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enumerate the fashions of wearing the hair at this period; for Stubbs, after saying there are no finer fellows under the sun than barbers, speaks of the French, Spanish, Dutch, and Italian cuts; new and old cuts; bravado and mean fashions; gentlemen's, common, court, and country cuts.

Stockings in the wardrobe of Henry VIII. have been mentioned; as also, a pair of long Spanish silk hose, (the term hose often including breeches, stockings, and shoes, in one dress) sent to Edward VI. as a rarity. Knit silk stockings, made in England, were first presented to Elizabeth, who refusing to wear any cloth hose afterwards, they came into vogue. An apprentice soon after borrowed a pair of knit worsted stockings made at Mantua, and then made a pair like them, which he presented to the Earl of Pembroke; and these are the first worsted stockings known to be knit in England*. Mary Queen of Scots, at her execution, wore stockings of blue worsted, clocked and edged at the top with silver, and under them another pair of white. Stubbs says that the women's stock. ings, generally, consisted of silk, jarnsey, worsted, crewel, or at least of fine yarn, thread, or

*The origin of worsted is thus explained in a note to Hallam's History of the Middle Ages. Blomefield, the historian of Norfolk, thinks that a colony of Flemings settled as early as the reign of Henry II. at Worsted, a village in that county, and immortalized its name by their manufacture. It soon reached Norwich, though not conspicuously till the reign of Edward I.

cloth of all colours, and with clocks, open seams, &c.

Stubbs describes cork shoes, or pantofles (slippers) as bearing up their wearers two inches or more from the ground; as of various colours, raised, carved, cut, or stitched; as frequently made of velvet, embroidered; and when fastened with strings, covered with enormous and valuable roses of ribands curiously ornamented. It is remarkable, that, as in the present age, both shoes and slippers were worn shaped after the right and left foot*. Shakspeare describes his smith as

Standing on slippers, which his nimble haste
Had falsely thrust upon contrary feet.

The introduction of gloves has already been incidentally mentioned; but perfumed and embroidered gloves were first brought into England by Edward, earl of Oxford; he presented a superb pair of them to Queen Elizabeth, who was so pleased with them, that she sat for her portrait with them on her hands. Such gloves became, of course, highly fashionable, but those prepared in Spain were soon found to excel in scent all others; and we find a commission given by Sir Nicholas Throgmorton to Sir Thomas Chaloner, ambassador in Spain: "I pray you, good my lord ambassador, send me two pair of perfumed gloves, perfumed with orange flowers and

* This is corroborated by the old sandal at page 263.

jasmin, the one for my

my own."

wife's hand, the other for

It must not, however, be concealed that the changes in dress, especially during the reign of Elizabeth, baffle the minuteness of chroniclers, and would tire the reader. An anecdote, illustrative of this fact, is recorded, and which, if not true, is an epigrammatic satire upon the follies of the time. A courtier in the above reign was desirous of having correct paintings of the costume of every nation in the world. The artist was puzzled when he came to illustrate the English : so he drew a naked native, with a bale of cloth at his feet on one side, and a pair of scissors on the other, and underneath the following lines were inscribed :

I am an Englishman, and I stand here,

And I don't know what clothes I will wear;
Now I will have this, now I will have that,
Now I will have I don't know what.

Nevertheless, the following items from a will, dated 1573, furnish some idea of the wardrobe of a country gentleman of that period, and denote that clothes were then of such value as to be left as legacies. "I give unto my brother, Mr. William Sheney my best black gown guarded and faced with velvet, and my velvet cap; also I will unto my brother Thomas Marcal my new shepe coloured gown, guarded with velvet and faced with cony; also I give unto my son Tyble my sherte gown faced with wolf, and laid with Billement lace; also I give unto my brother

Cowper my other short gown, faced with fox (skin); also I give unto Thomas Walker my nightgown faced with cony, with one lace also, and my ruddy coloured hose; also I give unto my man Thomas Swaine my doublet of canvas that Forde made me; also I give unto John Wyldinge a cassock of shepes colour edged with pouts skin; also I give unto John Woodsyle my doublet of fruite canvas and my hose with fryze bryches; also I give unto Strowde my fryze jerkin with silke buttons; also I give Symonde Bisshoppe the smyth my other fryze jerkin with stone buttons; also I give to Adam Ashame my hose with the frendge (fringe) and lined with crane-coloured silk, which gifts I will to be delivered immediately after my decease."

Yet the glories of this era were ruffs, tippets, stays*, and stomachers. The most characteristic of these features of costume was the ruff of plaited linen, or cambric, round the neck

Stays originated in the corset, changed into the boddice, a sort of sleeveless waistcoat, quilted, having slips of whalebone between the quiltings. An ancient perquisite belonging to the queen consort of these realms was, that on the taking of a whale on the coasts, it should be divided between the king and queen; the head only becoming the king's property, and the tail the queen's. The reason of this whimsical distinction, as assigned by our ancient records, was to furnish the queen's wardrobe with whalebone. This is altogether a vulgar error; for the head furnishes what is improperly termed whalebone, consisting of plates of baleen, hanging like fringe from the palate, to strain the water, which the whale takes into its large mouth, and retain the small animals on which it subsists.

and wrists, which now spread into its greatest size and capacity. The materials, or lawns and cambrics, had been introduced here by Dutch merchants, who retailed those articles in ells, yards, &c. for, not one shopkeeper in forty durst buy a whole piece. The queen's ruffs were previously of fine Holland; yet, after lawn and cambric had been introduced, none in England could tell how to starch them; and they were supported out on every side by pieces of ivory, wood, or gilt metal, called poking sticks. About this time, the art of starching was brought from Flanders; and in 1504, the wife of William Boonen, the queen's coachman, starched for the whole court. Soon after, starching was publicly taught in London, by a Flemish woman, named Mistris Dinghen Vanden Blasse; her usual price for teaching the art itself being four or five pounds, with twenty shillings additional for showing how "to seeth the starch." Then lawn ruffs were worn by people, so strange and finical, that "ruffs made of spiders web" became a scoff or by-word. But the fashion lay in the starch as well as the ruff: of the former there were five colours, the most fashionable of which was yellow starch, invented by Mrs. Turner, who was concerned in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, for which she was hanged at Tyburn; she would die in a yellow ruff, of her own invention; which made yellow starch so odious, that it immediately went out of fashion.

The rapier or tuck, contemporary with the

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