Another development in men’s dress after 1540 was one of those really fundamental changes in fashion which only occur once every century or even less frequently. The hose, which men had worn for the previous 350 years, was replaced by breeches. There was an intermediary period between about 1540 and 1570 when men wore trunk hose, which were still tight below the knee, but from the thigh to the knee were loose and baggy, and often padded, and becoming increasingly elaborate and of more expensive material. By 1575 trunk hose had been largely replaced by Venetian breeches, which were often called ‘Venetians’. When Knox and his collaborators translated the Bible into English and published it in Geneva in 1560, they wrote in the third chapter of the Book of Genesis that Adam and Eve, on discovering that they were naked, sewed fig leaves together and made themselves ‘breeches’, though the usual translation was ‘aprons’. This was a successful attempt to be very up-to-date, for breeches, even in Central Europe, were only just beginning to be worn in 1560. Their opponents mockingly referred to the Geneva Bible as the ‘breeches Bible’.
These breeches, which were even more elaborate than the upper part of trunk hose, reached to the knee, leaving the bottom part of the trunk hose as stockings. Breeches, in some form or other, remained for nearly three hundred years until they were replaced by trousers in the nineteenth century.
At the beginning of the Tudor Age the shirts of noblemen and gentlemen had a narrow band at the neck, no more than an inch wide, which was sometimes frilly and just visible above the doublet. After 1540 the neckband grew into a pleated collar which grew higher and more elaborate, until by 1570 it had given way to the ruff, a detachable collar, some 3 inches wide, fitting over the shirt and all around the neck. The ruff grew bigger, and by 1585 many fashionable noblemen and gentlemen were wearing very large ruffs. At its largest, the ruff, as worn in the last decade of the Tudor Age, covered the whole width of the shoulders, in a circle all around the neck, and had thirty-two pleats. This fashion lasted for about twenty-five years; but by 1610 the ruff was beginning to be replaced by the turn-down lace or linen collar lying on the shoulders.
The Protestant Reformation had its effect on costume at the court of Edward VI. With Latimer preaching to the King on the plight of the poor, and criticizing the greed and ostentation of the rich, and all the Protestant clergy denouncing the pomp and pride of Popish prelates, Edward’s courtiers thought it best to avoid extravagance of dress, and black or dark garments tended to replace the brighter colours of Henry VIII’s court. The Venetian ambassador, no friend to the Protestant Reformation, complained that Edward’s court was dull and sombre. But some of the ladies at court seized any opportunity to be more elegant and frivolous. When the Queen of Scots, Mary of Guise, the mother of Mary Queen of Scots, who soon afterwards became Regent for her daughter, passed through London on her return to Scotland from a visit to France, Edward VI gave a great banquet for her at Whitehall in November 1551. Foxe, in his Book of Martyrs in 1563, praised Elizabeth I, then the Lady Elizabeth, for ‘when all the other ladies of the court flourished in their bravery, with their hair frowsened, and curled, and double curled, yet she altered nothing, but, to the shame of them all, kept her old maidenly shamefacedness’. The ladies were now able to display their hair, for the gable hood had been generally replaced by the French hood, and more hair than ever was displayed. It was now often parted in the middle and lifted over pads at the side of the head, which gave the hair a wavy appearance. If Foxe’s account is accurate, Elizabeth changed her attitude in later life.
When Mary Tudor became Queen and restored the Catholic religion, the Venetian ambassador was pleased to be able to report that pomp and dignity had returned to the English court, and that the Queen and her ladies wore richer garments than had been worn during her brother’s reign. But Mary, with her religious piety and her strong aversion to sex, had no intention of encouraging frivolity of any kind, and though dress at her court was rich and stately, it was also matronly and unprovocative. The Venetian ambassador described the style of the ladies’ garments as masculine; and the Spanish influence was noticeable, because of the frequent contact with King Philip and his courtiers. The low necklines were replaced by high collars which largely obscured the neck, and after 1560 women began wearing the same ruffs as the men. The ladies’ necks were obscured for thirty years, but were once again visible after 1585, for when the gentlemen started to wear the largest kind of ruff, the ladies abandoned ruffs for the high collar behind the neck, open in the front and revealing the neck and throat. After 1560 women sometimes wore high bonnets with feathers, like the men’s bonnets; but they often wore little jewelled caps on the backs of their heads. Some older women continued to wear French hoods.
Their skirts also changed after 1540. The kirtle was divided into two parts, the bodice being separated from the skirt, which hung down over a support structure which was called the ‘farthingale’, jutting out from the waist. The farthingale, which originated in Spain, was being worn at Henry VIII’s court in 1545, and generally by the time that Mary became Queen.
It was one of the duties of Mary’s maids-of-honour to help her put on her farthingale, and on one occasion this caused some embarrassment to her maid-of-honour, Lady Frances Neville. One day Lady Frances’s friend, Lord William Howard, the Lord Chamberlain, met Frances at court and tickled her under the chin, saying gaily to her: ‘My pretty whore, how does thou?’ Lady Frances took the remark in good part, for neither of them realized that the Queen had overheard their conversation; but the Queen, in her innocence, did not know what the word ‘whore’ meant. A few minutes later, Mary summoned Frances to come and assist her with her farthingale; and as Frances knelt at her feet and arranged the farthingale, Mary said: ‘God-a-mercy, my pretty whore’. Lady Frances told her how grieved she was that Her Majesty should think her to be such a woman. ‘Have I said or done more than the Lord Chamberlain did?’ asked the Queen. Lady Frances explained ‘My Lord Chamberlain is an idle gentleman, and we respect not what he saith or doth’; but she had not expected to be called this by the Queen. Mary then apologized. Another of Mary’s maids-of-honour, Jane Dormer was present, and many years later, after she had married the Spanish ambassador and had become the Duchess of Feria, she told the story to one of the many English Catholic refugees who came to her house in Madrid, in order to show him how innocent and virtuous Queen Mary had been.
After 1580, the Spanish farthingale was replaced by the French farthingale, with hoops under the skirt which made the skirt protrude for about 2 feet on both sides of the waist, and then fall sharply, vertically to the ankles; but it did not quite reach to the ground as women’s dresses had previously done. The French farthingale remained in fashion until about 1610. Brighter colours in women’s dresses came in after 1570, replacing the black and white which had previously been worn. White continued to be the prescribed colour for the ladies of the court; but Lady Kytson was not the only lady of fashion to wear a red dress in 1573.
Jewellery, like buildings, was a status symbol in the Tudor Age. No one of lower rank than a knight or the son of a lord was allowed by law to wear a gold ring or ornament, unless he owned land worth £200 a year in rent; but wealthy princes, nobles and merchants and their wives and daughters wore rings, gold chains, necklaces and brooches in order to display their wealth. The display was not wasted, for when men wore expensive jewellery, it always attracted attention. When Henry VIII in 1515 wore a gold collar with a diamond the size of a very large walnut, the Venetian ambassador duly reported it to the Doge and Senate, and added that Henry’s ‘fingers were a mass of jewelled rings’. It confirmed the general belief abroad that Henry VIII was very rich, and the English ambassador in Brussels wrote in 1522 that the great influence which Henry exercised in international affairs was very largely due to his great wealth. Elizabeth I followed her father’s example in this respect. Though she was always reluctant to spend money on other things, she was willing enough to spend it on her jewels, and rightly believed that
the costly rings on her fingers and jewels on her breast and around her neck would raise her prestige with the foreign ambassadors and the distinguished visitors from overseas who came to her court to admire her.
Royal rings had another special function. When the King gave a ring as a gift to a counsellor or courtier, this was a sign that he did not wish this favoured person to be arrested except on his express orders. If, when a royal officer was arresting a suspect, the person whom he was arresting showed him the King’s ring, he knew that he was not to proceed with the arrest until he had referred the matter to the King personally. There are several well-known instances of this. Cranmer’s secretary, Morice, recorded the occasion when the Catholic faction in Henry VIII’s Privy Council decided to arrest Cranmer on a charge of heresy. Henry got to hear of their plan, and summoned Cranmer to come to his apartment late on the previous evening. When he told Cranmer that his fellow-counsellors were planning to arrest him at the Council meeting the next day, Cranmer said that he was quite ready to be arrested as he was sure that he could prove his innocence at his trial. Henry replied:
O Lord God! What fond simplicity have you . . . Do not you think that if they have you once in prison, three or four false knaves will be soon procured to witness against you and to condemn you, which else now being at your liberty dare not once open their lips or appear before your face. No, not so, my lord, I have better regard unto you than to permit your enemies so to overthrow you.
He then gave Cranmer his ring and told him to show it to the counsellors when they arrested him next day. Cranmer did so, and as soon as the counsellors saw the ring, they realized that they had made a dreadful mistake. They went at once with Cranmer to the King, who upbraided them, and told them to have dinner with Cranmer and be reconciled to him.
An even better known story, though it depends on less reliable evidence than Morice’s about Cranmer, is the tale of how Elizabeth I gave a ring to the Earl of Essex. When Essex was arrested and condemned to death as a traitor for his plot to arrest Elizabeth’s counsellors in 1601, he sent the ring to Lady Nottingham, one of Elizabeth’s ladies-in-waiting, and asked her to show it to the Queen. Lady Nottingham, whose husband was Essex’s opponent in the Council, did not tell Elizabeth that Essex had sent the ring; and Elizabeth, who had been expecting Essex to send her the ring, interpreted his failure to do so as a sign of his pride and ambition and unwillingness to plead for her mercy. She therefore signed the warrant for his execution, and was greatly distressed when she discovered that he had in fact sent the ring to Lady Nottingham.
The subjects of the Tudor sovereigns were restricted in the display in which they could indulge, and the colours of their clothes, by the Sumptuary Laws, which had been in force since the fourteenth century but were strengthened during the Tudor Age. These statutes had two objects: to protect the English wool industry against foreign competition by restricting the wearing of imported foreign fabrics and furs; and to maintain the distinction in dress between the social classes. There was no need for legislation to prevent the husbandman from dressing like a gentleman, for the idea had never occurred to him; but domestic servants often dressed in the cast-off clothes that their masters had passed on to them; tailors who made clothes for gentlemen sometimes made the same clothes for themselves; and, at the top of the social ladder, earls sometimes dressed like dukes, and dukes sometimes dressed like members of the royal family. For a man to dress above his station in society seemed to people in the Tudor Age to be as wrong, and as much an offence punishable by law, as it would be today for an army corporal or second lieutenant, without authority, to sew an extra stripe on his arm, or to put a crown beside the pip on his shoulder. So the Tudor Parliaments dealt with the problem by a series of statutes which, for length, attention to detail, and complicated construction, can rival any twentieth-century legislation on town and country planning.
At the beginning of the Tudor Age, the restrictions on dress were governed by statutes of Edward IV’s Parliaments of 1463 and 1483; but more extensive restrictions were imposed by four statutes passed in the reign of Henry VIII between 1510 and 1533. No one except the members of the royal family was to dress in cloth-of-gold or in any garment of purple colour, on pain of a fine of £20, which is about £10,000 in terms of 1988 prices; but dukes and marquesses were allowed to wear cloth-of-gold and purple in their doublets and sleeveless coats, provided that the material did not cost more than £5 a square yard. No one under the rank of an earl was to wear any sable fur; and no one under the rank of a baron could wear cloth-of-silver, satin, any garment with a gold or silver bordure, any woollen garment which was made ‘out of this realm of England, Ireland, Wales, Calais or the Marches of the same, or Berwick’, or any crimson or blue velvet. No one under the rank of a knight or a lord’s son could wear a silk shirt, unless he owned land worth £20 a year in rents; and if the land was worth less than £5 a year, he could not wear any garment that was scarlet or violet in colour. Breaches of these provisions were punished by heavy fines, and forfeiture of the offending garment; but if any husbandman, shepherd or labourer, who did not own goods worth £10, wore hose which cost more than tenpence a yard, he was to be put in the stocks for three days. All these restrictions applied equally to the accoutrements in which the members of the various classes decked out their horses. The Acts did not apply to persons holding certain offices, to actors who wore the garments in plays, or to foreign ambassadors and to ‘noblemen or other coming into the King’s realm or other part of his obedience to visit or salute His Grace or to see the country, and not minded to make long or continual demeure in the same’.
The Acts contained a term which was found in nearly every Tudor statute which imposed fines and forfeiture as a penalty. Half the fine and half the value of the forfeited garment was to go to the King; the other half was to go to any informer who brought a private prosecution and sued for his share before the local JPs.
A more severe statute was passed by Philip and Mary’s Parliament in 1554. No one under the rank of a knight’s son, unless he owned land worth £20 a year or goods worth £200, was to wear any silk in his hat, bonnet, nightcap, girdle, hose, shoes, scabbard or spurs, on pain of three months’ imprisonment and a fine of £10 for every day on which the garment was worn; and any master who found his servant wearing such a garment was to be fined £100 if he did not discharge the servant within fourteen days.
A working-man’s habit. Woodcut from A Christall Glass of Christian Reformation by Stephen Bateman, 1569.
Servants were often dressed in livery, with their master’s crest on their left sleeve. This was right and proper, but problems arose when a master gave a loyal servant his cast-off clothes. The Act of 1533 specified in precise detail how far this was permissible. The servant of a master who was a lord, knight, squire or gentleman and owned land worth £40 a year could wear any garment given him by his master, unless it was crimson, purple, scarlet or blue, and any fur of an animal which was to be found in the realm, except the fur of martens or black rabbits. Despite this ban on the colour blue for servants, it became the practice later in the sixteenth century for servants’ livery to be blue; and blue became so well established in people’s minds as the colour of servants’ clothes that most gentlemen would not wear blue.
Although the Sumptuary Laws were so precise about the fabrics, colour and cost of the clothes of the various classes, they were rather ambiguous about their application to women. The Act of 1483 stated that it did not apply ‘for any woman, excepted the wives and servants of labourers’; and the Act of 1510 exempted all women from the provisions of the Act. The Act of 1554 expressly referred to women, but enacted that it was not to apply to anyone over the rank of a knight’s son or daughter ‘or being wife to any of them’, or to anything that ‘women may wear on their caps, hats, girdles or heads’. A woman who dressed above her station might excite ridicule and disapproval; but it was only when a man did so that the social order was seriously threatened, and the Acts were aimed a
t men far more than at women.
Elizabeth’s Parliament in 1563 dealt with the problem by prohibiting the sale of any clothes on credit. Nothing ‘appertaining or tending to the apparelling, clothing, docking, garnishing or adorning of the body’ was to be sold unless the whole of the purchase price was paid in money at the time of the sale or within twenty-eight days afterwards. The Act did not apply if the purchaser buying the garment had an income of £3,000 a year or more from land, fees or any other source.
If men and women in the Tudor Age had their choice of clothes restricted and prescribed in such detail by the State, they had the benefit of legislation for consumer protection which was not to be enjoyed by later generations until the twentieth century. Laws and regulations imposed price controls and ensured that minimum standards of quality were complied with. Some of the legislation was passed as a result of pressure by influential lobbies and counter-lobbies. The craft guilds in the cities and boroughs persuaded Parliament that the poor quality of clothes, of which the people complained, was caused by unskilled persons who were not members of their guild and made shoddy goods; while the independent producers outside the guilds argued that it was the monopoly enjoyed by the guilds which kept prices too high for the poorer people to afford.
In 1489 the MPs were persuaded that drapers, tailors, hatmakers and capmakers were charging ‘excessive price having unreasonable lucre, to the great hurt and impoverishment of the King’s liege people, buyers of the same’; they were selling hats and caps for three or four times what it had cost to make them. So Parliament fixed the maximum price for various kinds of cloth, and enacted that no hat could be sold for more than twenty pence or cap for more than 2s.8d. An Act of 1495 dealt with the problem of the poor quality of the cheaper fustian doublets that were worn by the common people. A good fustian doublet ought to have lasted for at least two years; but many people were finding that their doublets began to disintegrate after only four months. This was because they were not ‘truly wrought and shorn with the broad shear’ only, but were deceitfully made with iron instruments which ruined the material, by dishonest people, who made the doublets ‘in the most highest and secret places of their houses’. These malefactors evidently did the work in their attics, where they would not be seen by their neighbours or by the passers-by in the street; and they did it so skilfully that the purchasers did not know whether the doublets which they bought were properly made or not. So the Act made it an offence, punishable on each occasion by a fine of twenty shillings, to make fustian doublets with irons or any instrument except a broad shear; and it authorized the Lord Mayor of London and the Wardens of the Shearmen’s Company to search any premises where doublets were made to ensure that the Act was being complied with.
A Brief History of the Tudor Age Page 15