A BROOCH.
The pelisse now came into existence; in form it was a close-fitting dress, a prototype of the garment which bears the same title to-day. Fur was a modish trimming, and nine bars of fur are mentioned as a trimming of some special grey pelisse which King John bestowed upon Isabella of Angoulême. Obviously the sealskin paletot and the sable cape were not amongst the possibilities of that hour, or His Majesty would not have been let off so cheaply.
A PLAIN WIMPLE.
But to the enthusiastic chronicler of fashion there was one fact of King John's reign which was pre-eminently worthy and admirable. This was the introduction of the wimple, of all attributes to feminine beauty surely the most becoming ever conceived or accomplished! It was made either in silk or linen, a covering for the neck, chin, and forehead at once disguiseful and provocative, coquettish and demure. At times the wimple was little more than an elaborated veil or kerchief, but in its most alluring form it was a separate article worn under the veil, as in a nun's dress of to-day, which, in fact, in all but colour, bears a striking resemblance to the thirteenth-century dress. Indeed Chaucer distinguishes the two when he says—
Wering a vaile insted of wimple,
As nonnes don in ther abbey.
The wimple was wrapped round the head and chin, and ladies of wealth bound it on the forehead by a golden or jewelled fillet, while their poorer sisters used plain silk. Silken wimples were forbidden to the nuns, who were then as now devoted to white linen. It is not unlikely that the wimple originated with the fashion of wearing the coverchief about the neck, and it was towards the end of the twelfth century that the coverchief underwent transformation, growing smaller and being tied under the chin like a modern cap or bonnet.
Boots and shoes formed an important portion of dress in the twelfth century, and here again the interfering cleric played his favourite rôle of denunciator. The monks, who were denied their wear, abused with vigour the peak-toed boots and shoes, which indeed reached a point exquisitely ridiculous when a courtier could choose to stuff the points of his shoes with tow, so that they might curl up like ram's horns. Dispassionately, I recognise as much wit as wisdom in the notion.
