Wireker was an Englishman, and the ‘Order’ founded in the _Speculum_ by Brunellus, the Ass, was clearly suggested by the _sociétés joyeuses_. Traces of such _sociétés_ in England are, however, rare. Some of the titles of local lords of misrule, such as the Abbot of Marrall at Shrewsbury or the Abbot of Bon-Accord at Aberdeen, so closely resemble the French nomenclature as to suggest their existence; but the only certain example I have come across is in a very curious record from Exeter. The register of Bishop Grandisson contains under the date July 11, 1348, a mandate to the archdeacon and dean of Exeter and the rector of St. Paul’s, requiring them to prohibit the proceedings of a certain ‘sect of malign men’ who call themselves the ‘Order of Brothelyngham.’ These men, says the bishop, wear a monkish habit, choose a lunatic fellow as abbot, set him up in the theatre, blow horns, and for day after day beset in a great company the streets and places of the city, capturing laity and clergy, and exacting ransom from them ‘in lieu of a sacrifice.’ This they call a _ludus_, but it is sheer rapine[1373]. Grandisson’s learned editor thinks that this _secta_ was a sect of mediaeval dissenters, but the description clearly points to a _société joyeuse_. And the recognition of the _droits_ exacted as being _loco sacrificii_ is to a folk-lorist most interesting. More than one of the records which I have had occasion to quote make mention of an _habit des fous_ as of a recognized and familiar type of dress. These records are not of the earliest. The celebrants of the ecclesiastical Feast of Fools wore _larvae_ or masks. Laity and clergy exchanged costumes: and the wearing of women’s garments by men probably represents one of the most primitive elements in the custom. But there can be little doubt as to the nature of the traditional ‘habit des fous’ from the fourteenth century onwards. Its most characteristic feature was that hood garnished with ears, the distribution of which to persons of importance gave such offence at Tournai in 1499. A similar hood, fitting closely over the head and cut in scollops upon the shoulders, reappears in the _bâton_, dated 1482, of the fools in the ducal chapel of Dijon. Besides two large asses’ ears, it also bears a central peak or crest[1374]. The eared hood became the regular badge of the _sociétés joyeuses_. It is found on most of the seals and other devices of the _Infanterie Dijonnaise_, variously modified, and often with bells hung upon the ears and the points of the scollops[1375]. It was used at Amiens[1376], and at Rouen and Evreux probably gave a name to the _Cornards_[1377]. Marot describes it as appropriate to a _sot de la Basoche_ at Paris[1378]. It belongs also to the _Narren_ of Nuremberg[1379], and is to be seen in innumerable figured representations of fools in miniatures, woodcuts, carvings, the Amiens _monetae_, and so forth, during the later Middle Ages and the Renascence[1380]. Such a close-fitting hood