Affectation of parade, and gaudy cloathing, were admitted among many of the clergy, who incurred the severest invectives of the poets on that account.

The ploughman, in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, is full upon this point.

He gives us the following description of a Priest "That hye on horse wylleth to ride, In glytter ande gold of great araye, 'I painted and pertred all in pryde, No common Knyght may go so gaye; Chaunge of clothyng every daye, With golden gyrdles great and small, As boysterous as is here at baye; All suche falshed mote nede fell." [Footnote 35: See Strut's Antiquities.] To this he adds, that many of them had more than one or two mitres, embellished with pearls, like the head of a queen, and a staff of gold set with jewels, as heavy as lead.

He then speaks of their appearing out of doors with broad bucklers and long swords, or with baldrics about their necks, instead of stoles, to which their basellards were attached.
"Bucklers brode and sweardes longe, Baudryke with baselards kene." He then accuses them with wearing gay gowns of scarlet and green colours, ornamented with cut-work, and for the long pykes upon their shoes.
But so late as the year 1652 we have the following anecdote of the whimsical dress of a clergyman.

John Owen, Dean of Christ church, and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, is represented an wearing a lawn-band, as having his hair powdered and his hat curiously cocked.