houses of the great spoke of themselves as in the robes of such and such a noble, because he whose patronage they courted was obliged to provide them with surcoats and mantles.  These were of their patron’s favourite colour, and were called the livery (livree), on account of their distribution (livraison), which took place twice a year.  The word has remained in use ever since, but with a different signification; it is, however, so nearly akin to the original meaning that its affinity is evident.”

[Illustration:  Fig. 418.—­Costume of English Servants in the Fourteenth Century.—­From Manuscripts in the British Museum.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 419.—­Costume of Philip the Good, with Hood and “Cockade.”—­From a Miniature in a Manuscript of the Period.]

An interesting anecdote relative to this custom is to be found in the chronicles of Matthew Paris.  When St. Louis, to the dismay of all his vassals, and of his inferior servants, had decided to take up the cross, he succeeded in associating the nobles of his court with him in his vow by a kind of pious fraud.  Having had a certain number of mantles prepared for Christmas-day, he had a small white cross embroidered on each above the right shoulder, and ordered them to be distributed among the nobles on the morning of the feast when they were about to go to mass, which was celebrated some time before sunrise.  Each courtier received the mantle given by the King at the door of his room, and put it on in the dark without noticing the white cross; but, when the day broke, to his great surprise, he saw the emblem worn by his neighbour, without knowing that he himself wore it also.  “They were surprised and amused,” says the English historian, “at finding that the King had thus piously entrapped them....  As it would have been unbecoming, shameful, and even unworthy of them to have removed these crosses, they laughed heartily, and said that the good King, on starting as a pilgrim-hunter, had found a new method of catching men.”

“The chaperon,” adds M. Quicherat, “was the national head-dress of the ancient French, as the cucullus, which was its model, was that of the Gauls.  We can imagine its appearance by its resemblance to the domino now worn at masked balls.  The shape was much varied during the reign of Philippe le Bel, either by the diminution of the cape or by the lengthening of the hood, which was always sufficiently long to fall on the shoulders.  In the first of these changes, the chaperon no longer being tied round the neck, required to be held on the head by something more solid.  For this reason it was set on a pad or roll, which changed it into a regular cap.  The material was so stitched as to make it take certain folds, which were arranged as puffs, as ruffs, or in the shape of a cock’s comb; this last fashion, called cockade, was especially in vogue (Fig. 419)—­hence the origin of the French epithet coquard, which would be now expressed by the word dandy.