It is a trait worth noticing, both in Mary Tudor and in the times, that she purchased six bonnets at £1 apiece, and two frontlets at 10_s._, at the shop of Lady Gresham, the actual Lady Mayoress, who was a near relation of the Boleyns. So that Mary was not ashamed of humble relations, nor a Lady Mayoress too proud to keep a shop. This was when Mary was only the “Lady Mary,” or Princess. When she became Queen she was not disinclined to wrap her dignity in all the glory, gold and brocade could give it. Her taste was not always of the best, and young ladies will shudder as they hear that when Mary was married, she marred a superb wedding costume, _à la Française_, by wearing a black scarf and scarlet shoes! True, young ladies, this was worse than burning Protestants;—which, after all, she sanctioned less from inclination than that she had bloody men around her, who put compulsory strain upon her tastes and feelings. For one Dr. Cahill, who gloats over the “glorious idea” of massacring Protestants, there were a score then, not only with the inclination but the power to give it effect; which, fortunately, _our_ friend of gloomy notoriety does _not_ possess. I have above said, the “shop” of Lady Gresham. Until the 10th or 12th of Elizabeth there were but few silk-shops at all in London, and those were invariably kept, or served, by females. The supply too was very scanty. Stowe, the antiquarian tailor, says that citizens’ wives in general were then constrained to wear knit caps of woollen yarn; silver thread, lace, and silk being very scarce, and only the very wealthy being able to purchase garments of which these materials formed a part; and even then, the husbands of ladies who desired to deck themselves in costly apparel, were obliged to prove that they were “gentlemen by descent.”