We have here engraved two specimens of these broad-toed shoes of the time of Henry VIII. No. 1 is copied from the monumental effigy of Katharine, the wife of Sir Thomas Babynton, who died 1543, and is buried in Morley church, near Derby. It is an excellent specimen of the sort of sole preferred by the fashionables of that day. The second cut exhibits a front view of a similarly-made shoe. They were formed of leather, but generally the better classes wore them of rich velvet and silk, the various colors of which were exhibited in slashes at the toes, which were most sparingly covered by the velvet of which the shoe was composed. In the curious full-length portrait of the poetical Earl of Surrey, at Hampton Court, he is represented in shoes of red velvet, having bands of a darker tint placed across them diagonally; which bands are decorated with a row of gold ornaments. During the reign of Edward VI., a sort of shoe [Illustration] with a pointed toe was worn, not unlike the modern one. It was of velvet, generally, with the upper classes; of leather, with the poorer ones. The former indulged in a series of slashes over the upper leather, which the others had not. We give here two specimens of these shoes, from prints dated 1577 and 1588; and they will serve to show the sort of form adopted, as well as the varied way in which the slashes of the velvet appeared, and which altered with the wearer’s taste. Philip Stubbes, the puritanical author of the “Anatomy of Abuses,” 1588, declares that the fashionables then wore “corked shoes, puisnets, pantoffles, and slippers, some of them of black velvet, some of white, some of green, and some of yellow; some of Spanish leather, and some of English, stitched with silk and embroidered with gold and silver all over the foot with gewgaws innumerable.” Rich and expensive shoe-ties were now brought into use, and large sums were lavished upon their decorations. John Taylor, the water poet, alludes to the extravagance of those who “Wear a farm in shoe-strings edged with gold, And spangled garters worth a copy-hold.” The shoe-roses were made of lace, which was as beautiful, costly, and elaborate, as that which composed the ruff for the neck, or ruffles for the wrist. They were elaborately decorated with needlework and gold and silver thread.