lOO History of the English Landed Interest. 



pictures of tlie period represent a long loose robe and sleeves, 

 with a hood or veil wrapped around the neck and breast and 

 falling down in front. The hair was carefully dressed and 

 curled with irons, nor was the rouge-pot unknown thus early. 

 The men wore ornaments round their necks, arms, and fingers, 

 of costlier value than those of the women. Their garments 

 were of silk, linen, and woollen texture. They wore caps or 

 bonnets, close coats, girded round the waist with a belt, 

 breeches which did not cover the knee, ilo"v\^ng cloaks, and 

 leathern shoes fastened with thongs. Their hair was combed 

 down the sides of the head from a parting in the middle, and, 

 except the clergy, they allowed their beards and moustaches 

 to grow. As a nation they were fond of hot baths, but used 

 cold ones as a penance. They dried themselves with woollen 

 towels.^ 



"We must now examine in detail the nicer shades of social 

 and official distinctions. And first, over the precedence due to 

 the different ranks of the aristocracy the inquirer is as much 

 liable to err as is some bungling master of the ceremony over 

 a modem court function. 



One historian will divide the Anglo-Saxon nobility into 

 king's thanes and lesser thanes, and another will draw care- 

 ful distinctions between ethelings, earldormen, eorls, king's 

 thanes, gesiths, and lesser thanes. Some, again, will confuse 

 a man's military or civil title with that allotted to him by 

 society, and introduce further subtle distinctions, many of 

 them synonymous, such as heretoch (hold), gerefa (reeve), 

 knight (dux), etc., until the student of history is half-inclined 

 to abandon the subject in despair. 



It may, however, be taken for granted that in any repre- 

 sentative gathering of the kingdom, such as the Witangemote 

 or synod, there would always be, besides the royal Bretwalda, 

 one main distinction between the greater and lesser nobles, 

 whether we choose to denominate the two grades, optimates 

 and proceres, greater barons and lesser barons, or king's 

 thanes and lesser thanes. Earlier in this work we have, for 



' Compare Sharon Turner, Anglo-Saxons, Books vii. and viii., and 

 Hume, Hist, of Engl, App. I. 



