Costume -- Great Britain -- History; Great Britain -- History; Great Britain -- History -- Pictorial works
The hat of the period, a truncated cone, will also be noticed, with a
feather at the side and turned-up brim. It was frequently ornamented
with precious stones. With regard to the bombasted breeches, an amusing
tale is told of a man who was being prosecuted at this time for having
his breeches stuffed with prohibited articles, but he was acquitted
because he proved to the satisfaction of his judges that his stuffing
“consisted merely of a pair of sheets, two tablecloths, ten napkins,
four shirts, a brush, a glass, a comb, and a night-cap.”
The ruff was sometimes exchanged for a wide, stiff collar, standing out
horizontally and squarely, and starched and wired as usual, but plain
instead of pleated, and it was sometimes edged, like the ruff, with
lace. These collars were called “bands,” and were usually stiffened
with yellow starch.
A slight alteration in costume was made in James’s reign. Short jackets
or doublets were worn, and the trunk hose, instead of being slashed and
laced, were covered with broad, loose strips, richly embroidered or
adorned with buttons, displaying the silk or velvet trunk in the narrow
intervals between the strips (see Plate 50, Fig. 1, which shows Prince
Henry, the eldest son of James I.).
The clothes of the nobles were very gorgeous, being made of silk and
velvet, and ornamented with lace, gold and gems. It was said that
George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, a favourite of James I., had a
white velvet suit, decorated with diamonds valued at fourteen thousand
pounds. Silk, worsted, and thread stockings were now almost universally
worn.
In a comedy written in 1607, a gentleman’s wardrobe is thus enumerated:
“A cloak lined with rich taffeta, a white satin suit, the jerkin
covered with gold lace, a chain of pearl, a gilt rapier in an
embroidered hanger, pearl-coloured silk stockings, and a pair of
massive gilt spurs.”
Pure white costumes of silk, velvet, or cloth were very fashionable at
this time.
Jewels were sometimes worn in the ears of gentlemen, and they also had
a custom of allowing a long lock of hair, called a “_love-lock_,” to
hang over upon the breast (Fig. 2).
The costume of a yeoman of the period consisted of a narrow-brimmed hat
with flat crown, a doublet with large wings and short skirts, a girdle
about his waist, trunk breeches, with hose drawn up to the thigh and
gartered below the knees.
_Charles I. and the Commonwealth._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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