[Illustration: Fig. 418.--Costume of English Servants in the Fourteenth
Century.--From Manuscripts in the British Museum.]
[Illustration: Fig. 419.--Costume of Philip the Good, with Hood and
"Cockade."--From a Miniature in a Manuscript of the Period.]
An interesting anecdote relative to this custom is to be found in the
chronicles of Matthew Paris. When St. Louis, to the dismay of all his
vassals, and of his inferior servants, had decided to take up the cross,
he succeeded in associating the nobles of his court with him in his vow by
a kind of pious fraud. Having had a certain number of mantles prepared for
Christmas-day, he had a small white cross embroidered on each above the
right shoulder, and ordered them to be distributed among the nobles on the
morning of the feast when they were about to go to mass, which was
celebrated some time before sunrise. Each courtier received the mantle
given by the King at the door of his room, and put it on in the dark
without noticing the white cross; but, when the day broke, to his great
surprise, he saw the emblem worn by his neighbour, without knowing that he
himself wore it also. "They were surprised and amused," says the English
historian, "at finding that the King had thus piously entrapped them....
As it would have been unbecoming, shameful, and even unworthy of them to
have removed these crosses, they laughed heartily, and said that the good
King, on starting as a pilgrim-hunter, had found a new method of catching
men."
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