in length by artificial hair, and was tied up in a number of ways.
Either it was placed in a tight silk case, like an umbrella case,
which came about half-way up the plait from the bottom, and had little
tassels depending from it, or the hair was added to till it reached
nearly to the feet, and was bound round with ribbands, the ends having
little gold or silver pendants. The hair hung, as a rule, down the
front on either side of the face, or occasionally behind down the
back, as was the case when the wimple was worn.

When the ladies went travelling or out riding they rode astride like
men, and wore the ordinary common-hooded cloak.

Brooches for the tunic and rings for the fingers were common among the
wealthy.

The plait was introduced into the architecture of the time, as is
shown by a Norman moulding at Durham.

Compared with the Saxon ladies, these ladies of Stephen's time were
elegantly attired; compared with the Plantagenet ladies, they were
dressed in the simplest of costumes. No doubt there were, as in all
ages, women who gave all their body and soul to clothes, who wore
sleeves twice the length of anyone else, who had more elaborate
plaits and more highly ornamented shoes; but, taking the period as a
whole, the clothes of both sexes were plainer than in any other period
of English history.

One must remember that when the Normans came into the country the
gentlemen among the Saxons had already borrowed the fashions prevalent
in France, but that the ladies still kept in the main to simple
clothes; indeed, it was the man who strutted to woo clad in all the
fopperies of his time--to win the simple woman who toiled and span to
deck her lord in extravagant embroideries.

[Illustration: {A woman of the time of Stephen}]

The learning of the country was shared by the ladies and the clergy,
and the influence of Osburgha, the mother of Alfred, and Editha, the
wife of Edward the Confessor, was paramount among the noble ladies of
the country.

The energy of the clergy in this reign was more directed to building
and the branches of architecture than to the more studious and
sedentary works of illumination and writing, so that the sources from
which we gather information with regard to the costume in England are
few, and also peculiar, as the drawing of this date was, although
careful, extremely archaic.

Picture the market-town on a market day when the serfs were waiting to
buy at the stalls until the buyer