Towards the end of James I.'s reign a singular custom came into fashion, brought in by the Puritan ladies, that of representing religious subjects, both in lace, cut-work, and embroidery, a fashion hitherto confined to church vestments. We find constant allusions to it in the dramatists of the day. Thus, in the _City Match_,[936] we read-- "She works religious petticoats, for flowers She'll make church histories. Her needle doth So sanctify my cushionets, besides My smock sleeves have such holy embroideries, And are so learned, that I fear in time All my apparel will be quoted by Some pious instructor." Again, in the _Custom of the Country_--[937] "Sure you should not be Without a neat historical shirt." {325}We find in a Scotch inventory[938] of the seventeenth century: "Of Holland scheittes ii pair, quhairof i pair schewit (sewed) with hollie work."[939] The entries of this reign, beyond the "hollie work," picked[940] and seaming[941] lace, contain little of any novelty; all articles of the toilet were characterised by a most reckless extravagance. "There is not a gentleman now in the fashion," says Peacham,[942] "whose band of Italian cut-work now standeth him not in the least three or four pounds. Yes, a semster in Holborn told me that there are of threescore pounds." We read how two-thirds of a woman's dower was often expended in the purchase of cut-work and Flanders lace. In the warrant of the Great Wardrobe for the marriage expenses of the ill-fated Princess Elizabeth, on which occasion it is recorded of poor Arabella Stuart, the "Lady Arabella, though still in the Tower, has shewn her joy by buying four new gowns, one of which cost £1,500,"[943] in addition to "gold cheine laze, silver spangled, silver looped, myllen bone lace, drawneworke poynte, black silk Naples lace," etc., all in the most astonishing quantity, we have the astounding entry of 1,692 ounces of silver bone lace.[944] No wonder, in {326}after days, the Princess caused so much anxiety to the Palatine's Privy Purse, Colonel Schomberg, who in vain implores her to have her linen and lace bought beforehand, and paid at every fair.[945] "You brought," he writes, "£3,000 worth of linen from England, and have bought £1,000 worth here," and yet "you are ill provided."[946] CHARLES I. "Embroider'd stockings, cut-work smocks and shirts." --Ben Jonson. Ruffs may literally be said to have gone out with James I. His son Charles is represented on the coins of the two first years of his reign in a stiff starched ruff;[947] in the fourth and fifth we see the ruff unstarched, falling down on his shoulders,[948] and afterwards, the falling band (Fig. 128) was generally adopted, and worn by all classes save the judges, who stuck to the ruff as a mark of dignity and decorum, till superseded by the peruke.[949] PLATE LXXXI.