Arun.
Surely bands are no part of the peculiar dress of the clergy, &c., but the ordinary dress of the people, retained by certain classes or professions, because they wished for something regular and distinctive. So the wigs of the judges were the fashionable dress 150 years ago. It is curious that the clergy have cut down their bands, while the lawyers still glory in comparatively large and flowing ones. Bands altered greatly in their form. Taylor, the Water Poet, I think, says—
"The eighth Henry, as I understand,
Was the first prince that ever wore a band,"
or, indeed, person of any sort. The date of the same thing in France is mentioned in Vellay, but I forget it now.
C. B.
Bishops and their Precedence (Vol. ii., p. 9.).—It may interest your correspondent E. to refer to a passage in Baker's Chronicle, sub anno 1461, p. 204., which would tend to show that the precedency of the spiritual barons was at that period disputed. That writer says:—
"John Earl of Oxford, with his son Aubrey de Vere, &c., was convicted of treason and beheaded. John Earl of Oxford, in a former parliament, had disputed the question concerning the precedency of Temporal and Spiritual Barons, a bold attempt in those days, and by force of whose argument Judgment was given for the Lords Temporal."
Where will this judgment or any account of the dispute be found?
G.