om elbow to wrist would not have given you the newest of the
new ideas to show in Norfolk; then, for some reason, you rejected the
bag sleeve, which was also in the fashion.

No doubt you had a cotehardie with well-fitting sleeves and good full
skirts, and a surcoat with a wide fur edge, or perhaps, in the latest
fashion of these garments, with an entire fur bodice to it. You may
have had also one of those rather ugly little jackets, very full, with
very full sleeves which came tight at the wrist, long-waisted, with a
little skirt an inch or so below the belt. A mantle, with cords to
keep it on, I know you had. Possibly--I have just thought of it--the
sleeves of your under-gown, the tight sleeves, were laced together
from elbow to wrist, in place of the old-fashioned buttons.

[Illustration: {A woman of the time of Henry VI.}]

I wonder if you ever saw the great metal-worker, William Austin, one
of the first among English artists to leave a great name behind him--I
mean the Austin who modelled the effigy of Earl Richard Beauchamp, at
Warwick.

[Illustration: {A woman of the time of Henry VI.}]

You must have heard the leper use his rattle to warn you of his
proximity. You, too, may have thought that Joan of Arc was a sorceress
and Friar Bungay a magician. You may have--I have not your wonderful
letter here for reference--heard all about Eleanor of Cobham, and how
she did penance in a shift in the London streets for magic against the
King's person.

Some ladies, I notice, wore the long-tongued belt--buckled it in
front, and then pushed it round until the buckle came into the centre
of the back and the tongue hung down like a tail; but these ladies
were not wearing the high-waisted gown, but a gown with a normal
waist, and with no train, but a skirt of even fulness and of the same
length all the way round.

[Illustration: {A woman of the time of Henry VI.}]

There were striped stuffs, piled velvet, rich-patterned silks, and
homespun cloths and wool to choose from. Long-peaked shoes, of course,
and wooden clogs out of doors.

[Illustration: {A woman of the time of Henry VI.}]

The town and country maids, the merchants' wives, and the poor
generally, each and all according to purse and pride, dressed in
humbler imitation of the cut of the clothes of the high-born, in quite
simple dresses, with purse, girdle, and apron, with heads in hoods, or
twisted wimples of coarse linen.

Well, there you lie, ladie