It is impossible to do more than mention the absurdities in general of women's attire and toilette during the eccentric Elizabethan era. Ladies painted their faces and wore false hair, as they had done in other ages, only with greater refinements of hideousness; they stuffed their petticoats with tow, and drew in their waists to incredible smallness as compared with the vast expansiveness of their form from the waist down, which was secured by the use of farthingales. The way they tilted up their feet with long cork soles made them amble much after the fashion of the women of China with their bandaged feet. They wore jewels and ornaments in great profusion, fine colored silk hose, which had lately been introduced among the other foreign "gewgaws" of the times, and exchanged with their friends as valued presents embroidered and perfumed gloves. In the light of the varied styles of the day, the criticism, "Like a crow, the Englishman borrows his feathers from all nations," was a true one. In the midst of the gayety and frivolity of the Elizabethan age, the forces of reaction were hidden, but already active; and the mutterings of discontent which were heard presaged the social outbreak which was to lead a king to the block. CHAPTER XI WOMEN OF THE COMMONWEALTH PERIOD The great evil of Puritanism was the tendency to hypocrisy which it produced among the people, by forcing upon them the simulation of a virtue greater than they in reality possessed. An affectation of piety which was carried to fanatical extremes, and which affected men and women alike and made them fall into stereotyped expressions and cant utterances having a savor of religiosity, while barren of the spirit of true devotion, was, to say the least, unwholesome for the nation. But the very fact that the pendulum had swung so far in the direction of primitive austerity in life and in worship showed that behind the hollow and insincere forms and words of Puritanism there was a magnificent earnestness of purpose, such as had been foreign to English life as a whole, although to be found among the followers of Wyckliffe and the Lollards.