Apostasy, _accidia_, quarrels, all rose in part from monotony. The majority of nuns were probably content with their life, but they strove to bring some excitement and variety into it, not only unconsciously by cliques and contentions, but also by a conscious aping of the worldly amusements which enlivened their mothers and sisters outside the convent walls. The chatelaine or mistress of a manor, when not busied with the care of an estate, amused herself in the pursuit of fashion; even the business-like Margaret Paston hankered after a scarlet robe. She amused herself with keeping pets, those little dogs which scamper so gaily round the borders of manuscripts, or play so gallant a part in romances like the Chatelaine of Vergi. She hawked and she hunted, she danced and she played at tables[940]. All these occupations served to break the monotony of daily life. The nuns, always in touch with the world owing to the influx of visitors and to the neglect of enclosure, remembered these forbidden pleasures. And they sought to spice their monotonous life, as they spiced their monotonous dishes. Gay clothes, pet animals, a dance, a game, a gossip, were to them "a ferthyngworth of fenel-seed for fastyngdayes." So we find all these worldly amusements in the convent. Dear to the soul of men and women alike, dear to monks and nuns as well as to the children of the world, were the gay colours and extravagant modes of contemporary dress. Popular preachers inveighed against the devils' trappings of their flocks, but when those trappings flaunted themselves in the cloister there was matter for more than words. As early as the end of the seventh century St Aldhelm penned a severe indictment of the fashionable nuns of his day: A vest of fine linen of a violet colour is worn, above it a scarlet tunic with a hood, sleeves striped with silk and trimmed with red fur; the locks on the forehead and the temples are curled with a crisping iron, the dark head-veil is given up for white and coloured head-dresses, which, with bows of ribbon sewn on, reach down to the ground; the nails, like those of a falcon or sparrow-hawk, are pared to resemble talons[941]. Synods sat solemnly over silken veils and pleated robes with long trains; they shook their heads over golden pins and silver belts, jewelled rings, laced shoes, cloth of burnet and of Rennes, dresses open at the sides, gay colours (especially red) and fur of _gris_[942]. High brows were fashionable in the world and the nuns could not resist lifting and spreading out their veils to expose those fair foreheads ("almost a spanne brood, I trowe"); when Alnwick visited Goring in 1445 he saw with the evidence of his own eyes that the nuns do wear their veils spread out on either side and above their foreheads, (and) he enjoined upon the prioress ... that she should wear and cause her sisters to wear their veils spread down to their eyes[943].