The first legal enactment concerning gloves occurs in the records of France. About 790, Emperor Charlemagne granted unlimited rights of hunting to the abbots and monks of Sithin for the purpose of procuring deer skins for making covers for their books, and also for gloves and girdles. The bishops, however, grew to feel that theirs should be the exclusive privilege of wearing gloves of such fine quality; and by the Council of Aix, in the reign of Louis, Le Debonnaire, the inferior clergy were ordered to abstain from deer skin and to wear only sheep skin, as was formerly deemed fitting for monks. In England gloves virtually “came over with the Conqueror.” The French importation—which several centuries later was to be the cause of such intense commercial rivalry between the two countries—was the mailed glove of stout deer or sheep skin, with joined plates of metal affixed to the back and fingers. The early Saxons, however, wore gloves of a rude sort, for the derivation of the word from _gluf_ is distinctly Saxon, and they are mentioned in the epic of _Beowulf_, composed in the seventh century, A.D. William S. Beck thinks that the early Britons may have been quick to appreciate the comfort afforded by the gloves worn by their Roman conquerors. It is known for a fact that the Britons of that age wore boots of untanned leather, and it should be no tax upon the imagination to suppose that if they protected one extremity they probably did the other. But Professor Boyd Dawkins, without a doubt, has pushed the history of the glove farthest back of any antiquarian. Professor Dawkins assures us that the cavemen wore gloves. He actually defines their style; they were “not of ordinary size,” he tells us, “but reaching even to the elbows, anticipating by untold ages the multi-button gloves of the Victorian era.” Now just when did these pre-historic, glove-wearing men live? Another eminent geologist holds that they inhabited the south of France before they were driven forth by the excruciating cold of the glacial period. It is impossible accurately to fix the date of the great ice age; Dr. Croll, however, and other celebrated scientists, appear to agree that it began about 240,000 years ago, that it lasted about 160,000 years and ended somewhat over 80,000 years since. Here, then, is an antiquity for gloves which should satisfy our fondest ambitions! This theory also restores to France with a vengeance the original prestige for glove-making of which that country is so jealous. _Theory_, should we say? The cavemen’s gloves, as we are distinctly told, were made of roughly dressed skins, sewn with elaborate bone needles; and an unmistakable drawing of such a glove was discovered by Professor Dawkins, rudely etched upon a bone, found among pre-glacial relics.