5. Taudry Lace.
It was formerly the custom in England for women to wear a necklace of fine silk, called Taudry Lace, from St. Audrey. She in her youth had been used to wear carkanets of jewels, and being afterward tormented with violent pains in her neck, was wont to say, that God in his mercy had thus punished her, and the fiery heat and redness of the swelling which she endured was to atone for her former pride and vanity[1]. Probably she wore this lace to conceal the scrofulous appearance, and from this, when it was afterward worn as an ornament which was common and not costly, the word taudry may have been taken to designate any kind of coarse and vulgar finery.
It would not be readily supposed that Audrey is the same name as Ethelreda.