And dress me in my smock;
The one half is o' the Holland fine,
The other o' needlework."
Chaucer, too, does not disdain to describe the embroidery of a lady's smock—
"White was her smocke, embrouded all before
And eke behynde, on her colar aboute,
Of cole blacke sylke, within and eke without."
The sums expended on the decoration of this most necessary article of dress sadly excited the wrath of Stubbes, who thus vents his indignation: "These shirtes (sometymes it happeneth) are wrought throughout with needlework of silke, and such like, and curiously stitched with open seame, and many other knackes besides, more than I can describe; in so much, I have heard of shirtes that have cost some ten shillynges, some twenty, some forty, some five pounds, some twenty nobles, and (which is horrible to heare) some ten pound a pece."[[52]]
Up to the time of Henry VIII. the shirt was "pynched" or plaited—
"Come nere with your shirtes bordered and displayed,