s from the abbey and the castle had
had their pick of the fish and the meat. The lady's steward and the
Father-Procurator bought carefully for their establishments, talking
meanwhile of the annual catch of eels for the abbey.

Picture Robese, the mother of Thomas, the son of Gilbert Becket,
weighing the boy Thomas each year on his birthday, and giving his
weight in money, clothes, and provisions to the poor. She was a type
of the devout housewife of her day, and the wife of a wealthy trader.

The barons were fortifying their castles, and the duties of their
ladies were homely and domestic. They provided the food for
men-at-arms, the followers, and for their husbands; saw that simples
were ready with bandages against wounds and sickness; looked, no
doubt, to provisions in case of siege; sewed with their maidens in a
vestiary or workroom, and dressed as best they could for their
position. What they must have heard and seen was enough to turn them
from the altar of fashion to works of compassion. Their houses
contained dreadful prisons and dungeons, where men were put upon
rachentegs, and fastened to these beams so that they were unable to
sit, lie, or sleep, but must starve. From their windows in the towers
the ladies could see men dragged, prisoners, up to the castle walls,
through the hall, up the staircase, and cast, perhaps past their very
eyes, from the tower to the moat below. Such times and sights were not
likely to foster proud millinery or dainty ways, despite of which
innate vanity ran to ribbands in the hair, monstrous sleeves, jewelled
shoes, and tight waists. The tiring women were not overworked until a
later period, when the hair would take hours to dress, and the dresses
months to embroider.

In the town about the castle the merchants' wives wore simple homespun
clothes of the same form as their ladies. The serfs wore plain smocks
loose over the camise and tied about the waist, and in the bitter
cold weather skins of sheep and wolves unlined and but roughly
dressed.

[Illustration: Cases for the Hair.]

In 1154 the Treaty of Wallingford brought many of the evils to an end,
and Stephen was officially recognised as King, making Henry his heir.
Before the year was out Stephen died.

I have not touched on ecclesiastical costume because there are so many
excellent and complete works upon such dress, but I may say that it
was above all civil dress most rich and magnificent.

I have given this slight pi