We cannot find that any very decided change was made in dress before the end of the eleventh century.  The ordinary dress made of thick cloths and of coarse woollen stuffs was very strong and durable, and not easily spoiled; and it was usual, as we still find in some provinces which adhere to old customs, for clothes, especially those worn on festive occasions and at ceremonials, to be handed down as heirlooms from father to son, to the third or fourth generation.  The Normans, who came from Scandinavia towards the end of the tenth century, A.D. 970, with their short clothes and coats of mail, at first adopted the dress of the French, and continued to do so in all its various changes.  In the following century, having found the Saxons and Britons in England clad in the garb of their ancestors, slightly modified by the Roman style of apparel, they began to make great changes in their manner of dressing themselves.  They more and more discarded Roman fashions, and assumed similar costumes to those made in France at the same period.

[Illustration:  Fig. 411.—­Costume of Charles the Simple (Tenth Century).—­From a Miniature in the “Rois de France,” by Du Tillet, Manuscript of the Sixteenth Century (Imperial Library of Paris).]

Before proceeding further in our history of mediaeval dress, we must forestall a remark which will not fail to be made by the reader, and this is, that we seem to occupy ourselves exclusively with the dress of kings, queens, and other people of note.  But we must reply, that though we are able to form tolerably accurate notions relative to the dress of the upper classes during these remote periods, we do not possess any reliable information relative to that of the lower orders, and that the written documents, as well as the sculptures and paintings, are almost useless on this point.  Nevertheless, we may suppose that the dress of the men in the lowest ranks of society has always been short and tight, consisting of braies, or tight drawers, mostly made of leather, of tight tunics, of sayons or doublets, and of capes or cloaks of coarse brown woollen.  The tunic was confined at the waist by a belt, to which the knife, the purse, and sometimes the working tools were suspended.  The head-dress of the people was generally a simple cap made of thick, coarse woollen cloth or felt, and often of sheep’s skin.  During the twelfth century, a person’s rank or social position was determined by the head-dress.  The cap was made of velvet for persons of rank, and of common cloth for the poor.  The cornette, which was always an appendage to the cap, was made of cloth, with which the cap might be fastened or adjusted on the head.  The mortier, or round cap, dates from the earliest centuries, and was altered both in shape and material according to the various changes of fashion; but lawyers of high position continued to wear it almost in its original shape, and it became like a professional badge for judges and advocates.