During the latter part of the Middle Ages it appears to have been a common practice for ladies to wear rosaries or chaplets of beads upon their wrists as bracelets. With these exceptions, the long sleeves that were worn throughout the greater part of the Middle Ages did not favour the use of an ornament that demanded the bare skin as a foundation. Ornamental circlets round the upper arm, which are not infrequently met with in pictures, must be regarded as gold-embroidered edgings or bands. It is true they were frequently set with pearls, stones, and decorations in gold, but as they were sewn upon the sleeves they have no actual claim to the name of armlets. Armlets or bracelets appear to have been worn to a certain extent towards the close of the fifteenth century, but to have been reserved chiefly for summer wear. "If the bracelets we ordered months ago are not here till the summer is over and we no longer wear our arms bare, they will be of no use." So, about 1491, says Mrs. Ady, wrote the famous Isabella d'Este, Marchioness of Mantua, to the skilled goldsmith, Ercole Fedeli, of Ferrara, who had failed to execute her order punctually. The dilatoriness of the same artist on another occasion kept the marchioness waiting four years for a pair of silver bracelets, and they would never, she declared, have been finished in her lifetime if Duke Alfonso had not thrown him into the Castello dungeon.[105] [105] Cartwright (J.), _Isabella d'Este_, I, p. 73. Though there are other references to the use of bracelets in the fifteenth century, it was not until about the middle of the century following that this species of ornament came into general use. [Illustration: A goldsmith in his workshop. From _Hortus Sanitatis_ (Strasburg, 1536).] CHAPTER XIX MEDIÆVAL BELTS AND GIRDLES The girdle or _ceinture_ of elaborate workmanship formed no inconsiderable part of the jewellery of the wealthy in the Middle Ages. Though actual examples are extremely rare, there is scarcely an effigy or picture from the thirteenth century to the beginning of the sixteenth which does not supply us with some varied form of this indispensable article; while the wills and inventories of the period often contain descriptions of girdles of extraordinary richness. By the poor, too, the girdle was habitually worn, but with them it frequently dwindled down to a few metal knobs sewn on to leather or on to coarse cloth. In addition to the upper girdle for fastening round the waist, a lower girdle was worn, both as an ornament and as a belt for the sword. It was a broad and sometimes stiff band which loosely encircled the body about the hips, and in the case of male attire was sometimes attached to the lower border of the tunic, with which it converged.