Woollen cloths were long the chief material of male and female attire. When new the nap was generally very long; and after being worn for some time it was customary to have it shorn; indeed, this process was repeated as often as the stuff would bear it. Thus we find the Countess of Leicester sending Hicque, the tailor, to London, to get her robes reshorn. Among the materials for dress mentioned, are linen, sindon, which has been variously interpreted to mean satin or very fine linen; scarlet and rayed or striped cloths, of Flemish, French, or Italian make; _pers_, or blue cloth, for the manufacture of which Provence was famous; russet, say or serge, and blanchet or blanket, a name which, it is believed, was given to flannel. The furs named are squirrel and miniver. Among the minor objects of personal use which appear to have belonged to Margaret de Bohun, in the fifteenth century, the "poume de ambre," or scent-ball, in the composition of which ambergris formed a principal ingredient, deserves notice; this being, perhaps, the earliest evidence of its use. We here learn also that a nutmeg was occasionally used for the like purpose; it was set with silver, decorated with stones and pearls, and was evidently an object rare and highly prized. Amongst the valuable effects of Henry V. according to an inventory dated A.D. 1423, are enumerated a musk-ball of gold, weighing eleven pounds, and another of silver-gilt. At a later period the Pomander was very commonly worn as the pendant of a lady's girdle. The _peres de eagle_ were the stones supposed to be found in the nest of the eagle, to which various medicinal and talismanic properties were attributed. Nor are we cognizant of an earlier mention of coral than that which occurs in this inventory: namely, the paternoster of coral, with large gilded beads, which belonged to Margaret de Bohun, and the three branches of coral which Alianmore de Bohun possessed. Among her effects also is the wooden table "painted for an altar;" it formed part of the movable chapel furniture which persons of rank took with them on journeys, or used when, through infirmity, the badness of roads, or some other cause, valid in those days, they were prevented from attending public worship. Licences to use such portable altars are of frequent occurrence on the older episcopal registers. John Evelyn, regretting "the simple manners that prevailed in his younger days, and which were now fast fading away," thus describes old-fashioned country life about the middle of the seventeenth century:--