At the time of the Reformation, when the English clergy abandoned the mediæval robes, they also desisted from wearing the tonsure, which had for many centuries been the distinguishing mark of the clergy, and they seem generally to have adopted the academical dress for their official and ordinary attire. PILGRIMS. The _fashion_ for going on pilgrimage appears to have sprung up in the fourteenth century, but we hear of it at a much earlier time than this. Christian pilgrimages began in visits to the scenes of Our Lord’s early life. As the custom grew, facilities were offered to lighten the journey. Adventurous shipowners organised a kind of service, so that pilgrims could travel to the Holy Land _viâ_ Rome. When the journey was made on land, the pilgrims took advantage of the hospitals and hostels which were founded here and there along the regular routes to rest themselves and obtain food. Treaties were made by monarchs to secure the safe passage of their subjects through foreign lands. Pilgrims were freed from all tolls, and anyone doing them bodily injury was liable to excommunication. In the Holy Land the Orders of Knights Templars and Knights Hospitallers were founded to safeguard them from the attacks of wandering bodies of Saracens, and to lodge them safely when they reached Jerusalem. The next most important pilgrimages were those to the tombs of SS. Peter and Paul at Rome, the centre of Western Christianity, and to the shrine of St. James at Compostella, in Spain. The English people, who were prevented from making pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Rome, or Compostella, could probably spare time for a shorter journey, and pilgrimages to English shrines became very common. The most popular of these were that of St. Thomas Becket, at Canterbury, and that of Our Lady (the Virgin Mary), at Walsingham (twenty-seven miles from Norwich), where there was a miraculous statue of the Virgin. To the former came also many pilgrims from the Continent of Europe. Nearly every Cathedral and Monastery, too, had its famous saint, to whose shrine the people restored. There were St. Cuthbert at Durham, St. William at York, St. Hugh at Lincoln, St. Edward Confessor at Westminster, and St. Edmund at Bury, and many others. There were also famous Roods (figures of our Lord on the Cross), statues of the Virgin, and Holy Wells; and a place of great attraction was Glastonbury, to which many travelled to see the famous Holy Thorn, said to have been planted by St. Joseph of Arimathæa. Members of all classes of society undertook these pilgrimages. Rich people with no occupation could afford the leisure and cost of these journeys, and the poor, who gave up their regular work and made the pilgrimage, could count on board and lodging at the numerous hospitals, monasteries, at the parish priest’s rectory, and in every gentleman’s hall.