450. _to the offring._ In the description of the missal-rites, Rock shews
how the bishop (or officiating priest) 'took from the people's selves their
offerings of bread and wine.... The men first and then the women, came with
their cake and cruse of wine.' So that, instead of money being collected,
as now, the people went up in order with their offerings; and questions of
precedence of course arose. The Wife insisted on going up first among the
women. See Rock, Church of our Fathers, iii. 2. 33, 149.
453. _coverchief_ (_keverchef_, or _kerchere_, _kerché_). The _kerchief_,
or covering for the head, was, until the fourteenth century, almost an
indispensable portion of female attire. See B. 837; Leg. of Good Women, l.
2202.
_ful fyne of ground_, of a very fine texture. See Pierce the Ploughman's
Crede, l. 230, which means 'it was of fine enough texture to take dye in
grain.'
454. _ten pound._ Of course this is a playful exaggeration; but Tyrwhitt
was not justified in altering _ten pound_ into _a pound_; for a
pound-weight, in a head-dress of that period, was a mere nothing, as will
be readily understood by observing the huge structures represented in
Fairholt's Costume, figs. 125, 129, 130, 151, which were often further
weighted with ornaments of gold. Skelton goes so far as to describe Elinour
Rummyng (l. 72)--
'With clothes upon her hed
That wey a _sowe of led_.'
Cf. Pierce the Ploughman's Crede, l. 84, and the note; Stubbes, Anatomy of
Abuses, 1585, pp. 63, 70, 72; or ed. Furnivall, pp. 69, 74, 76.