Gere, paid for, for the children of the stable, [182].
Gere for Sexton the fool, for, [205], [215].
----, for making, [270].
As in three out of the four instances in which this word is used it evidently referred to fantastic dresses or the appendages to them, it may be inferred that the children of the stable were ludicrously habited, and which is the more probable if the conjecture which has been hazarded be correct, that they were employed in riding racing horses. Gere was, however, sometimes used for the ornamental parts of dress, for Louis XII. king of France, is described in a letter from the Earl of Worcester in 1514, as "devysing new collers and goodly gere for" the queen his bride.—Ellis's Original Letters, second Series, vol. i. p. 236. Mr. Markland observes "this word, per se, meant clothing simply. From the days of Spenser to those of Swift, when magnificence or ornament is implied, the word is accompanied with some epithet; thus 'gorgeous gear' in the former, and 'glittering birth-day gear' in the latter. See Masking." Shakspeare, however, uses the word in the sense which it is supposed to be employed in the text:
"Let us complain to them what fools were here
Disguis'd like Muscovites, in shapeless gear."
Love's Labour Lost, A. 5. Sc. 2.
Chaucer uses Gere for articles of any kind, but in one instance he applies it to articles of dress:
"And for that nothing of her olde gere
She shulde bring into his hous, he bad
That woman should despoilen her right there
Of which these ladies weren nothing glad
To handle hire clothes wherin she was clad."
The Clerkes Tale, l. 8248.