and therefore he shall have much pain and tribulations.” Being assoiled of this crying sin, S. John takes William to a fire “grete and styngkyng,” in which he sees people burning in their gay clothes. “I saw some with collars of gold about their necks, and some of silver, and some men I saw with gay girdles of silver and gold, and harnessed with horns about their necks, some with no jagges on their clothes, than whole cloth, others full of jingles and bells of silver all over set, and some with long pokes on their sleeves, and women with gowns trailing behind them a long space, and some with chaplets on their heads of gold and pearls and other precious stones. And I looked on him that I saw first in pain, and saw the collars, and gay girdles, and baldrics burning, and the fiends dragging him by two fingermits. And I saw the jagges that men were clothed in turn all to adders, to dragons, and to toads, and ‘many other orrible bestes’ sucking them, and biting them, and stinging them with all their might, and through every jingle I saw fiends smite burning nails of fire into their flesh. I also saw fiends drawing down the skin of their shoulders like to pokes, and cutting them off, and drawing them to the heads of those they cut them from, all burning as fire. And then I saw
