"Where true courage roots, The proverb says, once over shoes, o'er boots."
Again, "to stand in another man's shoe" is a popular expression for occupying the place or laying claim to the honours of another. "Looking for dead men's shoes" is still an every-day phrase denoting those who are continually expecting some advantage which will accrue to them on the death of another. The shoe-horn, too, from its convenient use in drawing on a tight shoe, was formerly applied in a jocular metaphor to subservient and tractable assistants. Thus, for instance, Shakespeare in _Troilus and Cressida_ (Act v., sc. 1) makes Thersites in his railing mood give this name to Menelaus, whom he calls "a thrifty shoeing-horn in a chain, hanging at his brother's (Agamemnon's) leg." It was also employed as a contemptuous phrase for danglers after young women.
A further article of dress that has had much honour conferred upon it is the glove, holding as it does a conspicuous place in many of our old customs and ceremonies. Thus in days gone by it was given, by way of delivery or investiture, in sales or conveyances of lands and goods. It was also employed as the token of a challenge to fight, a symbolical staking, perhaps of the prowess of the hand to which the glove belonged. Hence to hang up a glove in church was a public challenge, very much as a notice affixed to a church-door is a public notice. _Apropos_ of this custom, a story is given in the life of the Rev. Bernard Gilpin, of the diocese of Durham, who died in 1583. It appears that he observed a glove hanging high up in his church, and ascertaining that it was designed as a challenge to any one who should dare to displace it, he desired his sexton to do so. "Not I, sir, I dare do no such thing," he replied. Whereupon the parson called for a long staff, and taking it down himself, put it in his pocket. Preaching afterwards on the subject, he denounced this unseemly practice, saying, "Behold, I have taken it down myself," and producing the glove, he exhibited it to the whole congregation as a spectacle of honour. This custom, we are told, does not appear to have been much older in this country than the thirteenth century, for Matthew Paris, in writing of the year 1245, speaks of it expressly as French. Noblemen wore their ladies' gloves in front of their hats, a practice mentioned by Drayton as having been in vogue at the battle of Agincourt:--