guarded with white; the livery colours generally used by the Tudor family. It has been lately scarlet and gold, shaped after the prevalent military style. Battle-axes, with the offensive part diminished in size, and the shafts covered with crimson velvet, are an invariable appendage to their parade. The captain bears an ebony baton with a gold head; the lieutenant, a similar baton with a silver head". Lastly, the original name of the band has lately been revived by command of his present majesty; and they are no longer called "Pensioners," but "Gentlemen at Arms."

Returning to our chronological notices, we find the female costume of the sixteenth century distinguished by long boddices, with or without skirts, or close-bodied gowns over them, with petticoats; and the celebrated fardingale, an immense hooped petticoat, which was introduced from Spain, under Queen Mary. "The ladies," says Strutt, "invented a kind of doublet, with high wings and puffed sleeves; and this costume was in full fashion at the beginning of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. They also extended their garments from the hips" by rolls and pads, " and, in imitation of the trunk slops, introduced the stately fardingale. The splendour of the dresses consisted of jewels, velvets, fur trimmings, and cloth of gold; and the dresses of persons of rank were usually

* Graphic and Historic Illustrator, 1832,

made of silk damask with under-hanging sleeves embroidered with gold. The cut shows a countess of the sixteenth century, in her barb and mourning-habit; the barb being a sort of neckerchief, curtain, or veil used at funerals, which was tied on above the chin in duchesses and countesses; in knights' wives under the throat; and in all

SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

others, (according to the sumptuary laws,) beneath the gullet.

About the middle of this century, or in 1543, pins were first brought from France, and used by Catherine Howard, queen of Henry VIII. Before that time, both sexes used ribbons, loopholes, laces with points and tags, clasps, hooks and eyes, and skewers of brass, silver and gold. Yet, at first, the pin was so ill made, that an act of parliament was passed, enacting that no pins should be sold unless they were double-headed, and had the "heddes soudered faste to the shanke of the pynne;" but this interference had such an influence on the manufacture, that the public could obtain no supply of pins until the obnoxious act was repealed. Pins were formerly acceptable new year's gifts to the ladies: sometimes they received composition in money; and

hence allowances for their separate use were denominated pin-money.

According to Stow, needles were first sold in Cheapside, in the reign of Queen Mary, where they were made by a native of Spain, who refused to divulge the secret of his art. It will be recollected that many Spanish artisans came over to England, on the marriage of Philip II. with Mary; so that the needle is supposed to be of Spanish origin. Needles are, however, mentioned a century and a half before Mary's reign, and a needle and thread had for ages been emblems of thrift. Holinshed tells us, that when Henry V. Prince of Wales repaired to court to clear himself of the imputation of dissolute indolence, he wore a gown of blue satin, full of oilet holes, and at every hole a needle hanging by a silken thread in token of his careful remembrance of collegiate discipline. Again, in observance of a fanciful derivation of Egglesfield, the founder of Queen's College, Oxford, from aguille needle, and fil thread, it had long been customary for the bursar of the college to give to each student, on New Year's Day, a needle and thread, saying at the same time, "Take this, and be thrifty."

The changes in head-dresses are next worthy of notices. The hood of the preceding century was now, in the sixteenth, exchanged for a coarse round felt hat, cap, or bonnet, with a single jewel in front for the men: Ben Jonson says, "Honour's a good brooch to wear in a man's hat at all times," reminding us that the jewel was worn

in the hat in his age. The women wore a plain coif, composed of a roll and false hair or velvet bonnet; though, if they were maidens, the head was left uncovered, and the hair, either hung down, or was very simply braided.

The headdress of Ann Boleyn, in Holbein's celebrated portrait, is a chastely elegant illustration of this period. Under Edward VI. the covering of the head for men was a plain velvet cap, worn diagonally, and decorated with a jewel, and large ostrich feather; and Ben Jonson speaks of " a beaver with a huge feather." Sir Thomas More, in his Utopia, seems to ridicule the ornaments upon hats: "When the Anatolian ambassadors arrived, the children seeing them with pearls in their hats, said to their mothers, See, mother! how they wear pearls and precious stones, as if they were children again !'—' Hush,' returned the mothers, these are not the ambassadors, but the ambassadors' fools.""

Caps were worn in this century, not by choice but compulsion; for, in 1571, Elizabeth caused an act of parliament to be passed, in behalf of the trade of cappers, providing that all above the age of six years, (except the nobility and some others,) should on Sabbath days and holidays, wear caps of wool, knit and dressed in England, upon penalty of ten groats; and this custom subsequently led to feuds among the wearers of black and blue caps. The most curious fashion of the head-dress in the reign of Elizabeth was, however, the lofty-crowned hat: one of the

earliest specimens has a high conical crown, and resembles the felt of the present day before it is shaped into a hat. Stubbs, a puritanical writer of this period, describes the hats as sometimes sharp on the crown, like the spire or shaft of a steeple, a quarter of a yard above the crown of the head; others flat and broad in the crown, like the battlements of a house; another kind with round crowns, and black, white, russet, red, green, or yellow bands; "never content with one colour or fashion two daies unto an ende." the fashions are rare and strange, so is the stuff, as silk, velvet, taffety, sarsnet, wool, and, which is more curious, some of a certaine kind of fine haire. These they call bever hattes, of twentye, thirtye, or fortye shillings price, fetched from beyonde the seas;" and some are not content with these extravagant hats without " a greate bunche of feathers, of divers and sundrie colours, peakyng on top of their heades."

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Perukes appear to have been introduced early in this century, since twenty shillings were paid for one for Saxton, fool to Henry VIII. Towards its close, or about the year 1595, the fashion became general of wearing a greater quantity of hair than was even the produce of a single head, so that it was dangerous for any child to wander, as women enticed such as had fine locks into by-places, and there cut them off. Stow informs us that women's periwigs were first brought into England soon after the above date. It would, however, be impossible to