The Puritan is as well-known a figure as any in history; an intelligent child could draw you a picture or describe you a Puritan as well as he could describe the Noah of Noah's Ark. He has become part of the stock for an Academy humourist, a thousand anecdote pictures have been painted of him; very often his nose is red, generally he has a book in his hand, laughing maids bring him jacks of ale, jeering Cavaliers swagger past him: his black cloak, board shoes, wide Geneva bands are as much part of our national picture as Punch or Harlequin. [Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF THE CROMWELLS (1649-1660) This is not one of the most Puritanical dresses, but shows how the richness of the reign of Charles I. was toned down. She carries a muff in her hand, wears a good wide collar and cuffs, and neat roses on her shoes.] [Illustration: {Two women of the time of the Cromwells; a type of jacket; two types of head-dress for women}] The Puritaness is also known. She is generally represented as a sly bird in sombre clothes; her town garments, full skirts, black hood, deep linen collar are shown to hide a merry-eyed lady, her country clothes, apron, striped petticoat, bunched up skirt, linen cap, her little flaunt of curls show her still mischievous. The pair of them, in reality religious fanatics, prepared a harvest that they little dreamt of--a harvest of extravagant clothes and extravagant manners, when the country broke loose from its false bondage of texts, scriptural shirts, and religious petticoats, and launched into a bondage, equally false, of low cut dresses and enormous periwigs. In the next reign you will see an entirely new era of clothes--the doublet and jerkin, the trunks and ruffs have their last eccentric fling, they become caricatures of themselves, they do all the foolish things garments can do, and then, all of a sudden, they vanish--never to be taken up again. Hair, long-neglected, is to have its full sway, wigs are the note for two centuries, so utterly different did the man become in the short space of thirty-five years, that the buck of the Restoration and the beau of the Jacobean order would stare helplessly at each other, wondering each to himself what manner of fool this was standing before him. [Illustration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF THE CROMWELLS (1649-1660) This shows the modification of the dress of the time of Charles I. Not an extreme change, but an endeavour towards simplicity.] CHARLES THE SECOND Reigned twenty-five years: 1660-1685. Born 1630. Married, 1662, Katherine of Portugal. THE MEN AND WOMEN [Illustration: {Two men of the time of Charles II.}]