The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England (28 page)

Do people obey this sumptuary legislation? In a word, no. Such proclamations are almost as ineffective as King Canute’s staged attempt to hold back the sea. Transgressions can be reported to manorial courts, but they rarely are; and in rural areas the fines are likely to be small.
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In towns, words of reproof might be spoken, but not much more: there are simply too many transgressors. If someone is caught and fined, the chances are he can pay quite happily and carry on as before. The same can be said for the Wool Cap Act of 1571, which states that all working people over the age of seven should wear a cap of wool every Sunday and holy day, with a fine of 3s 4d for each day that they do not. Again, you might find yourself indicted, but on the whole you can expect little more than an admonishment and a small fine.

Types of Cloth Used in Elizabethan Clothing
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In the above list, the highest-quality fabric is named first, then the lower and coarser qualities of cloth, in order of fineness. Lawn is gossamer-fine and used for ruffs, ruffles (cuffs), collars and partlets (neckerchieves). Cambric is very white and used for the best shirts,
smocks and collars. Holland is also white: the sort of linen that townsmen and women use for their shirts, smocks, starched ruffs and aprons. Lockram is used for the same purposes by working men and women, and linsey-woolsey is used by poorer people for their gowns and petticoats. Cloth is class, and those who are socially aspiring need only invest in a finer fabric and take it to their tailor. Note that, despite the name, the only proper cotton in these fabrics is the thread used in fustian: the ‘cotton’ noted above is a lightweight wool. Only at the end of Elizabeth’s reign does pure cotton cloth start to be imported from the East, in the form of calico.
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When it comes to colour, things get a little more difficult. Elizabeth grows up with a reputation for very modest dress, described by contemporaries as ‘sad’ (meaning dark-coloured). Puritan writers applaud her for her lack of ostentation in the early part of her reign, when she often wears black and white. White means ‘purity’ and black symbolises ‘constancy’, and the two colours together represent ‘eternal virginity’.
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But there is more to this simplicity than caution in the face of public opinion and the symbolism of a virgin queen. England has relatively few natural dyes of great strength. Purple has to be obtained from Mediterranean whelks – 30,000 of them to make an ounce of dye. Bright red is the next-hardest dye to obtain and is thus the colour that betokens aristocratic wealth and the power of the Church of Rome. There are four sources. An orange-red can be made from boiling brazilwood, which used to be traded in powdered form from Asia but now is mainly imported from the New World by the Portuguese (who name the country of their source Brazil after it). A brighter red, used to dye the broadcloth called scarlet, comes from kermes: a parasitic insect that lives on evergreen oaks in the Mediterranean and which, when pregnant, is killed with vinegar, dried in the sun and opened to extract its wormlike larvae. When rolled into little balls called ‘grains’ and soaked in water, these produce a bright-red dye called ‘grain’ – hence the words ‘ingrained’ and, in connection with the worms, ‘vermilion’. The third bright red is cochineal from insects indigenous to the Spanish dominion of Latin America. In England the only available red is madder, and its quality varies considerably, depending on the soil. To make an English ‘purple’ (more of a violet really) you have to mix madder with the one indigenous natural blue dye, woad. From the scarcity of strong, bright colours you will appreciate that it suits Elizabeth very well to declare
that black and white are her favourite colours. It belittles the riches of the Spanish and accentuates the symbolic purity and constancy of her own costume. From your point of view, it is not a good idea to turn up at court for the first time in a cloak dyed in cochineal.
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Avoidance of all things foreign does not extend to design. The English shamelessly take whatever they require from wherever they find it. Courtiers travelling abroad bring back new designs and materials for themselves and for their wives, mothers and sisters. They learn more about the new fashions in Holland, Italy and Germany from entertaining foreign gentlemen and ladies at home. The queen receives portraits of Continental royalty as gifts, showing the latest styles at foreign courts. Information about the new fashions overseas is also circulated by dressed dolls sent from France (which can be handed to the daughter of the household to play with after the style has been copied); in 1559–60 dolls to the value of £178 3s 4d are imported through the port of London.
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The result of this fascination with the new is an eclectic style: people mix Spanish sleeves with French gowns and Dutch cloaks. The dramatist Thomas Dekker comments that

The Englishman’s dress is like a traitor’s body that has been hanged, drawn and quartered, and is set up in various places: his codpiece is in Denmark, the collar of his doublet and the belly in France, the wing and narrow sleeve in Italy, the short waist hangs over a butcher’s stall in Utrecht, his huge slops speak Spanishly … and thus we that mock every nation for keeping of one fashion yet steal patches from every one of them to piece out our pride.
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The queen herself deliberately and enthusiastically encourages this magpie-like approach. In fact, she may rightly claim to be one of the greatest patrons of fashion in history. In the inventory of all her clothes and personal jewels in the royal residences in 1600 we find that she has 102 French gowns, 67 round gowns, 100 loose gowns, 126 kirtles, 136 foreparts, 125 petticoats, 96 cloaks, 85 doublets and 99 ‘robes’ (ensembles for specific occasions, such as her coronation or parliament). Additionally she keeps 2 robes, 26 French gowns, 14 round gowns, 27 loose gowns, 23 kirtles, 58 foreparts, 27 petticoats, 41 cloaks and 38 doublets at the Office of the Wardrobe at Blackfriars. It is the variety of these clothes that makes her such a fashion icon. Although
she only employs two tailors during her whole reign – Walter Fyshe until 1582 and William Jones thereafter – she has gowns specially brought from France for her tailor to copy; she has four Spanish gowns made for her between 1571 and 1577. She has the earl of Leicester write to his Italian contacts in Antwerp asking for newly made bodies to be obtained for her in Italy and Spain. She obtains Venetian gowns and has others made for her ‘in the Italian fashion’. Many of her partlets, smocks and gowns come from Flanders. In 1569 she has Walter Fyshe replace the lining of her ‘Dutch gown of black velvet with Spanish sleeves’ with white taffeta. She even has a Polish gown of black velvet.
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For a woman who never in her life travels abroad, it is as if she is touring the world in her wardrobe.

Needless to say, the Puritans do not like this fanciful adoption of foreign style. John Aylmer writes of Elizabeth in 1559: ‘I am sure that her maidenly apparel, which she used in King Edward’s time, made the nobleman’s daughters and wives ashamed to be dressed and painted like peacocks.’
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But as the queen’s dress becomes more lavish in the 1570s, so too does that of her courtiers. In 1577 William Harrison laments what he calls ‘the fantastical folly of our nation’:

I can tell better how to inveigh against this enormity than describe any certainty of our attire, such is our mutability, that today there is none to the Spanish guise, tomorrow the French toys are most fine and delectable, ere long no such apparel as that which is after the high Almain [German] fashion, by and by the Turkish manner is generally best liked of, otherwise Morisco gowns, Barbarian fleeces, the mandilion worn to Colleyweston ward [i.e. askew], and the short French breeches make a comely vesture that, except it were a dog in a doublet, you shall not see any so disguised as are my countrymen of England. And as these fashions are diverse so likewise it is a world to see the costliness and the curiosity, the excess and the vanity, the pomp and the bravery, the change and the variety, and finally the fickleness and the folly that is in all degrees, insomuch that nothing is more constant in England than inconstancy of attire. Oh, how much cost is bestowed nowadays upon our bodies and how little upon our souls!

Philip Stubbes is even more scathing in his
Anatomy of Abuses
(1583). He declares that ‘by wearing apparel more gorgeous, sumptuous and precious than our state, calling or condition of life requireth, we are
puffed up into pride and induced to think of ourselves more than we ought, being but vile earth and miserable sinners’. He continues in this manner for 144 pages, railing against ruffs, hats, hairstyles, ‘the strangest doublets’ and ‘costly nether stockings’, sparing neither man nor woman, but seemingly taking delight in declaring that ‘their dirty dregs [should be] ripped up and cast into their diamond faces’.
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The strength of his invective is truly splendid. At one point, in describing his fellow Englishmen, he announces that ‘neither the Libertines, nor the Epicures, nor yet the vilest Atheists that ever lived exceeded this people in pride’.
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If you find such bitter castigations simply an inverted form of pride, then you will have some sympathy for the queen in the days of her most splendid raiment. In his advanced old age the above-mentioned John Aylmer (by now bishop of London) dares to criticise the queen for her extravagant dress. Elizabeth replies: ‘If the bishop holds more discourse on such matters, she will fit him for Heaven – but he should walk thither without a staff and leave his mantle behind.’ As Sir John Harington observes, if the bishop had first enquired as to the extent of her majesty’s wardrobe, he would have chosen to preach on another topic.
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Women’s Clothing

In a dialogue book of about 1600 by Peter Erondell you can read the words of a well-to-do woman, called Lady Ri-Melaine, to her waiting gentlewoman as she prepares to get dressed in the morning:

Go fetch my clothes: bring my petticoat bodies, I mean my damask quilt bodies with whalebones. What lace do you give me here? This is too short, the tags are broken: I cannot lace myself with it, take it away, I will have that of green silk. When shall I have my undercoat? Give me my petticoat of wrought crimson velvet with silver fringe. Why do you not give me my nightgown for I take cold. Where be my stockings? Give me some clean socks; I will have no worsted hosen, show me my carnation silk stockings. Where laid you last night my garters? Take away these slippers, give me my velvet pantofles. Send for the shoemaker that he may have again these turn-over shoes, for they be too high. Put on my white pumps; set them up, I will have none of them: give me rather my Spanish leather shoes, for I will walk today … Tie the strings with a strong double knot for fear they untie themselves.
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There are several words here that might cause you to scratch your head. Bodies? Pantofles? Turn-over shoes? It seems best to deal with these items of clothing one by one, starting with the first garment you will put on after you get out of the bath.

Smocks.
The shift or chemise is normally called a smock in Elizabethan England. It is the basic undergarment that has been worn by women for centuries. It slips over the head and reaches down to the knees or beyond, sometimes with a square-cut neckline, sometimes with a round one. Early in the reign you see smocks with high necks that peep out over the collar of the overgarments, from which the fashion for the ruff develops. Smocks are usually made of linen, the quality varying according to your status. The highest quality normally used is cambric, followed by holland; ordinary people use lockram.
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Those who cannot afford pure linen use linsey-woolsey. A high-quality smock is normally embroidered around the collar and perhaps along the sleeves with designs such as oak leaves and acorns.

There is an old tradition that a new husband cannot be held liable for his bride’s debts if she wears nothing but her smock at her wedding. You would have thought that a bride might refuse to get married in church in her underwear, with all her family, friends and peeping toms watching. But it happens. Some young women do have very heavy debts.
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Stockings and hose.
At the start of Elizabeth’s reign Lady Ri-Melaine would not have been calling for
silk
stockings: all ladies of whatever estate have to make do with stitched linen or woollen hose. But in 1561 the queen’s silkwoman, Alice Montague, hands Elizabeth the fruits of her labours: for the last ten years Alice has been trying to work out how to knit silk stockings. When the queen puts them on, she declares: ‘I like silk stockings so well because they are pleasant, fine and delicate, that henceforth I will wear no more cloth stockings.’
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Unfortunately for her majesty, Mrs Montague cannot knit silk that quickly. In 1562 it is a yeoman of the guard who presents the queen with two pairs of black silk stockings, and he does the same again in
1563: presumably he manages to find a foreign supplier. Mrs Montague triumphs again in 1564, making two pairs of black silk stockings. The following year, having got the hang of it, she knits nine pairs. Very soon, everyone wants them. In 1599 William Lee invents a machine for knitting stockings and other silk garments. Less wealthy women, who cannot afford knitted silk, have to put up with wrinkled woollen at their knees for many more years.
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