You are what you wear
Clothes are our outer skin. They are part of how others see us, and how we see ourselves. They reflect our tastes and our aspirations. Nowadays we have lots of clothes, because we have all sorts of artificial (plastic) materials and industrial processes which make clothes cheap and available to everyone.
In the Middle Ages, clothes were all of natural materials and made by hand: they were expensive. Some clothes were more expensive than others, and it was very easy to tell - just by what your clothes were made of, never mind how they were cut - how rich you were.
In the later Middle Ages,
laws were passed forbidding people of lower classes to wear upper class clothes. By then, the class system was in theory quite rigid - but obviously it wasn't in practice, because otherwise you wouldn't have needed these laws!
For church people clothes were supposed to be simple. Christ and his disciples lived in poverty so that they could spend money instead on helping others. Church people were supposed to follow their example. Because you should focus on others, you should yourself be humble, so that you get rid of any self-importance and selfishness. Also, church people were also supposed to be focusing on God and heavenly matters, and not on worldly matters like how they looked. This was especially the case for people in monasteries.
Merton Priory was Augustinian.
St Augustine's Rule said that:
There should be nothing about your behaviour
to attract attention.
Clothes, therefore, should be as humble as the canons who wore them. When you joined a monastery, you gave up all individual property. Everything was to be held in common. That included clothes. Augustine's Rule again:
And just as you have your food from one pantry, so, too, you are to
receive your clothing from a single wardrobe. If possible, do not be
concerned about what you are to wear at the change of the seasons.
The Augustinian Rule was a bit vague, though. It said that you had to get your clothing from the common store, but it didn't say what the clothing was. For that, we have to go to the other great founder of monks,
St Benedict. He said monks should wear:
a tunic, a cowl, a belt for work, and for the feet
shoes and stockings.
This monastic dress was called a
habit. Because there were different sorts of monastics, there were different sorts of habits - a bit like football strips or army uniforms. The Augustinians' habits looked something like this. (Right is John Studeley, c.1500, from St Frideswide's, Oxford. Left, a diagram of a habit.)
We know most about what they wore from a handbook of
Barnwell Priory, just outside Cambridge. There, canons received clothes twice a year. At Easter, each canon got:
-
one a
surplice or rochet of 7 ells of stuff (an ell was 45” /114
cm)
-
one sheet of 6 ells
-
three pair of
linen breeches, each of which is to be of 5 ells
-
one pair of
summer hose of soft leather, which ought to rise above the knees
-
one pair of
shoes of leather
-
one pair of
gaiters of
serge or canvas
-
one cope
(cloak) of
frieze without fur
At Michaelmas (29th
September) each canon got:
-
one new tunic
of
woollen, or one cassock of lambskin
-
a pair of
boots of felt, and a pair of gaiters of woollen, and two pair of
slippers similarly of woollen
-
a black
lambskin to mend the fur of the hood of his cloak.
The chamberlain was in charge of the clothes. He gave them out and took them back in again, and made sure they were repaired and washed. He gave old linen to the poor.
This is made from flax (linum). It’s strong and quick-drying – and cool in the summer. For those reasons, linen is excellent for underwear. Our canons wore linen breeches and shirts in the summer. 
Other plant fibres would have included nettle. Nettle is processed in a similar way, too, and makes a very good fibre. Considering the number of nettles we have, and the fact that we've got to stop using plastic, isn't it time we used nettle for our clothes and cordage?
