ard II. their dress was sumptuous beyond belief. Sir John
Arundel had a change of no less than fifty-two new suits of cloth of
gold tissue. The prelates indulged in all the ostentatious luxury of
dress. Chaucer says, they had "chaunge of clothing everie daie."
Brantome records of Elizabeth, Queen of Philip II. of Spain, that she
never wore a gown twice; this was told him by her majesty's own
_tailleur_, who from a poor man soon became as rich as any one he knew.
Our own Elizabeth left no less than three thousand different habits in
her wardrobe when she died. She was possessed of the dresses of all
countries.

The catholic religion has ever considered the pomp of the clerical habit
as not the slightest part of its religious ceremonies; their devotion is
addressed to the eye of the people. In the reign of our catholic Queen
Mary, the dress of a priest was costly indeed; and the sarcastic and
good-humoured Fuller gives, in his Worthies, the will of a priest, to
show the wardrobe of men of his order, and desires that the priest may
not be jeered for the gallantry of his splendid apparel. He bequeaths to
various parish churches and persons, "My vestment of crimson satin--my
vestment of crimson velvet--my stole and fanon set with pearl--my black
gown faced with taffeta," &c.

Chaucer has minutely detailed in "The Persone's Tale" the grotesque and
the costly fashions of his day; and the simplicity of the venerable
satirist will interest the antiquary and the philosopher. Much, and
curiously, has his caustic severity or lenient humour descanted on the
"moche superfluitee," and "wast of cloth in vanitee," as well as "the
disordinate scantnesse." In the spirit of the good old times, he
calculates "the coste of the embrouding or embroidering; endenting or
barring; ounding or wavy; paling or imitating pales; and winding or
bending; the costlewe furring in the gounes; so much pounsoning of
chesel to maken holes (that is, punched with a bodkin); so moche dagging
of sheres (cutting into slips); with the superfluitee in length of the
gounes trailing in the dong and in the myre, on horse and eke on foot,
as wel of man as of woman--that all thilke trailing," he verily
believes, which wastes, consumes, wears threadbare, and is rotten with
dung, are all to the damage of "the poor folk," who might be clothed
only out of the flounces and draggle-tails of these children of vanity.
But then his Parson is not less bitter against "the horrible