A Brief History of the Tudor Age

by Ridley, Jasper

  The shoes worn by wealthy men changed with the fashion, becoming wider and less pointed at the beginning of the Tudor Age. In the first half of the sixteenth century they never had heels. Sometimes they were fastened by a strap across the instep; sometimes they were tight-fitting like a slipper. Labourers often wore boots for working in the fields, particularly in the winter, and noblemen and gentlemen wore boots for riding and walking out-of-doors.

  It was in men’s outer garments that the distinctions of class and occupation were most clearly shown. The labourer wore a woollen jerkin, or jacket, which was a coat with sleeves reaching from the shoulder to the knee, and fastened at the waist with a belt. It was a very good protection against the wind and rain for the husbandman when he worked in the fields in winter; on warm summer days, he removed it and worked in his doublet, in his shirt, or naked above the waist.

  Middle-class men wore that emblem of respectability, the robe, or gown, reaching from the shoulder to well below the knee, often nearly to the ankles, open at the front, with short sleeves reaching to the elbow. The gown, like the white collar and tie in the middle of the twentieth century, was the badge which distinguished the middle-class man who had a sedentary occupation and a superior position from the husbandman or artisan who wore a shorter jerkin which did not impede him in performing physical labour. The gown was worn by priests, lawyers, schoolmasters and university lecturers, and merchants; it survives today in the vestments of the clergy, the barrister’s and solicitor’s robe, the academic gown, and the robes worn on official occasions by mayors of cities and boroughs and by the masters and wardens of the city livery companies. The gown was also worn by physicians and by the barber-surgeons, who, though they were regarded as socially inferior to the physicians, were very eager to show that they were superior to the lower classes.

  The master-masons and master-carpenters, whose skill in building the great houses of the King, the nobility and the gentry was so highly valued, also insisted on wearing a gown, though master-carpenters usually distinguished themselves from members of other professions and crafts by wearing a carpenter’s apron above their gowns. Master-butchers wore gowns, which they covered with an apron when they engaged in messy work in their slaughterhouses and shops; but their butchers’ livery company issued ordinances in 1607, officially enforcing the practice which had become well-established by custom before the end of the Tudor Age, forbidding any butcher from wearing his apron, but only his gown, if he walked or stood on Sunday or on a holy day in any street in the city of London or within a mile from the city limits. Master-cooks wore gowns, covered with an apron, when they supervised the work in the kitchen or served a picnic for Elizabeth I on a hunting expedition; and by the end of the century the head gardener of a great lord was wearing fashionable dress as he walked through the garden, pausing to prune the occasional shrub, amid the under-gardeners digging and working in their jerkins or doublets.

  Noblemen and gentlemen did not usually spend much time sitting in churches, schools, and counting-houses, but, like the husbandmen, were often out-of-doors, and took a good deal of physical exercise hunting or riding. They did not wish to be encumbered with long robes, and tended to wear rather shorter gowns than those worn by the sedentary middle classes, though their upper garment was different from the rough jerkin of the labourer. At the beginning of the Tudor Age, noblemen and gentlemen wore gowns reaching to the knee when they were not in their riding coats. Gowns were longer, reaching to the ankles, in 1500, but became shorter after 1520. It now became fashionable for noblemen and gentlemen to wear a short dagger hanging from the belt at the front of the body.

  Men of all classes wore caps, bonnets and hats at all times, for they were hardly ever bareheaded. The husbandmen and artisans wore small round woollen bonnets; fashionable noblemen and gentlemen wore felt hats of various shapes, and occasionally adorned with a high crest of feathers. All men wore their caps and hats indoors and at meals. They only removed them when they retired alone or with their family in the privacy of their houses. Then they removed their gowns or jerkins and their doublets, and put on what they called their nightgown, which was very like a modern dressing gown. But even when wearing their nightgowns Tudor men were not bareheaded, for having removed their hats they immediately put on their nightcaps, which were fairly tight-fitting bonnets, and often elaborately embroidered. They wore their nightcaps all the evening, but removed them and replaced them with simple linen caps when they went to bed. When Henry VIII said: ‘Three may keep counsel if two be away; and if I thought that my cap knew my counsel I would cast it into the fire and burn it’, this was because his cap was nearly always on his head, even when he was alone, working in his closet.

  Men only removed their hats in the presence of a superior, or otherwise as a sign of respect. Nobles and all other men removed their hats in the King’s presence, though the King very often gave them permission to replace them on their heads. Servants and labourers removed their hats in the presence of their masters or of any gentleman; and nobles and gentlemen did the same in the presence of a nobleman or gentleman of superior rank to their own. An etiquette book of the middle of the fifteenth century, which was widely read and followed during the Tudor Age, insisted that servants must always be bareheaded when serving at table, and that this rule must be followed by the chief butler and steward of a gentleman or nobleman’s household, and by nobles and gentlemen, however high their rank might be, when ceremoniously serving the King at his dinner table. They also usually removed their hats at the mention of the King’s name. When anyone received a letter from the King which was delivered to him by a messenger, it was the practice for him to remove his cap and kneel as he took the letter.

  Thomas Cromwell, the son of a blacksmith in Putney, who rose to be a solicitor, the confidential agent of Cardinal Wolsey, Henry VIII’s Secretary of State, the King’s Vicegerent in ecclesiastical affairs, Lord Cromwell of Oakham, Lord Privy Seal, and Earl of Essex, expected everyone to treat him with the respect due to his rank; but during the spring and summer of 1540 he was engaged in a desperate power struggle with the Catholic faction of Gardiner and the Duke of Norfolk, in which first one side and then the other seemed to be coming out on top. Henry finally authorized Norfolk to arrest Cromwell on a charge of high treason at a meeting of the Privy Council on the morning of 10 June and send him as a prisoner to the Tower. When Cromwell arrived for the meeting, he and the other Privy Councillors, who for so long had treated him with the greatest respect, stood outside in the courtyard waiting to go into the Council chamber. A gust of wind blew off Cromwell’s cap. He expected all the other councillors to take off their own caps as long as he was bareheaded; but none of them did so. Cromwell said: ‘A strong wind, my lords, to take off my cap and not take off yours.’ He must have been expecting the worst as he went to take his place at the Council table. Then Norfolk called out: ‘Cromwell, do not sit there; a traitor does not sit with gentlemen.’ Norfolk arrested him on a charge of high treason and tore the collar of St George from his neck; and all the other councillors insulted and buffeted him as he was dragged to the barge which was to take him to the Tower. He was beheaded seven weeks later.

  Men removed their hats to salute a lady, and often did so even to a lady of inferior rank. When Shakespeare wrote his play Richard II, he was thinking of the customs of 1595, not of 1399, when he made Richard II sneer at Bolingbroke, the future King Henry IV, who was trying to curry favour with the common people: ‘Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench.’ In Henry VIII’s reign, contemporary observers considered it to be a sign of the King’s great courtesy to ladies that he always removed his cap when he addressed them.

  After Henry had divorced Catherine of Aragon and married Anne Boleyn, he was very angry that his daughter Mary refused to acknowledge that his marriage to her mother was void and that she herself was illegitimate. He forced Mary to serve as a lady-in-waiting to her baby sister, Elizabeth, the daughter of Anne Boleyn. In January 1534, when Elizabet
h was four months old, Henry visited her at Hatfield in Hertfordshire. He played with her, but did not visit Mary, who was confined to her room at the top of the house. Mary had always been fond of her father, who had loved her when she was a child, and as Henry was leaving she looked out of her window in order to see him as he was mounting his horse in the courtyard. Several of the courtiers who were escorting the King noticed her at her window, but thought it would be wise not to salute her. Then Henry looked up and saw her. He coolly but courteously raised his cap to salute her before he rode away; and all the courtiers then followed his example, and took off their caps to her.

  Women of all classes wore long dresses reaching to their ankles or trailing on the ground, as they did in every period of history before 1920; but lower-class women, when working in the fields or doing the housework, sometimes wore their dresses just a little shorter, an inch or two above their ankles, or kilted them up a little to be able to walk more freely. These women often rolled up their sleeves to the elbows when they were working; but no noble lady or gentlewoman, or merchant’s wife or daughter, wore short sleeves, for throughout the whole of the Tudor Age women’s sleeves, whether loose or tight-fitting, always reached to the wrist.

  At the beginning of the Tudor Age women wore under their gowns a dress which comprised the bodice and skirt called the ‘kirtle’. The neckline was low and square-cut, and became lower and wider between 1500 and 1530. On their heads women wore a tight-fitting undercap, and over it the gable hood, which by 1500 had replaced the butterfly headdress of Edward IV’s reign. The gable hood reached to the shoulders, and went half-way down the back, behind. It completely covered the hair.

  Fashions in women’s dress changed very little during the first forty years of the sixteenth century, except that Anne Boleyn, who had been educated at the French court, replaced the gable hood by the French hood after 1525. The French hood was worn at the back of the head, and stretched down the back like the gable hood; but the front of the head was uncovered, and revealed the hair of upper-class ladies for the first time for three hundred years. After the execution of Anne Boleyn, the French hood went out of fashion at court, where Jane Seymour reintroduced the gable hood; but it was now worn with the lappets turned up instead of hanging down on the shoulders. This new variety of the gable hood, like the French hood, was always worn over the undercap.

  The fall of Anne Boleyn did not exclude the French hood for long. It was back at court soon after 1540, and was being worn by the King’s daughters, the Lady Mary and the Lady Elizabeth.

  Unmarried women sometimes wore their hair loose and flowing, which normally married women never did, though Cranmer wrote that Anne Boleyn came ‘in her hair’ to her coronation. Unmarried working-class women wore their hair flowing over their shoulders and fastened only by a ribbon; but married working-class women covered their hair with a simple linen headdress, and continued to do so while upper-class married ladies were allowing their hair to be seen under the French hood.

  At the beginning of the Tudor Age, men wore their hair shoulder-length, usually parted in the middle. They were clean-shaven, as they had been for the previous seventy-five years since beards went out of fashion in about 1410. In 1510 all the Kings in Western Europe were clean-shaven – the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian, King Ferdinand of Spain, King Louis XII of France and young King Henry VIII of England, as his father Henry VII had been. Hair was a little shorter than in 1485; it still covered the ears and reached to the collar, but did not flow on to the shoulders.

  When Louis XII died on New Year’s Day 1515, his young cousin Francis, Duke of Angoulême, became King Francis I at the age of twenty. He set out to dazzle Christendom by establishing a brilliant court as well as by a victorious campaign in Italy, and he grew a beard. Henry VIII was impressed by Francis I, and was eager to outshine him. When he spoke to the Venetian ambassador on May Day 1515 at an outdoor party in the woods near Blackheath, he asked him about the new French King: ‘Is he as tall as I am? Is he as stout? What sort of legs has he?’ Then, opening the front of his doublet, he showed the calf of his leg to the ambassador and said: ‘Look here, and I have also a good calf to my leg.’ He was interested to hear that Francis had grown a beard, but did not immediately follow his example.

  In 1517 he decided to improve his relations with France, and entertained Francis’s envoys at some outstandingly lavish banquets at Greenwich. A treaty of friendship was signed in October 1518, and it was agreed that Henry and Francis should meet. During the discussions about the plans for the meeting, Henry told the French ambassador that he would grow a beard, so that he and Francis could compare their beards when they met. Francis expressed his pleasure about this, and proposed to Henry that they should both promise not to shave off their beards until they met at ‘the interview’.

  Henry grew a beard; it was gold in colour, less red than the hair on his head. But Catherine of Aragon did not like him with a beard, and persuaded him to shave it off. When Francis heard that Henry had shaved off his beard, he was disappointed, and reminded him of his promise; but he understood when Henry explained that he had shaved it off to please his Queen. He agreed with Henry that in matters of this kind, the wishes of the ladies must always prevail.

  During the next seven years, Henry grew a beard on more than one occasion, but always shaved it off soon afterwards, perhaps to please Catherine. According to John Stow, who wrote his Annals thirty years later, Henry ordered all his courtiers, on 8 May 1535, to cut their hair short, and set the example by having his own hair cut short and growing a beard; but in fact many courtiers were still clean-shaven and wearing their hair covering their ears for some time after this. Henry himself has a beard, and very short hair, fully revealing the ears, in the portrait of him which was probably painted by Joos van Cleve in 1536, when he was forty-five, and in the well-known portrait by Holbein a few years later. Edward VI already had very short hair when he was Prince of Wales. Henry’s brother-in-law, the Duke of Suffolk, and Sir Thomas Wyatt, the poet and ambassador, both grew long beards before they died in 1545 and 1542; and the Earl of Surrey, who was beheaded on Henry’s orders at the age of thirty in 1547, wore a beard. But Suffolk, Wyatt and Surrey all had hair covering their ears. William Fitzwilliam, Earl of Southampton, had long hair and was clean-shaven in 1542. Sir John Russell, who was created a peer in 1539 and Earl of Bedford in 1550, wore a long beard, and had short hair with the ears visible, as did several other courtiers and gentlemen when they were painted by Holbein before he died in November 1543; but the Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Cromwell and Sir Thomas Elyot are clean-shaven in Holbein’s portraits, and the bottoms of their ears are hardly visible beneath their hair, though the hair barely reaches the collar.

  Cromwell did not approve of any unconventional man who grew his hair longer than this accepted length. John Foxe, who greatly admired him, recorded an incident in his Book of Martyrs, not to show how arbitrarily Cromwell exercised his power, but in praise of his sense of propriety. Once when he was walking in the street he met a servingman who had hair hanging over his shoulders. Cromwell asked him whether his master had ordered him to wear his hair so long, or what other reason he had for doing this. When the man replied that he had made a vow not to cut his hair, Cromwell said that he would not force him to break his vow, but that he would stay in prison until he decided to do so. The man was imprisoned in the Marshalsea and not released until his master had persuaded him to cut his hair to the conventional length.

  The clergy and men of letters remained clean-shaven; but Sir Thomas More seems to have grown a beard in the Tower in the last months of his life before his execution in 1535, though the story that he asked the executioner not to cut off his beard, as the beard had not committed high treason, is almost certainly fictitious. In Europe priests had begun to wear beards by this time. Pope Julius II was wearing a beard as early as 1512, though this was most unusual at the period. Clement VII, who had earlier been clean-shaven, wore one in 1532, as did his successor, Pau
l III. Cardinal Pole had a long beard.

  In England, the most authentic portrait of Gardiner shows him clean-shaven. Cranmer was still clean-shaven when Flicke painted his portrait in July 1545; but when Henry VIII died, he decided to grow a beard to show his grief at the King’s death. A portrait of Cranmer painted during the reign of Edward VI shows him with a long white beard, and he has a beard in the contemporary pictures of his martyrdom at the stake in 1556. His colleagues, the Protestant bishops and martyrs Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer, had beards; and the picture of the martyrdom of another leading Protestant bishop, John Hooper, in 1555 shows him with a closely cut beard. After 1550, beards were worn by most noblemen and gentlemen for the next hundred years. Under Mary and Elizabeth they were usually worn from the ears, and cut short and to a point; but older men sometimes wore their beards long, like Lord Burghley. A few noblemen and gentlemen, like Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel and Sir Philip Sidney, were clean-shaven as late as 1580. By 1550, most noblemen and gentlemen had cut their hair shorter, revealing the ears. Hair then remained very short for forty years; but by 1590, a few fashionable young men had again begun to grow it long, sometimes reaching to the shoulders.

  The fashion in dress as well as in beards and hair changed after 1540. Noblemen and gentlemen abandoned the gown and wore a shorter sleeveless cloak, sometimes with a high collar, fastened at the neck and hanging down the back. After 1580 men began wearing the cloak ‘Collywestonwise’, no longer covering the back, but over the left shoulder only. The flat cap of Henry VIII’s reign was replaced after 1560 by a high bonnet, sometimes rising as high as 6 inches above the top of the head, with a feather, fastened vertically at the side of the bonnet, rising even higher. Instead of the short dagger, hanging in front of the body, men began after 1540 to wear a sword, or rapier, some 3 feet long, hanging behind the body, with the hilt near the left hip and the point behind the calf of the right leg.