To Spain historians have granted the laurel of the ruff, which became first popular in England in the reign of Henry VIII.; and Anne Boleyn introduced lappets made of velvet and adorned with precious stones, either pointed at the hem or square and broad. During those days the length of the gown denoted the rank of the wearer, countesses and baronesses and ladies of lower degree stamping their estate upon the dimensions of their train. Embroidery decorated the gowns and petticoats alike, many of the dresses being cut open in front to display a satin kirtle and an apron embroidered in gold and many colours. The bodice of the dress sometimes differed in colour from the skirt, and the sleeves would match the skirt; and there was much variety in head-dress, the velvet cap tasselled and set with jewels above a floating veil being a popular style. But cauls, coifs, and French hoods, and the high bands in front, were in evidence, together with a white three-cornered cap, the original no doubt of the Marie Stuart cap of succeeding years. The men were as prodigal as the women, and spared no expense or time or thought in their pursuit of the sumptuous and the elegant; their shoes and garters and hats glittered with gems, and they wore rings and chains in profusion, raising the trades of tailors and goldsmiths and cloth-makers to supreme importance. Jack of Newbury, a famous cloth merchant of the time of Henry VIII., is described as appearing before that monarch in a plain russet coat and a pair of white kersey slops, the stockings of the same piece being sewn to his slops. Slops was a term developed from "slip," and signified any garment easily adjusted, and an example of its use occurs in _Much Ado About Nothing_, a phrase running "as, a German from the waist downward, all slops"; hence may the suspicious glean that the Teuton habit of costume was not mainly trim. [Illustration: IN THE TIME OF HENRY VII.] Men yielded to the general craze for an expanded hip, wearing great breeches stuffed with hair or bran or wool, and exhibiting no less than feminine enthusiasm in the width of their ruffles. Their hose, of different detail, was either of cloth or silk, and blazed with colour, being ornamented with gold or threads of Venetian silver, though the King himself preferred cloth hose, which also had the honour of decorating Queen Elizabeth, until she chanced to meet with the silk stocking, to which she thereafter clung with tenacity.