into the pillory; the church bells clashed, and chimed, and tolled; bright cloth of scarlet hung from the upper windows if it was a feast day, or if the Mayor and Aldermen had a riding; the streets were bright with the colors of that many-colored time, when the men vied with the women in bravery of attire, and when all classes spent upon raiment sums of money, in proportion to the rest of their expenditure, which sober nineteenth-century folk can hardly believe. Chaucer is full of the extravagance in dress. There is the young squire-- Embroidered was he as if it were a mead All full of freshest flowers, white and red. [Illustration: NORTH-EAST VIEW OF CROSBY HALL, SHOWING PART OF THE INTERIOR OF THE GREAT HALL.] Or the carpenter's wife-- A seynt [girdle] she wered barred all of silk In barm cloth eke as white as mornë milk Upon her lendes [loins] full of many a gore. White was her smock and browded all before, And eke behind on her coler about Of cole black silk within and eke without. Or the wife of Bath, with her scarlet stockings and her fine kerchiefs. And the knights decked their horses as gayly as themselves. And the city notables went clad in gowns of velvet or silk lined with fur; their hats were of velvet with gold lace; their doublets were of rich silk; they carried thick gold chains about their necks, and massive gold rings upon their fingers. With all this outward show, this magnificence of raiment, these evidences of wealth, would one mark the small tenements which here and there, even in Chepe, stood between the churches and the substantial merchants' houses? We measure the splendors of a city by its best, and not by its worst.