The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England (30 page)

Outdoor wear.
People spend a great deal of time out of doors, not only for the sake of sport and amusement as in the modern world, but for necessary tasks, such as working, travelling and shopping. Women usually wear a ‘safeguard’ when out of the house: a skirt covering their household dress. A sleeveless cloak or a Dutch cloak (with sleeves) is used to cover the top part. The queen has many matching cloaks and safeguards made for her, so we learn of ‘one cloak and a safeguard of purple and yellow cloth of silver, like leaves striped downright, with a lace of carnation, silk, Venetian gold and flat damask silver lined with white satin’.
³⁷
Later in the reign you might choose a juppe instead: a French descendant of the medieval jupon; in its sixteenth-century form it is a padded travelling jacket. Elizabeth has forty-three matching juppes and safeguards, such as ‘one juppe and safeguard of peach colour, gold camlet, with a raised work of Venetian gold [and] silver down, before and all over the sleeves’.
³⁸
Alternatively, you might wear a riding gown lined with fur.

Riding hoods of wool or velvet are usual when travelling, as are gloves, scarves and mufflers (which cover the face and protect the wearer from the rising dust). Masks are also worn, especially in summer, in place of a gauze veil, to protect the wearer against the sun and the dust of the road. In 1575 van Meteren remarks on the new fashion in England for women outside the home to wear ‘vizards’ and ‘silk masks’ (probably referring to the silk coverings).
³⁹
Travelling masks are similar to Venetian masks: when worn with a velvet riding hood, they can be quite haunting. Perhaps Stubbes does not go too far (for once) when he remarks that

When they ride abroad they have visors made of velvet … with which they cover all their faces, having holes made in them against their eyes; whereout they look so that if a man that knew not their guise before should chance to meet one of them he would think he met a monster or a devil, for face he can see none but two broad holes against her eyes, with glasses in them.
⁴⁰

The above is a basic palette of garments and styles. You can mix them together in many different ways. Fashion being what it is, as soon as
something is accepted as normal, people want to do something different. Having said that, it is worth bearing in mind that not everyone has access to mantles and veils, gowns and kirtles. A poor working-class girl might own nothing but a smock and a cassock. Townswomen who cannot afford a farthingale will wear a bum-roll instead: a heavily padded bustle or bolster that encircles the waist and gives some projection to the gown. When walking any distance, to go to market for instance, most women will not use mules on their shoes, but will wear boots: mules would be impractical. On such journeys most people make do with a hat and muffler or scarf rather than a riding hood or mask. Once in town, most women will remove their scarves and mufflers and walk barefaced along the streets, carrying their baskets. It is worth noting also that working women’s skirts are slightly shorter than those of gentlewomen: when traipsing up and down muddy streets or farmyards you do not want your gown to be under your feet.

If you want to know what the wife of a moderately wealthy husbandman might wear and how much it costs, look in her bedchamber. There you may find ‘her best gown [worth] 10s; her old gown, 5s; a kirtle of russet, 9s; two kirtles of fustian, 9s; her best petticoat, 4s; her old petticoat, 1s; a silver pin, 1s 2d; her best cap, 2s 4d; a neckerchief, 6d; and five kerchiefs (linen headdresses), 5s.’
⁴¹
In 1587 an Oxfordshire widow’s wardrobe consists of four gowns and four petticoats (worth £3), three aprons and five smocks (6s 8d) and ten kerchiefs and two neckerchiefs (12s).
⁴²
It doesn’t sound much, but that amounts to a quarter of all her moveable wealth. In 1579 Alice Bates of Appleby has goods to the total value of £3 7s 8d: almost half her wealth is in what she wears.
⁴³
On the other side of the social spectrum, when Avis Gardner of Cropredy (Oxfordshire) dies in 1580 all she possesses is her clothing and the chest in which she keeps it all, the whole lot being worth 14s 9d, including the chest ‘with lock and hinges’.
⁴⁴
For most women, clothing themselves in even relatively plain attire is an expensive business: clothes for a female servant in Berkshire in the 1590s costs 1s 10d. Having a pair of shoes made for you may cost as much as 18d. Three pairs of hose, two petticoats and mending a doublet will set you back 3s 4d in 1597.
⁴⁵
If your husband is a labourer earning just 2s per week and spending at least half of that on food for the family, even buying someone else’s old cast-off gown at 2s 6d is a huge expense.

Women’s Hair and Headwear

Early in the morning, while she is still in her nightgown, Lady Ri-Melaine orders her waiting gentlewoman, Jolye, to attend to her hair:

Lady Ri-Melaine:
Jolye, come dress my head, set the table further from the fire, it is too near. Put my chair in its place. Why do you not set my great looking glass on the table? It is too high, set the support lower. Undo my night attire. Why do you not call the page to warm the rubbers? Let him be called: here, sirrah! Warm that – and take heed you burn it not. I pray you Jolye, rub well my head, for it is very full of dandruff. Are not my combs in the case? Where is my ivory comb? Comb me with the boxwood comb; give me first my combing cloth otherwise you will fill me full of hairs, the hairs will fall upon my clothes. Comb backward – O God! You comb too hard, you scratch me, you pull out my hairs. Can you not untangle them softly with your hands before you put the comb to it?

Jolye:
Will it please you to rise up a little Madame? For your hairs are so long that they trail on the ground.

Lady Ri-Melaine:
My daughter is like me in that; hath she not fair hairs? What say you of it?

Jolye:
Truly Madame she has the fairest, the longest flaxen-colour hairs that one can see. There needeth no curling of them for they are curled of themselves …

Lady Ri-Melaine:
I like her the better for it … Page, take the comb-brushes and make clean my combs, take heed you do not make them clean with those that I use to my head. Take a quill to take away the filth from them, and then put them in the case. Go to, make an end of dressing my head.

Jolye:
What doth it please you to wear today Madame? Will it please you to wear your hairs only or else to have your French hood?

A number of things in this ritual might surprise you: not least the practice of artificially curling the hair. The ‘rubbers’ being warmed by the fire are linen cloths for rubbing the hair clean. Almost everyone
dresses her hair using combs, not brushes. Hairbrushes are expensive and used mainly for applying medicinal substances to the hair; they will not be commonly used for another two centuries.
⁴⁶
But the modern preference for hair dyed blonde is nothing new: ‘maidens wear silk cauls with which they keep in order their hair made yellow with lye’, writes William Horman. The wealthy might regularly change the colour of their hair to suit their clothes. An alternative is to wear a wig: the queen has dozens in the 1590s and uses them to colour-coordinate her hair with her dresses, as well as to cover up her grey locks. All these things come in for sharp criticism from Philip Stubbes:

If curling and laying out their own natural hair were all (which is impious …) it were the less matter; but they are not simply content with their own hair but buy other hair, either of horses, mares, or any other strange beasts, dyeing it of what colour they list themselves. And if there be any poor woman (as now and then we see God doth bless them with beauty as well as the rich) that hath fair hair, these nice dames will not rest till they have bought it. Or if any children have fair hair they will entice them into a secret place and for a penny or two they will cut off their hair, as I heard that one did in the city of London of late, who meeting a little child with very fair hair, inveigled her into a house, promised her a penny, and so cut off her hair. And this they wear … as though it were their own natural hair … If any have hair of her own natural growing which is not fair enough then they will dye it in divers colours …
⁴⁷

The French hood that Lady Ri-Melaine’s gentlewoman refers to is a close-fitting velvet one that has a rounded top and goes over a linen coif (often called a ‘biggin’). It will normally have a finely wrought border and the coif too will be embroidered. Less wealthy women wear a plain coif, if they are not wearing a hat, or fold a kerchief into a coif. The style of wearing tall hats with a crown also starts in the 1560s; ‘English burgher women usually wear high hats covered with velvet or silk for headgear,’ writes Thomas Platter in 1599.
⁴⁸
Married women cover their hair, in line with the teachings of St Paul; if they do not, they are considered dangerously wanton and ill-disciplined.
⁴⁹
Girls and unmarried women tend not to wear hats or other sorts of headdress unless travelling.

Women’s Accessories

At the start of her reign, when asked about gifts, Elizabeth casually remarks that she would like nothing more than a fan. This is probably meant as a mark of modesty but it results in her being given dozens of elaborate fans over the subsequent years. Some of these are extraordinarily decorative, such as ‘one fan of white feathers with a handle of gold having two snakes winding about it garnished with a ball of diamonds in the end and a crown on each side within a pair of wings garnished with diamonds’.
⁵⁰
Gloves are also given as gifts to women, although they might be bought for practical purposes. The University of Cambridge pays £3 for a pair of perfumed gloves garnished with embroidery and goldsmith’s work’ to give to the queen in 1578.
⁵¹
Provincial glovers like John Shakespeare make less-expensive items, costing as little as 4d: the leather used by the Stratford glovers comes from the skins of sheep, lambs, bucks, does, deer, calves, horses and even dogs.
⁵²
Linen handkerchiefs are relatively affordable: plain linen are the cheapest; lawn, cambric and silk are more expensive, with embroidered and lace-trimmed examples being more expensive still. These are all twelve to fifteen inches square. The smaller variety of four or five inches are usually presents given by women to men – as love tokens rather than subtle hints on their personal hygiene.

The queen’s personal jewellery is a national treasure. Mrs Blanche Parry lists 628 jewels when she makes an inventory in 1587 for the benefit of her successor as lady of the queen’s bedchamber. In the seventeenth century, when King James sells off the collection, there is an outcry. For present purposes, however, it is important to understand that the queen’s use of jewellery and its symbolism firmly set the standards for all other women in the country. Consider Elizabeth’s snake and pelican jewels: in Geffrey Whitney’s
A Choice of Emblems and Other Devices
(1586) you will read that snakes are symbols of wisdom, and the pelican, which in folklore pecks at her own breast to revive her young with her own blood, stands for self-sacrifice. The queen is particularly keen on the latter, having given up her chance of marriage for her queenly duty.

Supposing you have sufficient money, you may choose long ‘carcanets’ or necklaces of pearls to adorn your body. Extravagant
hairstyles frequently incorporate jewels: these may be fixed with hooks to your curls or, if you are wearing a wig, with pins. Wealthy women will not only have jewellery attached to their clothes and their velvet hats and caps, but will wear one special pendant jewel of symbolic relevance over the breast. ‘One pendant jewel’ of course, may incorporate many pieces of gold and precious stones, such as the queen’s ‘jewel of gold like a pelican, garnished with diamonds of sundry sorts and bigness under her feet, three rubies and a triangle diamond with three small short chains and a knob garnished with sparks of diamonds and rubies’, and the fantastic gold, enamel, ebony, diamond and pearl ship pendant presented to her by Francis Drake.
⁵³

Remember that it is not just the design that has symbolic value: the stones themselves carry subtle meanings. In the words of a goldsmith given voice in a phrasebook:

The diamond is esteemed the chiefest of stones and called the stone of love, forasmuch as it hath virtue to reconcile and renew (yea, rather increase) love in them that are married, being in discord, by a hidden virtue that nature (or, to speak more properly, God) hath given it, to draw good affection to those that carry it; but I would never wish a pusillanimous man to carry it for it manifesteth timidity of the heart. It hath power also to resist enchantments. The virtue of the emerald hath likewise force as the diamond against enchantments: it quencheth lasciviousness, increaseth riches, and beautifieth the speech. The agate stirreth up storms, giveth the interpretation of dreams, and maketh the person to be agreeable. The sapphire is a royal stone … it chaseth away melancholy and is very profitable for the sight … The amethyst is good against drunkenness, taketh away evil thoughts, and giveth good understanding.
⁵⁴

Most countrywomen do not wear jewellery. In 1597 the prosperous Berkshire husbandman Thomas Dier and his wife have just two gold rings and one silver ring between them, even though their goods and chattels are worth £145.
⁵⁵
Married women do not wear a wedding ring of gold unless they are moderately wealthy (their marital status is shown by the way they dress and cover their hair). Gold rings are sometimes given to friends and relatives on the death of a person, so some people of humble means do wear gold rings, but in memory of the dead, not as a show of status. Pendant earrings are also known;
Philip Stubbes fulminates against those who ‘are not ashamed to make holes in their ears whereat they hang rings and other jewels of gold and precious stones’.
⁵⁶
Small bands of gold are affordable to the provincial yeoman’s or merchant’s wife, but again we are talking about the minority of moderately wealthy women. Most women do not have pierced ears.
⁵⁷