In her New Year’s gifts were also, “strayt-bodyed gowns, trayn-gowns, waist-robes, night rayls, shoulder cloaks, inner sleeves, round kirtles.” She also had nightgowns and jackets, and underwear, hose, and various forms of foot-gear. Many of these garments never came to America. Some came under new names. Many quickly disappeared from wardrobes. I never read in early American inventories of robes, either French robes or plain robes. Round gowns, loose gowns, petticoats, cloaks, safeguards, lap mantles, sleeves, nightgowns, nightrails, and night-jackets continued in wear. I have never found the word forepart in this distinctive signification nor the word kirtle; though our modern writers of historical novels are most liberal of kirtles to their heroines. It is a pretty, quaint name, and ought to have lingered with us; but “what a deformed thief this Fashion is”—it will not leave with us garment or name that we like simply because it pleases us. Doublets were worn by women. “The Women also have doublets and Jerkins as men have, buttoned up the brest, and made with Wings, Welts and Pinions on shoulder points as men’s apparell is for all the world, &; though this be a kind of attire appropriate only to Man yet they blush not to wear it.” Anne Hibbins, the _witch_, had a black satin doublet among other substantial attire. A fellow-barrister of Governor John Winthrop, Sergeant Erasmus Earle, a most uxorious husband, was writing love-letters to his wife Frances, who lived out of London, at the same time that Winthrop was writing to Margaret Winthrop. Earle was much concerned over a certain doublet he had ordered for his wife. He had bought the blue bayes for this garment in two pieces, and he could not decide whether the shorter piece should go into the sleeve or the body, whether it should have skirts or not. If it did not, then he had bought too much silver lace, which troubled him sorely. Margaret Winthrop had better instincts; to her husband’s query as to sending trimming for her doublet and gown, she answers, “_When I see the cloth_ I will send word what trimming will serve;” and she writes to London, insisting on “the civilest fashion now in use,” and for Sister Downing, who is still in England, to give Tailor Smith directions “that he may make it the better.” Mr. Smith sent scissors and a hundred needles and the like homely gifts across seas as “tokens” to various members of the Winthrop household, showing his friendly intimacy with them all. For many years after America was settled we find no evidence that women’s garments were ever made by mantua-makers. All the bills which exist are from tailors. One of William Sweatland for work done for Jonathan Corwin of Salem is in the library of the American Antiquarian Society:—