We have ample sources from which to learn precisely what was worn by these first colonists—men and women—gentle and simple. We have minute “Lists of Apparell” furnished by the Colonization Companies to the male colonists; we have also ample lists of apparel supplied to individual emigrants of varied degree; we have inventories in detail of the personal estates of all those who died in the colonies even in the earliest years—inventories wherein even a half-worn pair of gloves is gravely set down, appraised in value, sworn to, and entered in the town records; we have wills giving equal minuteness; we have even the articles of dress themselves preserved from moth and rust and mildew; we have private letters asking that supplies of clothing be sent across seas—clothing substantial and clothing fashionable; we have ships’ bills of lading showing that these orders were carried out; we have curiously minute private letters giving quaint descriptions and hints of new and modish wearing apparel; we have sumptuary laws telling what articles of clothing must not be worn by those of mean estate; we have court records showing trials under these laws; we have ministers’ sermons denouncing excessive details of fashion, enumerating and almost describing the offences; and we have also a goodly number of portraits of men and a few of women. I give in this chapter excellent portraits of the first governors, Endicott, Winthrop, Bradstreet, Winslow; and others could be added. Having all these, do we need fashion-plates or magazines of the modes? We have also for the early years great instruction through comparison and inference in knowing the English fashions of those dates as revealed through inventories, compotuses, accounts, diaries, letters, portraits, prints, carvings, and effigies; and American fashions varied little from English ones. [Illustration: Governor Edward Winslow]