When noble persons went to Court, they wore dresses far more splendid than any to be seen now--dresses of all colours, worked in with flowers and branches of gold, sometimes with heraldic devices and strange figures, and perfectly smothered in jewels. No one has pearls, and emeralds, and diamonds sewn on their gowns now; but in the fourteenth century, rich people had the seams of their clothes often covered with gems. The ladies wore close-fitting dresses, with splendid belts, or _seints_, round their hips, all jewelled; and strings of glittering jewels hung round their necks, and down from the belt, and on the head-dress. People did not wear short sleeves then, but long ones, made sometimes very curiously with streamers hanging from the elbow; a long thin gauze veil, shining with silver and gold; and narrow pointed shoes, much longer than their feet, which, they thought, made the foot look slender. If ladies had not had such long shoes, they would never have showed beneath their long embroidered skirts, and they would always have been stumbling when they walked. It was a very graceful and elegant costume that Chaucer’s wife wore; but the laws of England probably forbade her to wear silk, which was reserved for nobles. When she walked out of doors, she had tall clogs to save her pretty shoes from the mud of the rough streets; and when she rode on horseback with the Queen, or her husband Chaucer, she sat on a pillion, and placed her feet on a narrow board called a _planchette_. Many women rode astride, like the “Wife of Bath” whom Chaucer speaks of. Now, perhaps, you would like to know whether Chaucer had any little children. We do not know much about Chaucer’s children. We know he had a little son called Lewis, because Chaucer wrote a treatise for him when he was ten years old, to teach him how to use an instrument he had given him, called an _astrolabe_.[13] Chaucer must have been very fond of Lewis, since he took so much trouble for him, and he speaks to him very kindly and lovingly. As Chaucer was married before 1366, it is likely that he had other children; and some people say he had an elder son, named Thomas, and a daughter Elizabeth.[14] John of Gaunt, who was Chaucer’s patron as I told you, was very kind to Thomas Chaucer, and gave him several posts in the King’s household, as he grew up to be a man. And John of Gaunt heard that Elizabeth Chaucer wished to be a nun; and, in 1381, we find that he paid a large sum of money for her _noviciate_ (that is, for her to learn to be a nun) in the Abbey of Barking. [Illustration: A LADY CROSSING THE STREET IN THE OLDEN TIME.]