By J. Y. Akerman, F-S.A. 95 
A pilgrimage in the middle ages, even from one part of England 
to the other, was a performance attended by much personal labour, 
fatigue and peril. The better sort went in cavalcade, as described 
in the well known lines of Chaucer :— 
‘‘ Well nine and twenty in a companye 
Of sundry folk, by aventure i-falle 
In felaschype, and pilgrims were they all 
That toward Canterbury wolden ryde.” 
but the poor trudged on foot, like the Pilgrim in Piers Ploughman’s 
Vision, who says :— 
“Ye may see by my signs 
That sitten on myn hatte, 
That I have walked full wide 
In weet and in drye, 
And sought good scintes 
For my soules helthe.” 
Another passage in the same remarkable poem, has:— 
‘*A bolle and a bagge 
He bar by his syde, 
And a hundred of ampulles 
On his hat seten.” 
An example of the ampul is in Mr. Brodie’s Collection, and is 
remarkable from its bearing the arms of Mortimer. 
These signs served at once for ornament and memorial. Chaucer’s 
Yeoman bore 
‘A Christopher on his breast of silver shene.” 
and the Miller 
Oe 1c bustin mat hoy uit. brs ‘had ypiked 
His bosom full of signys of Canterbury broches.” 
The Pardoner, according to the same poet, had a Vernicle, or 
portrait of the Saviour ; 
Bee ee tS ae ‘¢ Sown upon his cap, 
His Wallet before him on his lappe 
Bret-full of pardon come from Rome all hote.”’ 
The truculent and superstitious despot, Louis the Eleventh, always 
had his hat well garnished with figures of this description, but in 
England they were the signs that the wearer had performed a pil- 
grimage. Thus Giraldus Cambrensis, on his return from abroad, 
passed through Canterbury, and, of course, visited the shrine of 
Saint Thomas. The Bishop of Winchester discovered this when he 
