hood: The generic term for a head covering. A countrywoman’s hood around 1520 was of white linen with lappets, which might be tied over the top of her head.
jerkin or jacket: A sleeveless vest worn over the doublet. The short jerkin (five to six inches below the waist) came to England with Philip of Spain in 1554. The jerkin of cloth or leather was worn by civilians from 1545 to 1575 and again from 1620 to 1630. As military garments throughout the period, “buff’ jerkins were made of leather.
jump jacket: A Dutch style favored by Puritans of the 1640s, this was worn with matching Dutch breeches, “bucket-top” boots, a square white linen collar, plain white cuffs, and a wide-brimmed black felt hat.
mandilion: A loose, thigh-length overcoat with a standing collar and loose sleeves. It was popular from 1520 to 1560 and again from 1577 to 1620. After 1620 it was called a Manderville and used only in livery.
Mary Stuart hood (1550-1630): Similar to a French hood but of sheer cloth such as lawn, trimmed with decorative fabric and edged with lace. The front border had a V- or U-shaped curve above the middle of the forehead. Widows frequently wore the style in black silk with a falling back section.
Monmouth cap: A knitted wool cap that fit the head and had a brim and a long peaked top that hung over one side and ended in a tassel. These were common from the 1570s to 1625, especially among soldiers and sailors.
nightcap: Any casual indoor headgear. It was not worn to bed.
nightclothes: Any informal morning or evening attire.
night rail: A garment in which some wealthy women slept by the mid-sixteenth century. Sleeping in the nude or in a shift, shirt, or smock was more common.
pipkin (1565-1595): A taffeta hat trimmed with ostrich feathers and decorated with jewels. It had a moderate crown, a narrow, fairly flat brim, and was worn over a caul.
rebato (1580-1635): A collar wired to stand up around a low-necked bodice.
ruff (1550-1630): A circular collar of cambric or lawn in the form of a starched and crimped or pleated frill, the ruff or ruff-band came to England from France. From 1562 to 1577, ruffs measured about three inches wide and two inches deep. They were separate articles of clothing by 1570. The cartwheel ruff was in fashion from 1580 to 1610 and the fan-shaped ruff from 1570 to 1625. The latter was made almost entirely of lace. Men’s ruffs were generally higher in back than in front, following the line of the jaw to frame the face and set off the shape of the skull. One from 1589 measures nine inches from neck to edge.
sack: A loose dress for country wear.
safeguard (1570-1630): An outer skirt worn for protection against weather and dirt during travel.
slop-hose: Sailors’ breeches.
slops or galligaskins: Any wide, loose breeches.
tippit: A short shoulder-length cape for women.
trunk hose, round hose, or French hose (1540-1625): A style of breeches for men who wanted to show off their legs. Trunk hose consisted of a padded ring, to which long nether-stocks were sewn.
tunic: Belted tunics were worn by the working classes.
Venetians or knee breeches: Any breeches fastened at the knee and separate from the netherstocks. They might be distended with vertical rolls of padding down the inside of each side seam. The codpiece was not worn with Venetians, which buttoned or tied in a concealed front opening.
waistcoat (1485-1525): Optional male undergarment, usually quilted, to which the breeches were fastened. A woman’s dressing jacket was also called a waistcoat.
wimple: Cloth covering the head, chin, and shoulders. In the country a woman might wear a straw hat over a wimple.
FABRICS OF THE RENAISSANCE
Spinning, weaving, and knitting were all practiced in England by the sixteenth century. An improved type of spinning wheel, the Saxony wheel, was introduced in the 1530s. Woolen cloth was produced at home but more exotic fabrics (including cotton) were imported. All those listed here were available by 1570.
Blends
bombazine: Variously described as a plain twilled fabric made of cotton and wool, as a silk and wool blend, and as a silk and cotton blend, bombazine was usually black but was available in colors by the end of the sixteenth century.
borato: A thin, light blend of silk and wool.
buffin: Used in doublets and other garments.
camlet or chamlet: Closely woven fabric of camel’s hair and silk (or wool or cotton).
damask: Textile woven of silk and linen with light and shade effects. True damasks were silk but the term came to mean any fabric with an elaborate design woven into it.
fustian: Cotton and flax or flax mixed with wool, with a silky finish. Fustian was used as a substitute for velvet.
mocado or mockado or mock velvet: A deep-piled velvet with better grades made in silk and inferior grades in wool, silk and wool, or silk and linen.
Cotton
The word meant any cloth made from the cotton plant. Cotton was imported as a raw material from Smyrna and Cyprus.
Linen
Linen was any cloth made from flax.
beaupers: Linen cloth similar to bunting.
cambric: Fine linen.
canvas: Coarse linen cloth which, early in the sixteenth century, was imported from France.
dorneck: Linen made in Norfolk and used for servants’ clothes.
dornicks: A checked table linen. Dornick was the Flemish name for the city of Tournai and dornicks originally applied to any fabrics manufactured there.
Holland: Any fine linen.
lawn or cobweb lawn: Any very fine, semitransparent linen cloth.
sammeron: It was “finer than flaxen and coarser than hempen.”
Silk
Produced by silkworms, both silk thread and finished fabric were imported throughout the period. By 1599, looms were being used to knit silk stockings, waistcoats, and other garments.
brocade: A rich silk cloth embroidered in gold and silver. Later, brocade meant any fabric with a raised, figured pattern.
caffa: A rich silk cloth similar to damask.
sarcenet: A fine, soft silk of taffeta weave.
satin: A glossy silk fabric with a smooth surface.
sussapine: A costly silk textile.
taffeta: A rich, thin silk used for doublets.
Wool
Woolens are any fabrics made from carded, short-staple sheep’s wool and fulled (shrunk, then beaten or pressed). The New Draperies were worsted or semi-worsted fabrics made with combed, long-staple wool and not fulled. They were introduced to England from the Netherlands by Protestant refugees in the 1560s and included sackcloth, serge, frizado, bays (or baize) and says. Later “New Draperies” came to mean any novelty cloth.
broadcloth: A fine woolen cloth of plain weave, two yards wide, produced in England from the twelfth century on.
cotton cloth: A woolen cloth of which the nap has been “cottoned” or raised, such as baft and frieze. This was manufactured in the North, especially around Manchester.
lemister: A fine woolen used for knitting caps.
puke: An imported woolen cloth or any woolen textile dyed before weaving.
russet: Coarse reddish brown, gray, or neutral color woolen homespun.
Other Fabrics
buckram: A coarse linen or cotton fabric used in hose and gowns.
calico: A cotton or cotton and linen fabric imported from the East and therefore costly. Calico later became the generic name for any cloth imported from the East. It was not the pattern we associate with the term today.
cloth of gold: Cloth woven with gold wire or flat strips of gold or both.
crape: A thin transparent silk, or silk and linen, used in mourning veils.
furs: Amice (gray squirrel), bauson (badger), beaver, cony (rabbit) ermine, fox, lettice (similar to ermine), lizard (lynx), and sable were all used in clothing.
kersey: A double-twilled say of wool or of silk and wool.
rash: A twilled textile of silk or wool.
tripe: Imitati
on velvet made of wool or thread.
velvet: Imported until the late seventeenth century and made of silk or cotton. Branched velvet was any figured velvet.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Arnold, Jane. Patterns of Fashion: The Cut and Construction of Clothes for Men and Women c. 1560-1620. Hollywood, CA: QSM, 1985.
Cunnington, C. Willett and Phillis. Handbook of English Costume in the Seventeenth Century. Boston: Plays, Inc., 1972.
Cunnington, C. Willett and Phillis. Handbook of English Costume in the Sixteenth Century. Boston: Plays, Inc., 1970.
Lister, Margot. Costumes of Everyday Life: An Illustrated History of Working Clothes from 900-1910. Boston: Plays, Inc., 1972.
Norris, Herbert. Tudor Costume and Fashion. Mineola, NY: Dover Books, 1997. A reprint of the 1938 edition.
Scarisbrick, Diana. Tudor and Jacobean Jewelry. London: Tate Publishing, 1995.
Yarwood, Doreen. The Encyclopedia of World Costume. New York: Bonanza Books, 1978.
CHAPTER TWO: FOOD AND DRINK
The staples of the Elizabethan diet were bread, beef, and beer. Most people ate three meals a day, though their content varied greatly depending on the social status and wealth of the family.
Breakfast was a simple meal for all classes, and eaten early. Even Queen Elizabeth had only bread, ale, beer or wine, and a good pottage made of mutton or beef The children in the earl of Northumberland’s household in 1512 got bread, beer, butter, saltfish (on fish days), or boiled mutton bones.
Dinner was the most substantial and most elaborate meal. It was served between 10 A.M. and 1 P.M. and could last three hours in a wealthy household. In the early seventeenth century the nobility, gentry, and university students generally dined at eleven while merchants dined at noon.
Supper was a lighter meal than dinner. The nobility, gentry, and students ate between 5 P.M. and 6 P.M., and merchants between 7 P.M. and 8 P.M., after business hours.
ON THE MENU
Henry VIII and the 800 people who made up his court consumed 8,200 sheep, 2,330 deer, 2,870 pigs, 1,240 oxen, 24,000 larks, and 33,000 chickens in one year. At the level of the gentry, the Petre family at Ingatestone Hall, Essex, with twenty servants, ate fifty-five oxen and calves, two cows, 133 sheep and lambs, and eleven swine in 1548. On an ordinary day with no guests, the Petre household might consume a piece of beef, a loin of veal, two chickens, and oranges in a sauce for dinner, and for supper, a shoulder of mutton, two rabbits, cold beef, and cheese. The menus Sir William Cecil drew up for his household at Wimbledon in the 1550s indicate that they had boiled beef as part of almost every meal (except on fish days), as well as roast beef, mutton, pork, veal, capons, rabbits, and wild fowl.
A “frugal” dinner to entertain a worthy friend might start with a shield of brawn with mustard. Brawn was meat from the forepart of a young, tame boar fed on oats and peas. It was eaten from November to February and as a special Christmas dish. Usually it had beer poured over it and was highly spiced. In addition there would be boiled capon, boiled beef, roasted beef, roast pig, baked chewits (any finely chopped meat), roast goose, swan, haunch of venison, venison pasty, kid with pudding in its belly, olive pie, custard, and various side dishes to bring the total number of selections up to thirty-two.
A townsman tended to eat as much meat as he could afford, breakfasting on salted or pickled herring, cold meat, pottage, bread, and ale, buying his midday meal at a cook shop or tavern (roast meats, meat pies, and stews were available), and supping on cold meat, bread, cheese, and ale.
In contrast, the diet of the average husbandman was comprised mainly of black bread and cheese. In addition he might eat eggs, leeks, parsnips, cabbage, peas, beans, and parsley. He’d see little beef or mutton, although he might have bacon now and then and taste mutton or pork at public feasts.
TABLE SETTINGS AND MANNERS
At the finer tables, tablecloths and napkins were used and spoons were provided at each place. Guests brought their own knives. Forks existed in England but were not yet used as individual eating implements. That was considered a foreign affectation until nearly the end of the seventeenth century. Finger bowls were used for washing. Venetian glasses and silver tankards were available to the wealthy. Others used pewter mugs. Early in the period, trencher bread was still in use. Four-day-old loaves made of wholemeal flour were cut into thick slices and used as plates to sop up the juice or gravy from the food. These trenchers were collected and given to the poor after the meal in wealthy households and eaten as part of the meal by the less well-to-do. For a time, wooden trenchers were slipped under the bread. Later the wooden plate (or pewter, silver, or gold for those who could afford it) replaced the bread entirely.
Saltcellars held salt. The largest, or Great Salt, was also used to indicate social standing. Those above the salt were the most important members of the household and honored guests. Servants and inferior persons sat "below the salt." What did that mean? An article in the November, 1985 National Geographic explains that the most important visitors sat on the host's right, a knight or two sat on his left (below the salt), and mere gentry were relegated to a separate table.
Drunkenness at meals was frowned upon but belching was acceptable, as was wearing hats to the table. Hats were taken off for toasts. There were etiquette books to tell people how to do everything from using a napkin to asking a lady to dance. Most were also instructional manuals for a career in courtiership. Among those which can be found on the Internet are the translation of Castiglioni's The Courtier by Sir Thomas Hoby and The Boke named the Governour by Thomas Elyot. Hugh Rhodes's Boke of Nurture, or Schoole of good manners included specific instructions not to pare nails at table, pick teeth with a knife, blow on the soup to cool it, or dip meat in the common salt cellar.
For further details on dining rooms, kitchens, and their contents, see Chapter Three.
PRESERVATION OF FOOD
To preserve food for the winter, it was dry-salted and smoked in the kitchen, hanging from the rafters. It could also be pickled in brine. For short-term preservation, food received a light dry-salting. Meat could also be dipped in vinegar. Colorings added to food to make it more appealing included sandalwood (to turn it pink), mulberry juice, and saffron.
HEALTH PROBLEMS AND DIET
Almost all the English suffered from malnutrition and from chronic vitamin C deficiency. What was then called “land scurvy” could be progressive, seasonally, over as many as thirty years. Lacey Baldwin Smith, in Treason in Tudor England (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1986), suggests that scurvy may have been responsible for the paranoia, irritability, and lack of control (all common symptoms) exhibited by many sixteenth-century Englishmen, and for the sheer stupidity of some of the treason plots they hatched. For more information on scurvy, see Chapter Six.
Ergotism, prevalent in areas where rye is grown, had not yet been diagnosed, but it was certainly the cause of some miscarriages and of nervous disorders such as St. Anthony’s Fire (an inflammation of the skin). It may also have been a factor in several localized outbreaks of witchcraft accusations. Witch trials in both Essex and Norfolk coincide with periods of time during which those areas were rye-growing centers. For more on this plausible theory, see Mary Kilbourne Matossian, Poisons of the Past: Molds, Epidemics and History (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1989).
FOODS
bread: Baking required a bread oven, which few but the largest houses had. There were communal ovens in rural locations, but in the towns and cities bread had to be bought from the baker. White (manchet) bread was rare outside of London. It was actually yellow in color, made from stone-ground wholemeal flour. “Cheat” was the next finest bread, containing more bran. Dark bread varied according to the grain available in the area. Maslin or “meslin” flour was half rye, half wheat. Bread entirely of rye was black and cheap. Oatmeal was used in the North. When any grain was scarce, then peas, beans, and even acorns were ground together with what little grain there was to mak
e flour. Brewis was a North Country breakfast dish consisting of slices of bread with fat broth poured over them.
butter: Butter came in firkins, wooden barrels which held fifty-six pounds. The poor used butter on their food. The rich used it primarily in cooking.
cheese: Hard cheese was made from skimmed milk. It kept well and was a staple among the poor. Soft (cream) cheese was made from whole milk and allowed to age before it was used in cooking. Green or nettle cheese was fresh curd cheese, not fully pressed. It stood upon a bed of nettles to drain. Spermese was green cheese to which herbs had been added. Junket was a curdled dish made of cream and rennet and set out to dry in small baskets made of rush.
fish: Fish days were Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and every day in Lent. Wednesdays were dropped after the Reformation but restored in 1563 in an effort to support the fishing fleet. Noncompliance was so widespread, however, that efforts to enforce the 1563 law and assess fines were abandoned around 1585. Eels, lampreys, and shellfish (oysters, whelks, cockles, shrimp, and crabs) were cheap and plentiful along the seacoast and up river estuaries. Salt and dried fish (especially cod, which was called stockfish) and smoked North Sea herring (sprats) were sold at inland markets. Ling was a large (three to four feet long) cod-like fish. Sturgeon, whiting, roach, dab, thornback, perch, gudgeon, turbot, pike, dolphin (rare, but three were taken in the Thames in 1552), porpoise (young porpoise cost eight shillings in 1509), smelt, salmon (found in the Thames), mackerel, bream, skate, flounder, and hake were all eaten in Tudor and Stuart times.
The Writer's Guide to Everyday Life in Renaissance England Page 3