The dress of clerics was legislated for by the Constitutions of Cardinal Ottoboni, to which subsequent reference was constantly made by the English bishops. Thus the same Bishop Grandisson, in 1342, issued a monition to his clergy on the subject, in which he speaks of the sensible legislation of the cardinal. All clerics were directed to follow this law as to their dress; it was not to be so long or so short as to be an object of ridicule or remark. The cassock or clerical coat in length was to be well above the ankles (_ultra tibiarum medium attingentes_), and the hair was to be cut so that it could not be parted and showed the ears plainly. In this way, by their _corona_ and tonsure, and by the exterior form of their dress, they might be clearly known and distinguished from laymen. Cardinal Otho likewise enforced the regulation about clerical dress, and declared that some of the English clergy looked rather like soldiers than priests, an opinion which the author of the gloss endorsed with the saying that it is not only in their dress that some offend, but in their open-mouthed laugh (_risus dentium_) and their general gait. The cardinal directs that all clerics shall use their outer dress closed, and not open like a cloak, and this in particular in churches, in meetings of the clergy, and by all parish priests, always and everywhere in their parishes. The status of the English clergy, generally from a legal standpoint, is thus described in Pollock and Maitland’s _History of English Law_-- “Taken individually, every ordained clerk has as such a peculiar legal status; he is subject to special rules of ecclesiastical law and to special rules of temporal law.... Every layman, unless he were a Jew, was subject to ecclesiastical law; it regulated many affairs of his life, marriages, divorces, testaments, intestate succession; it would try him and punish him for various offences, for adultery, fornication, defamation; it would constrain him to pay tithes and other similar dues; in the last resort it could excommunicate him, and then the State would come to its aid.... The ordained clerk was within many rules of ecclesiastical law which did not affect the layman, and it had a tighter hold over him, since it could suspend him from office, deprive him of benefice, and degrade him from his Orders.”