Among the most remarkable objects brought to light in this manner are certain curious mediæval ornaments, which belong to the age that has bequeathed exceedingly few examples of articles for personal use. The ornaments referred to are the small badges or signs of lead, given or sold, as tokens, to mediæval pilgrims to the shrines of saints or martyrs, and known as "Pilgrims' Signs." They were obtained from the attendants at shrines and exhibitions of relics, who kept ready a large variety bearing the effigy or device of some particular saint, or the symbol that had reference to his acts of worship. Each sign or token was pierced with holes, or more frequently had a pin cast in one piece with it, making it available as a brooch. It was thus fastened to the hat or other portion of the pilgrim's dress as a testimony of his having visited the particular shrine indicated by the token. These badges, which date from about the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, were manufactured at the churches or monasteries to which pilgrimages were made. Moulds for casting them are preserved in the British Museum and the Guildhall Museum; and a forge was found at Walsingham Priory where the sacristan melted the metals employed for their manufacture.[54] [54] Several writers on Pilgrims' Signs state that a furnace destined for the same purpose may still be seen in an upper chamber in Canterbury Cathedral. Inquiry on the spot has failed to confirm the truth of this statement. The furnace in question has been used solely for the purpose of casting leadwork for repairing the roof. The badges were probably made somewhere in the Cathedral precints. It will be outside the present purpose to enumerate all the varieties of form assumed by these interesting and historically most valuable objects. Important collections of them are preserved in the British Museum and Guildhall Museum in London, and in the Musée Cluny, Paris (Pl. XVII, 1-4). In England the most popular relics were those of Our Lady of Walsingham Priory, and particularly those of St. Thomas of Canterbury, whose signs, according to a statement of Giraldus Cambrensis, were worn as early as the twelfth century. The anonymous author of the supplement to Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_ speaks of the purchase of signs by Chaucer's party on the occasion of their pilgrimage to Canterbury, and remarks that on their departure from the Cathedral "they sett their signys upon their hedes, and som upon their capp." And Erasmus, in his _Colloquy of the pilgrimage for religion's sake_, notes that pilgrims were "covered on every side with images of tin and lead." Judging from the number and variety of the badges relating to the murdered archbishop, Becket, his shrine must have enjoyed a widespread popularity, though the scallop-shell of St. James of Compostella was perhaps more universally recognised as a pilgrim's sign than any other.