A coronell on hur hedd set,
Hur clothys with bestes and byrdes wer bete
All abowte for pryde.[1]
When in the field, over their armour, whether of mail or plate, knights wore a long sleeveless gown slit up almost to the waist on both sides: sometimes of "samit," often of "cendal," oftener still of "ciclatourn," because of its flowing showy texture was this garment made, and from a new and contracted way of calling it, the name of the gown, like the shortened one for its stuff, became known as "cyclas," nothing akin to the [Greek: kyklas]?]—the full round article of dress worn by the women of Greece and Rome. When, A.D. 1306, before setting out to Scotland, Edward I. girded his son, the prince of Wales, with so much pomp, a knight, in Westminster Abbey; to the three hundred sons of the nobility whom the heir to the throne was afterward to dub knights in the same church, the king made a most splendid gift of attire fitting for the ceremony, and among other textiles sent them were these "clycases" wove of gold:—"Purpura, bissus, syndones, cyclades auro textæ," &c. as we learn from Matthew Westminster, "Flores Historiarum," p. 454. How very light and thin must have been all such garments, we gather from the quiet wit of John of Salisbury while jeering the man who affected to perspire in the depth of winter, though clad in nothing but his fine "cyclas:"—"dum omnia gelu constricta rigent, tenui sudat in cylade."[2]
Not so costly, and even somewhat thinner in texture, was a silken stuff known as cendal, cendallus, sandal, sandalin, cendatus, syndon, syndonus, as the way of writing the word altered as time went on. When Sir Guy of Warwick was knighted,
And with him twenty good gomes
Knightes' and barons' sons,
Of cloth of Tars and rich cendale
Was the dobbing in each deal.[3]
The Roll of Caerlaverock tells us that among the grand array which met and joined Edward I. at Carlisle, A.D. 1300, on his road to invade Scotland, there was to be seen many a rich caparison embroidered upon cendal and samit:—
La ot meint riche guarnement
Brodé sur sendaus e samis.[4]
And Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, leading the first squadron, hoisted his banner made of yellow cendal blazoned with a lion rampant purpre.[5]
