As to increasing wealth by war, that has never yet happened to this
nation; and, I believe, rarely to any country. Our former kings most
engaged in war were always poor, and sometimes excessively so. Edward
III. pawned his jewels to pay foreign forces; and _magnam coronam
Angliae_, his imperial crown, three several times--once abroad, and
twice to Sir John Wosenham, his banker, in whose custody the crown
remained no less than eight years. The Black Prince, as Walsingham
informs us, was constrained to pledge his plate. Henry V., with all his
conquests, pawned his crown, and the table and stools of silver which he
had from Spain. Queen Elizabeth is known to have sold her very jewels.

G.K.

* * * * *


HEAD-DRESS OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY, IN ENGLAND.


In Wickliffe's _Commentaries upon the Ten Commandments_, in the
midst of a moral exhortation, he manages, by a few bold touches, to give
us a picture of the fashionable head-dress of his day:--

"And let each woman beware, that neither by countenance, nor by array of
body nor of head, she stir any to covet her to sin. Not crooking
(curling) her hair, neither laying it up on high, nor the head arrayed
about with gold and precious stones; not seeking curious clothing, nor
of nice shape, showing herself to be seemly to fools. For all such
arrays of women St. Peter and St. Paul, by the Holy Ghost's teaching,