We may conceive a nice picture of Countess Constance, the wife of Hugh Lufus, Earl of Chester, as she appeared in her dairy fresh from milking the cows, which were her pride. No doubt she did help to milk them; and in her long under-gown, with her plaits once more confined in the folds of her wimple, she made cheeses--such good cheeses that Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, rejoiced in a present of some of them. What a change it must have been to Matilda, free of the veil that she hated, from the Black Nuns of Romsey, and the taunts and blows of her aunt Christina, to become the wife of King Henry, and to disport herself in fine garments and long plaited hair--Matilda the very royal, the daughter of a King, the sister to three Kings, the wife of a King, the mother of an Empress! STEPHEN Reigned nineteen years: 1135-1154. Born 1094. Married, 1124, to Matilda of Boulogne. THE MEN [Illustration: {A man of the time of Stephen}] When one regards the mass of material in existence showing costume of the tenth and eleventh centuries, it appears curious that so little fabric remains of this particular period. The few pieces of fabric in existence are so worn and bare that they tell little, whereas pieces of earlier date of English or Norman material are perfect, although thin and delicate. There are few illuminated manuscripts of the twelfth century, or of the first half of it, and to the few there are all previous historians of costume have gone, so that one is left without choice but to go also to these same books. The possibilities, however, of the manuscripts referred to have not been exhausted, and too much attention has been paid to the queer drawing of the illuminators; so that where they utilized to the full the artistic license, others have sought to pin it down as accurate delineation of the costume of the time. In this I have left out all the supereccentric costumes, fearing that such existed merely in the imagination of the artist, and I have applied myself to the more ordinary and understandable. As there are such excellent works on armour, I have not touched at all upon the subject, so that we are left but the few simple garments that men wore when they put off their armour, or that the peasant and the merchant habitually wore. Ladies occupied their leisure in embroidery and other fine sewing, in consequence of which the borders of tunics, of cloaks, the edgings of sleeves, and bands upon the shoes, were elegantly patterned. The more important the man, the finer his shoes. [Illustration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF STEPHEN (1135-1154) He is wearing a cloak with hood attached; it is of skin, the smooth leather inside. He has an ankle gaiter covering the top of his shoes. On the arm over which the cloak hangs can be seen the white sleeve of the shirt.]