The brilliant reign of Edward III[40] was favourable to the full display of jewellery. New luxuries were imported in great abundance, and there was hardly a lady of position who had not in her possession some portion of the spoils of plate and jewels from cities beyond the sea; while those who, like the Knight of Chaucer, had been at Alexandra "when it was won," returned with cloth of gold, velvets, and precious stones. In the thirty-seventh year of this reign (1363) the Parliament held at Westminster enacted several sumptuary laws against the extravagant use of personal adornment. These state what costume is suited to the various degrees of rank and income, and are of value for the information they supply on the prevailing fashions in jewellery. Restrictions of this kind, re-enacted from time to time, and apparently of little effect, seem to have been intended not so much to prevent the gratification of an instinctive desire for bravery and splendour, as to make different classes proclaim their rank and station by their dress. [40] See list of his jewels in _Inventories of the Exchequer_, III, p. 166, and his Great Wardrobe Accounts (_Archæologia_, XXXI, p. 55). Chaucer in the Prologue of his _Canterbury Tales_ affords in a charming manner additional information about the personal ornaments of the different grades of English society of his time. He gives detailed description of the brooch of the yeoman and the nun, and pictures the merchant with his richly clasped shoes, the squire with short knife and gypcière (purse) at his girdle, the carpenter's wife with her collar fastened by a brooch as "broad as the boss of a buckler," and various tradesmen who, in spite of sumptuary laws, wore pouches, girdles, and knives of silver:-- Hir knives were ychaped not with bras But all with silver wrought ful clene and wel Hir girdeles and hir pouches every del. The passion for personal ornaments, or "bravouries" as they were termed, reached its zenith in England during the reign of the elegant and unfortunate Richard II, whose courtiers outvied one another in such extravagances. An anonymous writer of the period quoted by Camden in his _Remaines concerning Britain_ speaks of hoods, even those worn by men of moderate means, as commonly set with gold and precious stones, while "their girdles are of gold and silver, some of them worth twenty marks." The king, in constant want of money, was obliged on several occasions to deposit the royal jewels with the Corporation of London as security for loans, and detailed lists of the objects selected for the purpose are preserved in the inventories of the Exchequer, and among the city archives.