If rich men and masters were dirty, poor men and servants must have been dirtier still. William Langlande’s description of Hawkyn’s one metaphorical dress in which he slept o’ nightes as well as worked by day, beslobbered (or by-_moled_, bemauled) by children, was true of the real smock; flesh-moths must have been plentiful, and the sketch of Coveitise, as regards many men, hardly an exaggeration: ... as a bonde-man of his bacon · his berd was bi-draveled, With his hood on his heed · a lousy hat above, And in a tawny tabard · of twelf wynter age Al so torn and baudy · and ful of lys crepyng, But if that a lous[84] couthe · han lopen the bettre, She sholde noght han walked on that welthe · so was it thred-bare. (_Vision_, Passus V. vol. 1, l. 2859-70, ed. Wright.) In the _Kinge and Miller_, Percy Folio MS., p. 236 (in vol. ii. of the print), when the Miller proposes that the stranger should sleep with their son, Richard the son says to the King, “Nay, first,” q{uo}th Richard, “good fellowe, tell me true, hast thou noe creep{er}s in thy gay hose? art thou not troabled w{i}th the Scabbado?” The colour of washerwomen’s legs was due partly to dirt, I suppose. The princess or queen Clarionas, when escaping with the laundress as her assistant, is obliged to have her white legs reduced to the customary shade of grey: Right as she should stoupe a-douñ, The quene was tukked wel on high; The lauender p{er}ceiued wel therbigh Hir white legges, and seid “ma dame, Youre shin boones might doo vs blame; Abide,” she seid, “so mot I thee, More slotered thei most be.” Asshes with the water she menged, And her white legges al be-sprenged. ab. 1440 A.D., _Syr Generides_, p. 218, ll. 7060-8. [Headnote: NAKED SCULLIONS AND DIRTY STREETS.] If in Henry the Eighth’s kitchen, scullions lay about naked, or tattered and filthy, what would they do elsewhere? Here is the King’s Ordinance against them in 1526: “And for the better avoydyng of corruption and all uncleannesse out of the Kings house, which doth ingender danger of infection, and is very noisome and displeasant unto all the noblemen and others repaireing unto the same; it is ordeyned by the Kings Highnesse, that the three master cookes of the kitchen shall have everie of them by way of reward yearly twenty marks, to the intent they shall prouide and sufficiently furnish the said kitchens of such scolyons as shall not goe _naked or in garments of such vilenesse as they now doe, and have been acustomed to doe, nor lie in the nights and dayes in the kitchens or ground by the fireside;_ but that they of the said money may be found with honest and whole course garments, without such uncleannesse as may be the annoyance of those by whom they shall passe”... That our commonalty, at least, in Henry VIII.’s time did stink (as is the nature of man to do) may be concluded from Wolsey’s custom, when going to Westminster Hall, of