If she be never so foul a dowde

With her kelles and her pynnes,

The shrew herself can shroud

Both her chekys, and her chynnes.

In its several more general uses it has always maintained its strict meaning of a covering.[[338]] Hoshea, we may recollect, speaks figuratively of God’s ‘rending the caul of Israel’s heart.’ Probably the word is connected with the ‘cowl’ of other monkish days, and thus may be associated with our ‘Coulmans’ and ‘Cowlers.’ ‘Richard le Couhelere,’ an entry of the fifteenth century, may belong to the same group.[[339]] A once familiar sobriquet for a hood was that of ‘chapelle,’[[340]] whence our edifice of that name and the diminutive ‘chaplet.’ The Parliamentary Writs give us an ‘Edmund le Chapeler;’ the Hundred Rolls furnish us, among other instances, with a ‘Robert le Chapeler.’ ‘Theobald le Hatter,’ ‘Robert le Hattare,’ ‘Thomas le Capiere,’ ‘Symon le Cappere,’ or ‘John Capman’ need no explanation. The articles they sold, whether of beaver, or felt, or mere woollen cloth, were largely imported from Flanders. Thus it is that Lydgate, as I have but recently shown, picturing the streets of London, mentions spots in his progress therethrough where—

Flemings began on me for to cry,

‘Master, what will you copen or buy?

Fine felt hats, or spectacles to read?’

That many of these wares, however, were of home manufacture is equally undoubted, and of this we are reminded by our ‘Blockers,’ representatives of the old ‘Deodatus le Blokkere.’ The ‘block’ was the wooden mould upon which the hat was shaped and crowned. In ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ Beatrice is made to say: ‘He wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat; it ever changes with the next block.’ The ‘blocker,’ I doubt not, was but a hat-maker; we still call a stupid man a blockhead. Our ‘Hurrers’ (‘Alan le Hurer,’ H.R., ‘Geoffrey le Hurwere,’ H.R.), once so important as to form a special company with articles and overseers, as representative of an old general term, are not so familiar as we might have expected them. Bonnets, caps, hoods, hats, all came under their hands. Strictly speaking, however, a ‘hure’ or ‘howre,’ as Chaucer spells it, was a shaggy cap of fur, or coarse jagged cloth. In an old political song of Edward the First’s time it is said—

Furst there sit an old cherle in a blake hure,