GLOVE, a covering for the hand and wrist.
Gloves, with respect to commerce, are distinguished into leather-gloves, silk-gloves, thread-gloves, cotton-gloves, worsted-gloves, &c. Leather-gloves are made of chamois, kid, lamb, doe, elk, buff, &c.
To throw the glove, was a practice or ceremony very usual among our forefathers; being the challenge, whereby another was desired to single combat.—It is still retained at the coronation of our kings; when the king's champion casts his glove in Westminster-hall. See CHAMPION.
Fayn supposes the custom to have arose from the eastern nations, who in all their sales and deliveries of lands, goods, &c. used to give the purchaser their glove by way of livery or investiture. To this effect he quotes Ruth iv. 7. where the Chaldee paraphrase calls glove, what the common version renders by free. He adds, that the Rabbinis interpret by glove, that passage in the eighth Psalm, In Idumeam extendam calcementum
calceamentum meum, "Over Edou will I cast out my shoe."—Accordingly, among us, he who took up the glove, declared thereby his acceptance of the challenge; and as a part of the ceremony, continues Favy, took the glove off his own right-hand, and cast it upon the ground, to be taken up by the challenger. This had the force of a mutual engagement on each side, to meet at the time and place which should be appointed by the king, parliament, or judges.—The same author asserts, that the custom which still obtains of blessing gloves in the coronation of the kings of France, is a remain of the eastern practice of giving possession with the glove, l. xvi. p. 1017, &c.
Anciently it was prohibited the judges to wear gloves on the bench. And at present in the fables of most princes, it is not safe going in without pulling off the gloves.