the wide
chimney, drip on the logs in the fire and make them hiss.

RICHARD THE SECOND

Reigned twenty-two years: 1377-1399.

Born 1366. Married, 1381, Anne of Bohemia; 1395,
Isabella of France.

THE MEN

The King himself was a leader of fashion; he had by grace of Nature
the form, face, and manner which go to make a dandy. The nobles
followed the King; the merchants followed the nobles after their kind;
the peasants were still clothed in the simplest of garments, having
retained the Norman tunic with the sleeves pushed back over the wrist,
k