Also she wears shifts of cloth of Rennes, which costs sixteen pence the ell.

Also she wears kirtles laced with silk and tiring pins of silver and silver gilt and has made all the nuns wear the like.
Also she wears above her veil a cap of estate, furred with budge.

Item, she has on her neck a long silken band, in English a lace, which hangs down below her breast and there on a golden ring with one diamond.[16] Is it not Madame Eglentyne to the life?
Nothing escaped our good Dan Chaucer's eye, for all that he rode always looking on the ground.
Moreover, it was not only in her dress that the Prioress and her sister nuns aped the fashions of the world.

Great ladies of the day loved to amuse themselves with pet animals; and nuns were quick to follow their example.

So, Of smale houndes had she, that she fedde With rosted flesh, or milk and wastel-breed.
But sore weep she if oon of hem were deed, Or if men smoot it with a yerde smerte.
The visitation reports are full of those little dogs and other animals; and how many readers of the Prologue know that the smale houndes, like the fair forehead and the brooch of gold full sheen, were strictly against the rules?
For the bishops regarded pets as bad for discipline, and century after century they tried to turn the animals out of the convents, without the slightest success.