60

The Normans.

THE Great Seals of the kings of this dynasty exhibit each monarch in dresses varying in a very slight degree from each other. A tunic, reaching halfway below the knee, and a mantle thrown over it and fastened by a fibula on the shoulder in front, completes their costume. William I. holds a sword in his right hand, and an orb, surmounted by a cross, in his left; as also does his son Rufus. Henry I. and Stephen bear also swords and orbs, but the crosses upon them are surmounted by large doves. Of William I. various representations occur in that valuable picture of the manners and costume of his period, known as the Bayeux Tapestry, and which is traditionally recorded to have been worked by his queen, Matilda, and the ladies of her court, to commemorate the invasion and conquest of England by her husband; and by her presented to the cathedral of Bayeux, in Normandy, of which Odo, the turbulent half-brother of William, was bishop: it reached completely round the cathedral, where it was exhibited on great occasions.*

This pictorial history of the Conquest commences with Harold's

*It is now preserved in the town-hall of the city (having been removed from the cathedral since 1803), where it is kept coiled round a roller: the tapestry measures 20 inches in breadth, and is 214 feet in length; it ends abruptly, and some portion is wanting. Dr. Dibdin, in his Tour in Normandy, has engraved the tapestry on its roll, as it usually appears, and also has given a facsimile of one of the portraits of William, copied, thread for thread, in imitation of the original needlework. The Society of Antiquaries, feeling the value of this curious historic production, despatched Mr. C. A. Stothard to Normandy to copy it in the most accurate manner, which he effected with minute truthfulness; and copies of his drawing, one-fourth of the original size, were published in the sixth volume of their work, the Vetusta Monumenta. Reduced copies of these plates, with an elucidatory text, have been recently published in a quarto volume by Dr. Bruce, of Newcastle.

visit to Normandy at the instigation of Edward the Confessor; and gives all the incidents of his stay at William's court, his subsequent departure, the death of Edward and his funeral at Westminster, the coronation of Harold, William's invasion, the battle of Hastings, and Harold's death. In addition to all this, many minute facts are recorded, and persons depicted and named that have escaped the chroniclers..

Besides the figures of William in this tapestry, there is a fulllength portrait of him in a manuscript that formerly belonged to Battle Abbey (which was founded by him to commemorate his conquest), and relates to its affairs until A.D. 1176: it is engraved in Dr. Dibdin's Bibliographical Decameron, vol. i., from the original in the Cotton MS., Domitian 2. In the public library at Rouen is a curious manuscript by William, Abbot of Jumiéges, to which abbey William was a great benefactor, and in whose presence the church was dedicated to the Virgin, by St. Maurille, Archbishop of Rouen, in 1067. At the commencement of the book is a drawing representing the historian offering his book to the Conqueror; the copy here given was drawn by me from the original, while at Rouen, some years since, and is now for the first time engraved. It is the best regal figure of William we possess. His tunic has wide sleeves with a richly ornamented border; a mantle is fastened to his right shoulder by a brooch or fibula. His crown is of singular shape, a combination of cap and crown,* and he holds in his left hand a sceptre of somewhat peculiar form. His face is so carefully drawn that it bears the marks of portraiture; a broad full face seems to have been the characteristic distinction of the Conqueror in all contemporary representations of him.

The ordinary costume of the people during this reign appears to have been as simple as that of the Anglo-Saxons. Short tunics, with a sort of cape or tippet about the neck, and drawers that co

*The Saxon Chronicle describes William as wearing the regal helmet "thrice every year when he was in England. At Easter he wore it at Winchester, on Pentecost at Westminster, and in mid-winter at Gloucester."

vered the entire leg, known as "chaussés," were worn, sometimes bandaged round the leg with various colours, or crossed diagonally. William is represented in one instance with blue garters and gold tassels over his red chaussés, very similar to the regal figure engraved as an illustration to the previous account of this fashion among the Saxons. Full trousers reaching to the knee are not uncommon, as may be seen in the cut on next page; and one example occurs in the tapestry in which they end in a series of vandykes, or points, of different colour to the trouser itself. The tunic, too, was sometimes variegated in perpendicular stripes from the waist, where it was confined by a coloured girdle. Their mantles, as before observed, were fastened by brooches or pins of an ornamental character, either square or round; and which, having been common for ages previous, remained in fashion centuries afterwards.

Their shoes are represented of various colours upon the tapestry, yellow, blue, green, and red; they wear also short boots, reaching above the ankle, with a plain band round their tops.

The male costume is, throughout the tapestry, similar to that worn by the figures to the left of Harold in the cut of his coronation already described, and which, in fact, varied but little from that of the Saxons.

There was, however, one striking peculiarity in the Normans who came with William, and that was the singular fashion of shaving the back of the head as well as the entire face. It was so great a novelty, that the spies sent by Harold to reconnoitre the camp of William, declared they had seen no soldiers, but an army of priests. "One of the English who had seen the Normans all shaven and shorn, thought they were all priests, and could chant masses; for all were shaven and shorn, not having moustachios left. This he told to Harold, that the duke had far more priests than knights or other troops." Such are the words in which this incident is described by Wace, the Anglo-Norman poet of the twelfth century, and the historian of the Dukes of Normandy.

The engraving given in the next page, of two mounted soldiers,— from the Bayeux tapestry,-shows this fashion very clearly: the central tufts of hair were sometimes covered by a close coif, or cap, which, passing over the centre of the head from the tip of each ear, left the back quite bare of covering, for the purpose of displaying this fashion more plainly. Mr. Planché, in his History of British Costume, says that it was adopted from the nobles of Aquitaine, who had been distinguished by this extraordinary practice for many

years previous to the Conquest; and who had spread the fashion after the marriage of Constance, Princess of Poitou, with Robert, King of France, in 997, by following her to Paris, and there exhibiting themselves thus shorn; their general manners being, accord

ing to contemporary

authority, distinguished by conceited levity, that and their dress being equally fantastic. But Fashion, who can invent nothing too ugly or too absurd for her votaries to adopt and defend, and whose sway is as blindly submitted to in our own day as it was by the exquisites in that of William of Normandy, spread these absurdities amazingly, much to the annoyance of the clergy, who lamented over the changes they could not avert, and the simple honesty of the "good old times" of their forefathers, with as much zest as the writers of a later period when talking of this visionary era-a golden age that existed only in imagination.

Once established in England, and revelling in the riches their rapine procured from its unhappy inhabitants, the courtiers of the Conqueror gave way to their ostentatious love of finery, which increased during his reign, and in that of Rufus arrived at its height, producing a total change in the appearance of the people. The king having set the example, of course the courtiers followed it; and the clergy are declared to have been equally distinguished with them for their love of attire both whimsical and expensive.* Not content with the amount of ornament their dresses could contain, they sought extra display by enlarging them to the utmost, allowing their garments to trail upon the ground, and widening their sleeves until they hung, not only over the entire hand, but several inches beyond it, even falling to the middle of the leg when their arms descended. One of the royal figures here engraved from Cotton MS., Nero C

"At this time preists used bushed and braided heads, long-tayled gounes and blasyn clothes, shinyng and golden girdles; and rode with gilt spurs, using of divers other enormities." Fabian's Chronicle, quoted by Strutt, who says this account is confirmed by Malmesbury; and that neither the preaching nor the authority of Anselm could correct these vices.

4, exhibits these sleeves very clearly. In the original this group is intended to represent the three Magi. The figure to the left shows another kind of sleeve, frequently seen in the illuminations of this period, and which looks like a very broad cuff turned over from the

wrist; it is generally gilt in the delineations where it is met with, and widens as it reaches the elbow, towards which it tapers to a point projecting from the arm. The mantle of this figure is tucked under the arm, to prevent inconvenience from its length in walking. These mantles were made from the finest cloths, and then lined with costly furs; Henry I. is said by the historians to have had one presented to him by the Bishop of Lincoln that cost one hundred pounds.

The length of their garments, and the love of amplitude that characterized the fashionables of this period, induced them to discard the close shaving introduced at the Conquest, and to allow their hair and beard to vie with their apparel in length and inconvenience, which induced the clergy to give them the name of "filthy goats." The cut of the Magi shows this fashion well (as do also some others a little further on): their beards are nicely combed (the third figure draws his through his fingers with evident satisfaction), and the moustachios allowed to hang to considerable length over it in single carefully-formed locks.

The earliest sculptured effigies of English sovereigns we possess are those of Henry I. and his Queen Matilda, at the sides of the great west door of Rochester cathedral, and of which the cut on the next page is a copy. They are much mutilated, but still preserve important details of costume. The king is in the flowing dress of the period; a long dalmatic lies in folds over his feet, and it appears to be open in front; it is partially covered by the super-tunic, which is gathered round the waist, but no girdle is visible; a long mantle lies in folds over his left arm, and is partially tucked beneath his