t is in shape exactly like the coats
worn by Persian ladies.

We may conceive a nice picture of Countess Constance, the wife of Hugh
Lufus, Earl of Chester, as she appeared in her dairy fresh from
milking the cows, which were her pride. No doubt she did help to milk
them; and in her long under-gown, with her plaits once more confined
in the folds of her wimple, she made cheeses--such good cheeses that
Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, rejoiced in a present of some of
them.

What a change it must have been to Matilda, free of the veil that she
hated, from the Black Nuns of Romsey, and the taunts and blows of her
aunt Christina, to become the wife of King Henry, and to disport
herself in fine garments and long plaited hair--Matilda the very
royal, the daughter of a King, the sister to three Kings, the wife of
a King, the mother of an Empress!

STEPHEN

Reigned nineteen years: 1135-1154.

Born 1094. Married, 1124, to Matilda of Boulogne.

THE MEN

[Illustration: {A man of the time of Stephen}]

When one regards the mass of material in existence showing costume of
the tenth and eleventh centuries, it appears curious that so little
fabric remains of this particular period.

The few pieces of fabric in existence are so worn and bare that they
tell little, whereas pieces of earlier date of English or Norman
material are perfect, although thin and delicate.

There are few illuminated manuscripts of the twelfth century, or of
the first half of it, and to the few there are all previous
historians of costume have gone, so that one is left without choice
but to go also to these same books. The possibilities, however, of the
manuscripts referred to have not been exhausted, and too much
attention has been paid to the queer drawing of the illuminators; so
that where they utilized to the full the artistic license, others have
sought to pin it down as accurate delineation of the costume of the
time. In this I have left out all the supereccentric costumes, fearing
that such existed merely in the imagination of the artist, and I have
applied myself to the more ordinary and understandable. As there are
such excellent works on armour, I have not touched at all upon the
subject, so that we are left but the few simple garments that men wore
when they put off their armour, or that the peasant and the merchant
habitually wore.

Ladies occupied their leisure in embroidery and other fine sewing, in
consequence of