168 Dress According to Statute. 



had had the subject under their consideration, and had not 

 ceased to inveigh against extravagance of apparel, not so 

 much because it was wasteful, as because it was the child of 

 personal vanity, and as such opposed to the simplicity of the 

 Christian rule of life, and to the direct teaching of Him who 

 compared Solomon in all his glory to the lily of the field, and 

 found him wanting in beauty beside it. Again and again the 

 monkish writers speak earnestly and heartily against the fops 

 of their day, mentioning as a matter of the gravest importance 

 that they wore tunics with deep sleeves, and mantles with 

 long trains, like women ; that the peaks of their shoes were of 

 enormous length, stuffed with tow, and twisted into fantastic 

 shapes ; that their hair, divided in front, fell down upon their 

 shoulders in ringlets, having also false curls added, to make 

 them look more like women. " Effoemenati " is the title by 

 which the monks call them, and they do not hesitate to attri- 

 bute to them vices of the most abominable kind. Some 

 allowance should doubtless be made for Saxon monks, who 

 wrote about Norman gallants, and later on, when this national 

 distinction was done away, for the antipathy which the children 

 of light might be supposed to have for the moth-like children 

 of this world; but Norman monks also declaimed against 

 Norman gallants, and the clerical anger, whether found in 

 Norman or Saxon breast, was, beyond all question, genuine ; 

 though it sometimes went above the mark, and made itself 

 ridiculous by the extravagant way in which it beat the air. 

 That it was genuine is abundantly proved by many things, and 

 notably by the sermons, poems, speeches, and exhortations of 

 divers kinds, with which the clergy belaboured their flocks at 

 the time the great pestilence, known as the Black Death, 

 swept away more than half the population of England. 

 On this occasion it was many times preached that the sinful 

 wastefulness of men and women in respect of their dress was 

 among the chief offences for which the wrath of God had come 

 upon the land. Giving the go-bye to his wrath because of the 

 bad drainage, the filthy condition of houses, the confined and 

 unwholesome streets, and the other accessories of fever, the 

 clergy fixed upon excess in apparel as being most displeasing 

 to God. Against silk hoods and party-coloured coats, deep 

 sleeves, and narrow waists ; against garments which were 

 indecentVy short, according to the censor's notions of decency; 

 against pointed shoes and bushy beards, the voice of the clergy 

 was loudly raised in notes of entreaty and warning. Women 

 as well as men came in for their share of blame, and bold, 

 unwomanly imitation of men's attire drew forth as eloquent 

 denunciations as the unmanly practice of men who aped the 

 dress of women. 



