his nephew a visit at court: he was 'a plain old man of threescore years; with a buttoned cap;1 a lockram falling band, coarse but clean; a russet coat; a white belt of a horse-hide, right horse-collar white leather; a close round breech of russet sheep's wool, with a long stock of white kersey, and a high shoe with yellow buckles." In the "History of Chester" (8vo, 1815) is published the following curious extract from the corporation records : "32 Henry VIII., Henry Gee, Mayor.-To distinguish the head-dresses of married women from unmarried, no unmarried woman to wear white or other coloured caps; and no woman to wear any hat, unless she rides or goes abroad into the country (except sick or aged persons), on pain of 38. 4d." In the thirty-third year of his reign, Henry passed a sumptuary law regulating the apparel of each member of the community, and which would appear to have exerted some influence over their usual mode of dressing, as it involved some consequences to the wearer, such as obliging him to keep always ready a horse and armour for the wars, provided his apparel displayed any costly article forbidden to all but those persons of a liberal income, sufficient to maintain the necessary equipment for battle; and this was enforced by a heavy fine, which in those days of constant pillage was no doubt carefully sought after by the jackals of a sovereign who probably got through more wealth than any other English king. The ladies were also effectually reached by the same law, through their husbands; for it was enacted, that "if any temporal person of full age, whose wife not being divorced, nor willingly absenting herself from him, doth wear any gown or petticoat of silk, or any velvet in her kirtle, or in any lining or part of her gown (other than in cuffes and purfles), or any French hood or bonnet of velvet with any habiliment, paste, or edge of gold, pearl, or stone, or any chain of gold about her neck, or upon any of her apparel; have not found and kept a light 1 The flaps, that fell over the ears, turned up and secured by a button. 2 A narrow collar of coarse linen, turned down round the neck. Edgings or borders. Velvet gowns and martens' fur were prohibited to all persons but those possessed of 200 marks per annum; the fur of black genet was confined to the royal family, and that of sables to nobles above the rank of a viscount. See cut of Anne Bullen, p. 232. 1 horse furnished, except he have been otherwise charged by the statute to find horse or gelding, shall lose 101. every three months while he has so neglected." The hindrance to trade, and trouble given to official personages by these ridiculous laws, is well illustrated in a letter from Richard Onslow, Recorder of London, February, 1565, given in Ellis's "Original Letters," vol. ii. He describes an interview he had with the civic tailors, who were puzzled to know whether they might "line a slop-hose not cut in panes, with a lining of cotton stitched to the slop, over and besydes the linen lining straight to the leg." This weighty legal quibble was solemnly thought over by the Recorder, and he says: "Upon consideration of the words of the proclamation, I answered them all, that I thought surely they could not: and that any loose lining not straight to the leg was not permitted, but for the lining of panes only; and that the whole upper stock being in our slop uncut could not be said to be in panes, wherewith they departed satisfied." It is difficult now to realize the absurdity of such an interview and the solemn trifling with legal opinion, wasting the time of the Recorder of London in this way. That it was wasted is proved by the continuation of his letter, for he says, the tailors came after a time again, "and declared that, for as much as they have refused to line the slop so, their customers have gone from them to other hosiers dwelling without Temple-bar," who having the law interpreted in their favour "have so lyned the slop." Hence the difficulty of the city magnate and the tailors, which induces him to write to higher state authority about that delicate question, the legal lining of the citizens' breeches! The dress worn at this period pretty accurately defined the class and station of the wearer-persons in the middle rank of life generally dressing with much simplicity; indeed, the gentry and higher classes, towards the end of this reign, would appear to have indulged in display only on great occasions; and the extravagancies of the field of cloth-of-gold became mere matter of history. The engraving (fig. 200) of the effigy of Laurence Colston, who died 1550, from an incised stone slab to his memory, in Rolleston Church, Staffordshire, displays the ordinary dress of a gentleman, with the long gown, ungirdled at the waist, and its hanging sleeves, entirely concealing the under-dress. The dress of the commonalty (fig. 201) is from the print of the progress of Edward VI. from the Tower, through the City to Westminster, on the day of his coronation, from the painting formerly at Cowdray. The female dresses are very plain a hood or cloth cap, with a border hanging round the neck, is worn by the foremost figure, and a gown with a close collar and tight sleeves, with a small puff at the shoulders. The other female wears a cap, something after the fashion of the one immortalized by its constant appearance on the head of the unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots, and known to all persons as her cap. An open gown displays the neck, which was covered by the partlet, an article similar to the modern habit-shirt, and which lingered longest, as most comfortable fashions do, among the old ladies, The male figure is dressed in a plain jerkin, doublet, and hose, and wears a flat cloth cap on his head, of the fashion usual with citizens, and which was ultimately known as 'the City flat cap:' it is the statute-cap' of Shakespeare, so called because they were strictly enjoined to be worn, by the 13th of Elizabeth, cap. 19, for the encouragement of the home manufacture: the law being, that “if any person above six years of age (except maidens, ladies, gentlewomen, nobles, knights, gentlemen of twenty marks by year in lands, and their heirs, and such as have borne office of worship) have not worn upon the Sunday and holyday (except it be in the time of his travell out of the city, town, or hamlet, where he dwelleth) upon his head one cap of wool, knit, thicked, and dressed in England, and only dressed and finished by some of the trade of cappers, shall be fined 3s. 4d. for each day's transgression." The portraits of Edward VI. render this cap perfectly familiar to us, and it may be still seen upon the heads of "the Blue-coat boys," as the scholars in his foundation of Christchurch are called; indeed, their costume has come down to us, with some few exceptions, from the period of its institution; the long blue gown, buckled round the waist, being the ordinary dress of a grave citizen of that time.' The manners of the age, too, were influenced by the gravity and thoughtfulness of the youthful king, who possessed a mind far above his years, and whose untimely death produced an incalculable amount of evil to the nation. With such a king, and an all-absorbing thirst for knowledge on subjects of the gravest import felt by the community at large, the frivolities of fashion had but little claim on their attention, and plain, serviceable clothing appears to have been that usually adopted by the great mass; while a richer quality, and a sparing amount of ornament, denoted the higher rank of the wearer. The prices of wearing apparel in England at this period may be gathered from the bill of expenses of the famous Peter Martyr and Bernardus Ochin, in 1547, who were invited to this country from Basle by Archbishop Cranmer. 1 See examples in Herbert's "History of the Twelve great Livery Companies of London," Burgon's "Life of Gresham," or the many portraits and effigies of citizens still existing in our metropolitan churches; particularly St. Saviour's, Southwark; St. Helen's, Bishopsgate; and St. Andrew's, Undershaft. The original bill is in the Ashmolean Museum; it has been printed in the "Archæologia," volume xxi., from whence the following few extracts have been obtained : Payd for two payer of hose for Bernardinus and Petrus Pd. for a payer of nether stocks for their servant Pd. for three payer of shooe for them and their servant Pd. for two round cappes for them. It was not until after the accession of Elizabeth that any striking change in costume occurred. Mary was too ful occupied in what she considered to be religious duties, to trouble herself much about the trifles of the toilet: having, to her entire satisfaction, considered "Blood and fire and desolation A godly thorough reformation," she set about the work with a zeal worthy of a better cause, and fully succeeded in earning herself an immortality the very reverse of that usually desired by her sex. During her awful reign the minds of all parties were too fully occupied to study fashions, and a great simplicity is visible in all contemporary representations of persons and events. The woodcuts in the original edition of Fox's "Martyrology," which depict many an event in this reign, will fully display the extreme simplicity that now appeared in the dresses of all classes of the community; and the portraits of Mary and her husband, as painted by Sir Antonio More, her court painter, exhibit little traces of the splendour that characterize those of her father, or her sister Elizabeth. She, indeed, was most stringent in her notions about apparel in general, and by enactments (1 and 2 Philip and Mary, cap. 2) declared, 'If any man born within the queen's dominions (except it be the sonne and heir apparent of a knight, or the sonne of one of higher degree; or such as may dispend xx pounds by year, in lands, offices, fees, or other yerely revenues for term of life; or be worth 66 |