James I., and his subjects who wished to clothe themselves loyally, wore stupendous breeches. Of course the “honourable gentlemen” of the House of Commons were necessarily followers of the fashion. But it led to inconveniences in the course of their senatorial duties. It was an old mode revived; and at an earlier day, when these nether garments were ample enough to have covered the lower man of Boanerges, the comfort of the popular representatives was thus cared for:—“Over the seats in the parliament-house, there were certain holes, some two inches square, in the walls, in which were placed posts to uphold a scaffold round about the house within, for them to sit upon who used the wearing of great breeches stuffed with hair like wool-sacks, which fashion being left the eighth year of Elizabeth, the scaffolds were taken down, and never since put up.” So says Strutt; but doubtless the comforts of the members were not less cared for when the old fashion again prevailed. The honourable gentlemen must have looked as if they were worshipping Cloacina rather than propitiating the god of Eloquence. “When Sir Peter Wych,” says Bulwer, in his ‘Pedigree of an English Gallant,’ “was sent ambassador to the Grand Seigneur, from James I., his lady accompanied him to Constantinople, and the Sultaness having heard much of her, desired to see her; whereupon Lady Wych, attended by her waiting-women, all of them dressed in their great vardingales, which was the court dress of the English ladies of that time, waited upon her highness. The Sultaness received her visitors with great respect; but, struck with the extraordinary extension of the hips of the whole party, seriously inquired if that shape was peculiar to the natural formation of Englishwomen; and Lady Wych was obliged to explain the whole mystery of the dress, in order to convince her that she and her companions were not really so deformed as they appeared to be.” Lady Wych probably did not look more astounding to the Turks than the Marchioness of Londonderry did to those of some thirty years ago, when she traversed the courts of the Sultan’s palace in the full undress of a lady of the “Regent’s Drawing Room.” Both these ladies were ambassadresses, and they remind me of the English nobleman in the reign of Anne, who was informed that he had been appointed representative of his sovereign at the court of the Sultan. “Oh!” he exclaimed, “I can never undertake it, I should look so absurd and awkward in women’s clothes!” He seriously thought that to represent his mistress he must be dressed as she was! But I shall say more of Anne hereafter. I have here to exhibit Oliver; Charles, as we all know, was a gentleman, at all events in dress. In _that_ respect Cromwell differed from him.