One, of the Fifteenth Century, is a contemporary of the long-peaked shoe, a specimen of the last expiring burst of the folly of mediæval fashion in the Middle Ages, the clog (44). Fairholt has reproduced a ludicrous picture of a king of England in foot-gear of this sort. It is taken from one of the Cotton MSS., where an able artist has represented, in the costume of the reign of Henry VI., the line of English kings from the Conqueror downwards. Richard III. and Buckingham clumping about on the Tower walls in abominable clogs, made doubly maleficent by the protruding toe, and clad in “rotten armour,” must indeed have looked a “marvellous ill-favoured” pair; nor could it have been difficult for Buckingham to counterfeit suspicion, “pry on every side, tremble and start at wagging of a straw.” There are also several examples of goloshes belonging to the time of Louis XIV.; but the most curious pattens are those worn by the Sixteenth Century Venetian ladies. The shoe is of white leather, stamped with an ornamentation, the stand of wood being also covered with white leather (45). Another is of such enormous length as to almost be a stilt. Tom Coryate, in his “Crudities” (1611), says that these “chapineys,” as he calls them, were so common in Venice, that no woman ventured out of her house without them, and that some were half a yard high. And this is corroborated by the statement of Raymond, who, in his journey in Italy in 1648, speaks of “shoes elevated as high as a man’s leg.” The Venetian ladies had in consequence to be assisted when they took their walks abroad, otherwise they ran the risk of taking a fall. Thus the “tottering willows” of China have had their parallel at their antipodes in Christian Italy. The fashion was still in vogue in the days of Evelyn, who describes the Venetian ladies as stalking about in their “choppines,” and notes the ridiculous figures they cut in attempting to crawl out of their gondolas.