“The invectives of divines have placed upon lasting records some transient follies, which might otherwise have sunk into oblivion; and the sermon of bishop Pilkington, a warm polemic of this time, may be quoted as a kind of commentary on the proclamation. He reproves ‘fine-fingered rufflers, with their sable about their necks, corked slippers, trimmed buskins, and warm mittens. These tender Parnels,’ he says, ‘must have one gown for the day, another for the night; one long, another short; one for winter, another for summer; one furred through, another but faced; one for the workday, another for the holiday; one of this colour, another of that; one of cloth, another of silk and damask: change of apparel, one afore dinner, another after; one of Spanish fashion, another of Turkey; and, to be brief, never content with enough, but always devising new fashions and strange.” ‘Yea, a ruffian will have more in his ruff and his hose, than he should spend in a year. He, which ought to go in a russet coat, spends as much on apparel for him and his wife, as his father would have kept a good house with.” “Miss Aikin conjectures, that the costly furs here mentioned, had probably become fashionable, since a direct intercourse had been opened, in Henry the Eighth’s reign, with Russia; from which country ambassadors had arrived, whose barbaric splendours had astonished the eyes of the good people of London. The affectation of wearing, in turns, the costume of all nations in Europe, with which the queen herself was not a little infected, may be traced partly to the practice of importing articles of dress from those nations, and that of employing foreign tailors in preference to native ones; and partly to the taste for travelling, which, since the revival of letters, had become laudably prevalent among the young nobility and gentry of England.