The first mention of what may rightly be termed the corset is at the end of the fourteenth century, when the dresses cut low in the front introduced by Isabella of Bavaria were responsible for the innovation, and made popular the wearing of the new garment, which was made in all kinds of materials laced either at the front or at the back. At the end of the fifteenth century the basquine was adopted, a corset of stout linen or cotton with a busk of wood or metal at the front. Rabelais says, "The ladies at the Court of Francis I. wore basquines, and a silk camlet over their chemises," and it is needless to say that they incurred the displeasure of the preachers of the day; indeed Charles IX. and Henry III. issued several stringent laws with regard to the corset, being convinced that it was highly injurious to the health of its wearers, and the corps piqué which was worn in this reign was neither more nor less than an instrument of torture, compressing the body into a hard unyielding mould, the splinters of wood often tearing the skin. Until the end of the sixteenth century the tailor had the monopoly of corset-making, and his methods seem to have been anything but tender. It was in the seventeenth century that Ben Jonson pathetically complained The whalebone man, Who quilts the bodies I have leave to span. In the reign of Louis XV. corsets were cut away on the hips and laced at the back, the long busks of wood or steel being only in the front; whalebone was used to stiffen the corset, which was sometimes made in two pieces and laced under the arms, and it was invariably supplied with shoulder-straps, and began in those days to take unto itself such rich materials as brocade and satin embroidered in gold chenille or silk. The Directoire period produced a classic zone worn outside the dress, a mode that soon gave place to the boneless corset, a fleeting fancy, for all costume worn in the time of Louis XVI. owes its greatest charm to the stays, the bodices being cut into long points and fitted tightly from bust to waist. In some instances these bodices were sewn on to the figure of the wearer after the stays had been laced to their extreme limit, and many of Hogarth's figures prove the influence of the very stiff stay, the figures being erect in an uncomfortable degree, for it is impossible to imagine any human creature achieving such excellence of carriage without considerable support from without, and some inconvenience from within.