The itineraries of Wey illustrate the comparative ease with which people travelled at that time. It was a long way to Palestine, but not too long for a man of seventy to undertake. The traveller relates stories of purses cut and jewels stolen, but there is no sense of other dangers or of any terrors: the pilgrims were taken on board; they were carried to the port; they were landed; they were conducted under escort to their shrines; and they were brought home again. It is noticeable that Wey’s two companions on his first pilgrimage were priests like himself. In Chaucer’s time, as is well known, all who could afford the time and money went on pilgrimage. Thus the wife of Bath:— “Thrice hadde sche ben at Jerusalem: Sche hadde passed many a strange stream: At Rome she hadde been and at Bologne: In Galice at Seynt James and at Cologne.” One imagines that the long civil wars and the widespread Lollardy, which was only silenced, not killed, interfered with the practice of pilgrimage in the fifteenth century. On the other hand, Erasmus shows us that the pilgrims to English shrines, at least, were numerous in his time. The regular service of personally conducted pilgrimages to Venice and back proves that pilgrimage to the Holy Land was not diverted or interrupted, in spite of war raging all around. At every shrine the pilgrim bought or was presented with a sign to show that he had been there. These signs were cast in pewter or in lead. A pilgrim who had been to many shrines came home with his cap or his coat covered with these emblems. Thus Chaucer says (_Archæologia_, xxxviii. p. 130):— “Then as manere and custom is, signes there they bought, For men of contre should know whome they had sought: Eche man set his silver in such thing as they liked, And in the meen while the miller had y-piked His bosom ful of signs of Canterbury brochis.” Afterwards “They set their signys upon their hedes, and some upon their capp, And sith to the dynerward they gan for to stapp.” Erasmus makes Menedemus ask, “What kind of attire is this that thou wearest? Thou art bedizened with semicircular shells, each full of images of tin and lead, and adorned with straw chains, and thy arm is girt with a bracelet of beads.” The reply is that he has been to certain shrines on pilgrimage.