“Hearing that the King and Queen are rode abroad with the Ladies of Honour in the Park, and seeing a great crowd of gallants staying here to see their return, I also staid walking up and down.... By and by the King and Queen, who looked in this dress (a white laced waistcoat and a crimson short petticoat, and her hair dressed _à la negligence_) _mighty_ pretty; and the King rode hand in hand with her. Here was also my Lady Castlemaine rode among the rest of the ladies, but the King took, methought, no notice of her.” Pepys was a man of many parts, and one of the most human of his kind. This wonderful _Diary_ of his contains the moralising of a philosopher, mixed with descriptions of the skittish flirtations of the man about town, the deeper _amours_ of the licentious Court, and the coarsest scandal and gossip, prices of various articles, political events, the weather, the servant question, and details of ladies’ gowns. He even sent a “poor fellow” to sit at the Duke of York’s playhouse to keep a seat for him, as messenger boys are sent to-day to secure seats in the pit. When at this time the riding habit for ladies was first displayed in Hyde Park, Pepys writes: “I saw them with coats and doublets with deep skirts, just like mine, and their doublets buttoned up the breast, with perriwigs and hats, so that only for a long petticoat dragging under the men’s coats, nobody would take them for women in any point whatever.” On another occasion we find him discussing ladies’ dress with Lady Carteret: “She tells me the ladies are to go into a new fashion shortly, and that is to wear short coats, above their ancles; which she and I do not like, but conclude this long trayne to be mighty graceful.” In 1664 he thus speaks of Lady Castlemaine: “To Hide Parke, where I have not been since last year; where I saw the King with his periwigg, but not altered at all; and my Lady Castlemayne in a coach by herself, in yellow satin and a pinner on; and many brave persons. And myself being in a hackney coach and full of people, was ashamed to be seen of the world, many of them knowing me.” Poor Pepys, what a love of display and dress. Gloves seem to have been a valued article of dress at this time. De Grammont mentions the fact that they were given as presents, and much store put upon them: “Martial gloves were then very much the fashion.” This rather flavours of reviews, but he does not refer to anything military, only to a famous firm of glovers in Paris, Martial by name, whose gloves—like all things French in those days—were in great request. Pepys leaves behind him a graphic chronicle of the licentiousness and profligacy of the period, which had best be thrust aside, but his description of the Court generally may be quoted here: