shoes&pattens6

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Shoes and Pattens

the vertical and horizontal drawstrings long out-moded in England (Blomąuist 1938, Figs. 28-47). The shoes from King’s Lynn also present a differ-ent picture of 14th-century footwear. Here there were a few modestly-pointed shoes but no sur-viving ‘poulaines’ (Ciarkę & Carter 1977, Fig. 168, Nos. 63-4). Thornton reconstructed a shoe from Roushill, Shrewsbury that has parallels among the mid to late 14th-century two-piece shoes from London, but again it is neither a ‘poulaine’ nor even pointed (Thornton 1961, Fig. 53.1). ‘Poulaines’, some elaborately decorated, do survive from Coventry (Thomas 1980), but are datable only by style, not by context.

The chronicler who compiled the Eulogium Histońarum, probably at the very end of the 14th century, specifically attributed the first appear-ance of ‘poulaines’ - and of some other eąually outrageous forms of dress - to the years 1361-2:

Eodern anno et in anno praecedenti tota communi-tas Anglicana versa. . . . Habent etiam sotulares rostratas in unius digiti longitudine ąuae ‘Crakowes’ vocantur; potius judicantur ungula daemonum quam ornamenta hominum. . . .

(v. 186; Haydon 1863, vol. iii, 230-1)

(‘In thatyear (viz. 1362) and the preceding year the whole of the English community was turned upside down. . . . They also have beaked shoes, one finger long, which are called ‘ ‘Crakowes ’ they are judged to be the claws of devils rather than the trappings of men. . . .’)

The exactitude with which this datę is given imme-diately arouses suspicion, especially sińce in the same years England was shaken by a serious recurrence of the Black Death. Decadence and catastrophe may have been unconsciously linked in the chronicler’s mind, just as in France in 1374 a new outbreak of plague brought on a resurgence of public hysteria fuelled by the feeling that demonie presences were poisoning society. Noth-ing pointed morę surely to the Devil’s handiwork than ‘poulaines’ which all had heard denounced so often by the clergy (Tuchman 1979, 260).

Stów, on the other hand, in his discussion of the Cordwainers’ Hall in Bread Street ward, traces the introduction of ‘poulaines’ to 1382, stating that

Ofthese Cordwayners, I reade, that sińce the fift of Richard the 2. (when he tooke to wife Annę daughter of Veselaus King of Bohem) by her example the English people had vsed piked shooes, tied to their knees with silken laces, or chaynes of silver and gilt. . . .

(ed. Kingsford 1971, 351; repeated, id., A Summańe of the Chronicles of England (1598), 149-50)

But sińce the latter part of this passage -regarding the tying of pikes to the knees with chains or laces - is almost certainly fictitious (see below), it may be that the first part should be regarded with eąual suspicion. It is possible that Stów acąuired the datę from an authentic medieval source but morę likely, perhaps, that it was an educated guess, madę in the knowledge that the-important cultural centre of Kraków - which gave its name to this particular type of shoe - lay less than a hundred miles from the border with Bohemia.

Whatever the precise datę of the introduction of ‘poulaines’, archaeological and historical sources are consistent in demonstrating their popularity during the 1380s and, possibly, the 1370s. Their sheer impracticality and opulence was a natural target for anyone of sober tastes with an axe to grind - and in the years around the Peasants’ Revolt there were many of these. William Lang-land, for instance, was never morę than a poor chantry priest in the City of London. Here he must have seen many displays of conspicuous extrava-gance, not least among monks - even Franciscans by the 14th century - whose monasteries were supported by rich endowments. It is no surprise, therefore, that he should describe proud priests in the company of the Anti-Christ as wearing pyked shoes (Pierś Ploughman, B.xx.218; ed. Skeat 1886, i.590); and, even if he did not write the passage himself, he would no doubt have agreed in condemning the Franciscans in the following terms:

Fraunces bad his bretherne/barfot to wenden Nou han they buclede schone/for blenyng ofher heles And hosen in harde weder/y-hamled by the ancie.

(Anon., Pierce Ploughman Crede, 298-300; ąuoted in Fairholt 1885, i.135)

‘Poulaines’ achieved such notoriety, and were the butt of so much ridicule, that it is often difncult