The mode seems to have been adopted in some excess by the monks, until a decree of the Council of Aix ordered that they should wear none but gloves of sheep-skin. Had they turned their cilices into gloves, and made flesh-brushes of them, it would have been more profitable to themselves, and to all who stood near them. In France, the use of gloves was allowed only to bishops. They were sometimes used in great formalities of the “Church,” and indeed of the State also; for bishops received investiture by presentation of a glove, and kings were not half crowned who did not receive a pair, with an episcopal blessing to enhance the gift. Among the early English, the Anglo-Saxons, we find that ladies, before they knew the use of the glove, or applied their knowledge to its most convenient conclusion, had the ends of their mantles shaped into gloves, and these were worn over the hand, under the name of mufflers. Gloves were worn by females before the Reformation, despite what Gough says to the contrary. A dishonoured knight was deprived not only of his spurs, but of his gloves also. It was right that the symbol for or gage of battle should be taken from him whose office it had been to carry arms, but who was no longer accounted as worthy of wielding them. In Germany, he who entered a prince’s stables, or was present at the killing of a stag, without taking off his gloves, had to pay his footing or fine; in the first case to the grooms, in the second to the huntsmen,—and for this reason, because they could not mingle among grooms and huntsmen, and yet retain their dignity (asserted by keeping on the glove), without paying for it. Gloves are distributed at funerals,—perhaps originally as a challenge from the doctor, defying all who shall dare say that he had committed murder contrary to the rules of art. But they were acceptable presents on other occasions; and when gloves were rare, and James I. and Elizabeth gave those rich and rare articles as gifts to various members of the Denny family, no doubt the fingers of the latter felt the honour deeply. When these gloves were sold, some two centuries and a half later, a single pair fetched a price for which a man with judgment and taste might purchase a select library. One of this family, Sir William Denny himself, contributed a remarkable poetical work to the libraries of 1653, namely, the ‘Pelecanicidium, or the Christian Adviser against Self-murder; together with a Guide, and a Pilgrim’s Pass to the Land of the Living.’ In the preface he says, “Mine ears do tingle to hear so many sad relations, as ever since March last, concerning several persons, of divers rank and quality, inhabiting within and about so eminent a city as late-famed London, that have made away and murdered themselves.”