During the reign of Queen Elizabeth a great variety of hats and caps were worn. They were mostly made of velvet and richly decorated with jewels, bands of gold or silver lace and feathers. A writer of that time describes them thus: “They wear them sharpe on the crowne, peaking up like the speare or shaft of a steeple, standing a quarter of a yard above the crowne of the head. Some others are flatte and broade on the crowne like the battlements of a house. Another sort have round corners, sometimes with one sort of band, sometimes another; now black, now white, now russet, now red, now green, now yellow, now this, now that—never content with one color or fashion two days to an end; and thus they spend the Lord’s treasure consuming their golden years and silver days in wickedness and sin.” Those must have been glorious days for the hatter when the fashions changed so rapidly that men were obliged to buy a new hat every two or three days. During this same reign laws were made compelling the lower classes to wear on the Sabbath a cap of peculiar shape and make. The escape of Lord Nithsdale from the Tower, in the early part of the eighteenth century, was principally effected by the large riding-hoods worn at that time, which he put on, along with his wife’s dress and cloak. Such hoods were ever after called Nithsdales. On page 25 are pictures of some of the early forms of English hats. Figs. 76 and 78 belonged to the clergy. Fig. 77 is a Scottish bonnet. * * * * * [Illustration: _Fig 57._ _Fig 58._ _Fig 59._ _Fig 60._ _Fig 61._ _Fig 62._ _Fig 63._] The Puritans discarded all ornament of any kind from their dress and wore the steeple hat, high and narrow in the crown, with a broad brim (Fig. 83). The Cavalier of the same era wore a low, broad-crowned hat with a feather stuck on one side. The principal changes that have taken place in hats from time to time have been in the height of the crown and in the width of the brim. As this latter became wider it led to the device of looping it up, and thus originated the cocked hat that was worn during the eighteenth century.