Dress According to Statute. 169 



The following passage from the "Eulogium Historiaruin" — 

 an anonymous but trustworthy chronicle, not only testifies to the 

 extravagance of dress in the year 1361, in spite of the warning 

 given twelve years before by the Black Death, but mentions 

 the names of some of the garments most affected by the 

 dandies of the period, and gives a very fair description of the 

 dresses commonly worn. The pious, if somewhat narrow- 

 minded, writer finishes his account by expressing a fear 

 "lest the dire punishment of the Lord should follow such 

 wickedness." 



■' In this and the preceding year the whole people of 

 England went mad in the matter of ornamental dress ; firstly, 

 they wore large over-tunics, cut short at the loins ; some of 

 these were as long as to the heel, not open in front as becomes 

 men, but distended in pleats about the arms, after the manner 

 of women, so that they who see them from behind must think 

 them to be women rather than men. This garment is called, 

 and rightly, in the vulgar tongue, ' goun/ and well is it so 

 called, for ' goun ' is derived from e gounyg/ which, properly 

 speaking-, is 'wounyg/ or 'open shame.'' They have also 

 little caps fastened under the chin, buttoned after the manner 

 of women, and having at the top part, in the round, philac- 

 teries studded with gold, silver, and precious stones. 



" They have also another silken garment, called a ' paltok/ 

 which, is rather suitable for a cleric than a layman ; yet is it 

 said in the book of Kings that Solomon in all his life never 

 wore such a thing. They also have drawers in two parts, 

 stiffened, which they fasten with braces to their f paltoks/ 

 and which are called ' harlots/ .... They have gold 

 and silver belts, enriched at great cost, the best being of 

 the value of twenty marks ; inferior ones, such as esquires 

 and other freemen would wear, at the price of a hundred 

 shillings, or five marks, or even twenty shillings, and all the 

 while the buyers have not twenty pence in their purse." 



The writer speaks of those who wear such things as being 

 " idlers and vapourers rather than men, actors than knights, 

 mummers than esquires. At court they are lions, but hares in 

 the field; they are slow to give, swift to take; eager for trifles, 

 but wearied by prayer \" 



In the course of time the professors of a political economy, 

 which saw in the impoverishment of the extravagant an 

 injury to the nation at large, justifying its conclusion, perhaps, 

 by the fact that much of the money spent in finery went out 

 of the country, which received nothing valuable in return, and 

 appealing to the experience which taught that an example of 

 prodigality in the. upper classes is sure to be followed more or 

 less ruinously through all the minor classes in the community, 



