a covering for the hand and wrist.

Gloves, with respect to commerce, are distinguished into leathern gloves, silk gloves, thread gloves, cotton gloves, worsted gloves, &c. Leathern gloves are made of chamois, kid, lamb, doe, elk, buff, &c. Gloves now pay a duty to the king, which increases according to their value.

To throw the glove, was a practice or ceremony very usual among our forefathers; being the challenge whereby another was defied 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.

Favyn supposes the custom to have arisen from the eastern nations, who in all their oaths 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 readers by shoe. He adds, that the Rabbins interpret by glove that passage in the civitil Psalm, In Iudaeam extendam ecclesiam meum, "Over Edom 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 Favyn, 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 affirms, 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, lib. xvi. p. 1017, &c.

Anciently it was prohibited the judges to wear gloves on the bench. And at present in the stables of most princes, it is not safe going in without pulling off the gloves.