after all the misery caused by the Conquest; or despairing during the
Great Frost of 1205, which began on St. Hilary's Day, January 11, and
lasted until March 22, and was so severe that the land was like iron,
and could not be dug or tilled.

When better days arrived, and farming was taken more seriously by the
great lords, when Grosseteste, the Bishop of Lincoln, wrote his book
on farming and estate management for Margaret, the Dowager-Countess
of Lincoln, then clothes and stuffs manufactured in the towns became
cheaper and more easy to obtain, and the very rough skin clothes and
undressed hides began to vanish from among the clothes of the country,
and the rough gartered trouser gave way before cloth cut to fit the
leg.

On lord and peasant alike the sun of this early age sets, and with the
sunset comes the warning bell--the _couvre-feu_--so, on their beds of
straw-covered floors, let them sleep....

EDWARD THE FIRST

Reigned thirty-five years: 1272-1307.

Born 1239. Married, 1254, Eleanor of Castile; 1299,
Margaret of France.

MEN AND WOMEN

Until the performance of the Sherborne Pageant, I had never had the
opportunity of seeing a mass of people, under proper, open-air
conditions, dressed in the peasant costume of Early England.

For once traditional stage notions of costume were cast aside, and an
attempt was made, which was perfectly successful, to dress people in
the colours of their time.

The mass of simple colours--bright reds, blues, and greens--was a
perfect expression of the date, giving, as nothing else could give, an
appearance of an illuminated book come to life.

One might imagine that such a primary-coloured crowd would have
appeared un-English, and too Oriental or Italian; but with the
background of trees and stone walls, the English summer sky distressed
with clouds, the moving cloud shadows and the velvet grass, these
fierce hard colours looked distinctly English, undoubtedly of their
date, and gave the spirit of the ages, from a clothes point of view,
as no other colours could have done. In doing this they attested to
the historical truth of the play.

It seemed natural to see an English crowd one blazing jewel-work of
colour, and, by the excellent taste and knowledge of the designer, the
jewel-like hardness of colour was consistently kept.

It was interesting to see the difference made to this crowd by the
advent of a number of monks in uniform black or brown, a