heavenly choir for ever." This MS., which abounds with curious drawings, of which we shall give some other specimens, is now preserved among the Cotton MSS., Nero D 7.

During the troublesome period that succeeded the death of Henry V., until peace was again established by that of Richard III., it would appear as if the minds of the English nobility and gentry sought relief in the invention of all that was absurd in apparel, as a counter-excitement to the feverish spirit engendered by civil war. All that was monstrous in the past was resuscitated, and its ugliness added to by the invention of the day, until ladies and gentlemen appear like mere caricatures of humanity. To detail or depict one-half of their doings would be impossible in thrice the space I have to devote to the subject. It has been done, however, by a contemporary hand; and any person who can obtain a sight of a very curious volume in the Harleian Collection, marked 2278, may see enough to convince him of the length to which the votaries of fashion now carried their whims. The volume

is a small quarto, full of splendidly-coloured and richly-gilt illuminations, and is the very volume given to Henry VI., when he passed his Christmas at St. Edmundsbury, by William Curteis, who was then abbot of the monastery there. The volume is a life of St. Edmund, by the famous John Lydgate, written in tedious rhymes, for his Majesty's especial gratification.

Specimens have been selected from the costume exhibited in this volume, for the use of those persons who may never see the original, and which will give a fair idea of that generally depicted.

"Hommage aux dames!" let us consider the ladies first, who seem to have had a fixed determination to render themselves the most conspicuous of the sexes, by the variety, size, and capacious form of their head-dresses. The group here engraved is exactly copied from the volume described, without the slightest attempt to correct it in any particular, and well exhibits the fanciful variety indulged in by

the fair wearers. The most unpretending head-dress is that worn by the foremost of the group. The heart-shaped one of the lady to her left is of very common occurrence; which is also the case with the turban worn by the farthest figure of the group. The other lady, whose forehead is surmounted by a pointed coiffure, is by no means so ungraceful as many of her contemporaries. The dresses, it will be observed, are worn long and full, with sleeves wide, and tight at the wrist, or in the opposite extreme; of both which fashions we see examples here. The ladies' gowns are trimmed with fur at the wrist, round the neck, and sometimes round the seam at the shoulders. Their waists are exceedingly short, giving a very long and ungainly appearance to the lower part of the figure, at the

expense of a compressed look to the upper portion; a fashion resuscitated in the last century.

The head-dresses of the ladies can, however, be but slightly understood from a single engraving; they exist in so many varieties, and appear to have been constantly on the change, while various patterns were adopted by various gentlewomen; and a group of them collected together, on any great public occasion, must have presented a very singular assemblage forms. A few more are accordingly given of the most ordinary kind, all selected from the same manuscript.

of

3

Fig. 1 is a horned coiffure, which may be said to be "strangely and fearfully made," and of a pattern that excited the ire of the soberminded satirists of the day to an irrepressible pitch. The ladies were declared to carry about with them the outward and visible sign of the father of all evil, proudly, triumphantly, and without shame! Lydgate, the monk of Bury, the most celebrated poet of the day, set his never-wearied pen to the task of condemnation, and produced a ballad against them, A Ditty of Women's Horns; the gist of the argument, and burden of every verse, being an announcement that "Beauty will show, though horns were away."

He declares that

"Clerkes record, by great authority,

Horns were given to beasts for defence;

A thing contrary to feminity,

To be made sturdy of resistance.
But arch wives, eager in their violence,
Fierce as tigers for to make affray,

They have despite, and act against conscience.
List not to pride, then horns cast away."

He afterwards excuses himself to the ladies for what he considers a justifiable condemnation, quoting the example of Scripture characters, his last verse alluding to the

"Mother of Jesu, mirrour of chastity,

In word or thought that never did offence,
True exemplar of virginity,

Head spring and well of perfect continence;
There was never clerk, by rhetoric nor science,
Could all her virtues rehearse until this day;
Noble princesses of meek benevolence,

Take example of her-your horns cast away."

Nothing, however, that could be said, sung, or written, appears to have had the effect of preventing these fashions from becoming universal.

The turban of fig. 2 is very frequently seen: it is of true oriental form, and certainly much less extravagant than some other headdresses in its proportions. A simple roll of cloth, silk, or velvet, sometimes encircles the head, the hair being brought through its centre, and allowed to stream down the back, as in fig. 3. A front view of a forked head-dress, with its small hanging veil, is seen in fig. 4; and fig. 5 exhibits another variety of the same fashion, the points being curled inward over the forehead.

The dress of the gentlemen may be comprehended by an examination of the figures here given, selected with a view to display the most ordinary and least whimsical and extravagant costume then worn. That of the gentleman with the dog varies but little from the fashion that had been adopted very long before, except in the cap, which is composed of a thick roll of stuff encircling the head like a turban, and styled a roundlet, having a quantity of cloth attached to its inner edge, which

covers one side, while a broad band of the same material, secured to the other, hangs down to the ground, unless tucked in the girdle, or wound round the neck, when the end was pendent behind or in front. The cap is frequently seen suspended by this band at the back of the wearer when thrown off, and thus it was prevented from falling,

which would appear to be the legitimate use and intention of the invention. The figure opposite has a similar cap, with its band hanging nearly to the ground; his sleeves are remarkably wide, and cut into ornamental escallops; the girdle confining the waist being remarkably low (in contradistinction to that adopted by the ladies), and which sometimes is seen encircling the hips, giving the body an exceedingly swollen and unpleasant appearance. The central figure behind exhibits the fashion, now universal, of closely shaving the face and cropping the hair above the ears, giving an amount of meanness and harshness of feature to the effigies and delineations of the period very unpleasant to view. This gentleman wears the sleeves "shaped like a bagpipe," which come in for their fair share of monkish censure, as receptacles for theft, when worn by servants, and fashionables of questionable character, who haunted public places in the pursuit of what Falstaff calls their "vocation."

There is no monumental effigy of the unfortunate Henry VI., who, loving retirement and religious seclusion, was denied their enjoyment living, and knew no rest even in the grave. His body was

conveyed from the Tower to St. Paul's, and then buried at Chertsey, whence it was again removed to Windsor, to allay the uneasiness of Richard III., who was annoyed by the popular belief of miracles effected at his tomb. When Henry VII. wished to remove it to Westminster, it appears that it could not be found.

Of the representations of this monarch, his queen and court, the best is that to be found in the Royal MS., 15 E 6, which depicts John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, presenting a volume of romances to the king and queen. It has been engraved by Strutt in his Regal Antiquities, and by Shaw in his Dresses and Decorations: the tapestry supposed to represent these illustrious personages, in St. Mary's Hall, at Coventry, also engraved in the latter work, is of a later date, probably of the time of Henry VII. In the Harleian MS. 2278, used for our examples of costume, there is a youthful representation of Henry. There is another and a very good full-length

of this sovereign pre

served in Cotton MS., Julius E 4. The manuscript contains a series of full-length figures of the English sovereigns, from the time of William the Conqueror to that of Henry VI., who is represented as a young The descriptive verses beneath each figure were written by Lydgate, and are brief historic memoranda of the events of each reign. The figures are all exceedingly well drawn, and as they are all dressed in the fashion of the days of Henry

man.

*The painting formerly at Strawberry Hill, and supposed to represent the marriage of Henry with Margaret of Anjou, is certainly of a later date, if it does represent the marriage of Henry at all, which is very problematical. It appears rather to be a German picture of the fifteenth century; its subject, the Marriage of the Virgin Mary.