The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England (33 page)

Women and girls also wear nightrails very similar to, or the same as, their smocks. Lace-trimmed perfumed cambric is favoured among
those who can afford it, together with a linen coif or cap. In heading to bed, Lady Ri-Melaine says to her maidservant:

take off my clothes, help me pull off my gown, pull off my shoes, give me my pantofles and my nightgown for fear I catch cold; why do you not give me my waistcoat? Where is the white hair lace to bind my hairs? I have not my linen coif nor my fustian undercap … warm my bed well …
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Women’s nightgowns can be of the most lavish material, designed to receive visitors as well as keep the wearer warm between leaving the bed and getting dressed. Even the queen wears them to meet people. Hers are made of silk, taffeta and velvet, lined with sarcenet and trimmed with gold and silver lace
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– the nearest modern equivalent would be a dressing gown, but on a lavish scale far beyond most people’s idea of nightclothes. In 1578 she allows a young man to catch her in her nightgown at Whitehall and declares herself to be ‘much ashamed thereof’.
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In fact, it is striking how often she is caught in her nightgown. In December 1597 she allows the French ambassador (the breast-fixated one) and his companions to see her in her nightgown and exclaims: ‘What will these gentlemen say to see me so attired? I am much disturbed that they should see me in this state.’ The ambassador notes that it is past one o’clock in the afternoon.
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Cleaning Clothes

The finest clothes are of little significance if they are dirty. In fact, ostentatious but dirty clothes may well have the opposite effect from that which you intend. This presents a real challenge to those who have to make fine clothes presentable. As William Horman points out, ‘if woollen clothes be taken no heed of and shaken and brushed, they will be moth meat and all to eat’. Nor are moths the only enemy: mice, damp, mildew and dust also cause problems. The solution to the mouse problem is easy: get a cat. The others are trickier.

There is no washing process for cloth of gold, silk, satin, taffeta and suchlike garments. If there is a small stain, it can perhaps be sponged off. Otherwise delicate and expensive clothes are cleaned by having the lining removed by a tailor, who will pass it to a laundress
to wash separately, before sewing it back into the garment. The showy outer part will be brushed or rubbed with a linen cloth. ‘Old men brushed their study clothes with cow tails as we do hair brushes,’ explains Horman. The brushes in question are shaped like modern shaving brushes: they consist of dyed pigs’ bristles protruding from a bone handle.
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Once brushed, the clothes are perfumed with powdered orris root, damask-rose powder, civet or ambergris, and then wrapped carefully in linen bags before being returned to their coffers. Furs are treated with fuller’s earth, beaten, trimmed and similarly perfumed. To combat damp and mildew, clothes that have not been worn for a while are regularly aired. Large quantities of coal are transported to the Tower and other royal palaces to air the queen’s expensive clothes: they are hung out on long cords across the heated room.
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When it comes to the actual washing of woollens and linens, you need a tub, hot water, a scrubbing board (for the coarser cloths) and soap. And a woman. Men do not wash things in Elizabethan England: it is exclusively women’s work and it is hard labour – hard on your hands and legs as well as your skin. Washing is usually done in a kitchen, where it is at least easy to boil the water.
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As for the soap, many recipe books contain instructions for making it at home: ‘take one strike [two bushels] of ashes and a quart of lime … mingle both these together. Then you must fill a pan of water and seethe them well. So done, you must take four pounds of beast’s tallow [fat] and put it into the lye, and seethe them together until it be hard.’
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If you would rather buy soap, three sorts are commonly available. Black soap is the cheapest: a liquid soap made in London from potash and train oil (extracted from whale blubber), costing about ½d per lb. Better is grey soap, a viscous liquid speckled with white, made in Bristol from potash and tallow (a liquid version of the above recipe), costing 1d or 1¼d per lb. Both these varieties smell disgusting and are caustic, so Mediterranean soap, made from potash and olive oil, is far superior. The best imported variety is Castile soap: a hard white cake from Spain, costing somewhat more (3d or 3½d per lb). In 1559–60, £9,725 worth of soap is imported into London, with another £4,665 worth of potash for making soap.
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Going to a washerwoman and asking for a good-quality shirt to be laundered carefully will cost you about 1d. Washing a servant’s linen for a year costs about 16d. Note that the finer and whiter the linen, the more expensive the soap. You cannot use black or grey soap on cambric without turning it grey.

When the clothes are clean they can be dried in the sun, if the weather is clement. In the fields outside London you will find washerwomen carrying their heavy baskets full of clean washing to dry on the grass or on hedges. In winter, clothes can be dried by the kitchen fire. Ironing as we know it has not yet been invented: flattening linen is done with warmed large stones or, in some wealthy households, the use of a screw press.

Given all this attention to appearance and detail, it is fitting to give Philip Stubbes the last word, in one of his finest tirades against English clothes; for so passionate is his invective that you get a real sense of how much people enjoyed their splendid apparel in Elizabethan England:

I think verily that Satan, Prince of Darkness, is let loose in that land – else it could never so far exceed as it doth for the like pride … thrice accursed be these years which bringeth forth such unsavoury fruits; and unhappy are that people whom Satan hath so bewitched and captivated in pride.
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7

Travelling

ROAD TRANSPORT

The use of the word ‘road’ as a noun is an Elizabethan invention, occasionally to be heard from the 1560s onwards.
¹
The terms ‘highway’, ‘path’, ‘lane’, ‘street’ and ‘way’ are more normally used. Nevertheless, whatever you call them, roads themselves are among the oldest parts of the man-made landscape. Many of the routes in use date from Roman times. Even in a city, whose houses are rebuilt over and over again, the twists and turns of ancient paths lie like ghosts between the changing structures. And transport along these roads is similarly unchanging. Standing at a town gate on market day, you’ll still see hundreds of people approaching – driving cattle or sheep, leading carts laden with sacks and crates, or walking with baskets on their arms or on their heads (holding them in place with a wreath of hay).
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Men are carrying dossars (huge baskets) on their backs or leading slow packhorses laden with panniers. Nothing much changes, you think … Until you hear the rumble of wheels behind you, the crack of the whip and the speeding coachman’s cry of warning.

COACHES

In many ways the increased use of the four-wheeled coach or ‘car’ goes hand in hand with the rise of the gentry and new wealth in the towns and cities. There have been passenger coaches since at least the thirteenth century, but, until now, they have been exclusively for royalty and aristocrats. Very soon after Elizabeth’s coronation, however, the number of coaches on the roads dramatically increases. This is mainly due to the return of Protestant émigrés from the
Continent, where coaches have been popular among the wealthy for a number of years. In 1560, 500 coaches are in use in the city of Antwerp alone.
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William Boonen, arriving from the Netherlands in 1564, so impresses the queen with his coach-driving skills that she appoints him her personal coachman.
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It is a good example of how the Protestant revolution affects all walks of life.

In the royal household coaches are referred to as ‘close cars’ (‘close’ meaning enclosed, as opposed to open to the elements). Most Londoners refer to them as ‘caroches’ – a corruption of the Italian
carrozze
, which are stately carriages for the very wealthy. Initially the task of making the royal close cars falls to the royal wheelwright; but in 1569 it goes to a designated ‘coachmaker’, William Rippon, who has been producing coaches for the aristocracy for several years.
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The queen has four made for her between 1578 and 1586: they all have timber bases with iron frames forming the superstructure, sides of leather, and linings of linen and brightly painted cerecloth. They have locking doors, for her majesty’s security. When the queen goes on a royal progress she may have between 300 and 400 carts and wagons with her, using up to 2,400 horses; but her own presence consists of her personal coach, a spare one (in case the first should break down) and what we might call the ‘royal convenience’ coach, containing a close stool (portable toilet) in case the queen or any of her ladies in waiting is caught short when travelling.
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Another reason for the sudden popularity of coaches is the lowering of the cost of production. In the Middle Ages a coach was an elaborate construction that would have set you back several hundred pounds. In Elizabeth’s reign most people feel they don’t need carved and gilt woodwork or embroidered silk hangings; it is enough simply to be travelling on four wheels. In 1573 a new coach can be obtained for just £34 14s, plus 2s 6d for painting your coat of arms on the side.
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A second-hand one might cost as little as £8: the earl of Essex has one valued at this price, and the earl of Bedford has two old coaches valued together at £10 in 1585.
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This does not include a team of four or six horses (at £10 or more). Do not underestimate the cost of the horses’ feed, especially if you are staying in town. When the purchaser of a brand-new coach, Mistress Kytson, arrives in London in 1574, she spends £2 11s 9d on her food and that of all her menservants. Their horses, however, consume £2 18s 4d of feed in the same time.
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It is predominantly women who create the new demand for coaches. This is partly because the English consider it a somewhat effeminate way for a gentleman to travel.
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Although Lady Cecil travels by coach, her husband, Sir William, usually rides, and he continues to do so even when he is getting on in years.
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Similarly Dr John Dee in 1595 hires a coach to send his wife and children from Mortlake to Coventry while he follows on horseback.
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In London, aristocratic ladies like to travel by coach to go shopping at the Royal Exchange. ‘Page, bid the coachman put his horses to the caroche,’ commands a lady as she prepares to leave a shop, adding, ‘Go to, Coachman, why do we tarry? Drive your horses.’
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We have already come across Thomas Platter’s comment that the women of England ‘often stroll out or drive by coach’ together.
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One of the major attractions of taking a coach is that you can have a private chat with your friend. In
The Merchant of Venice
Portia says to Nerissa: ‘But come I’ll tell thee all my own device when I am in my coach.’
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Similarly, men will use a coach when they wish to confide in a woman, travel with her secretly – or seduce her.
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Foreign men visiting England have fewer qualms about travelling by coach. Some German and Swiss tourists find English saddles uncomfortable, so they hire coaches. Thomas Platter and his fellow travellers are so sick of riding hired horses by the time they reach Canterbury in September 1599 that they swap their steeds for a two-wheeled long cart and a team of five horses (a medieval arrangement, in which the horses are all tethered in a long line). Platter and his companions travel through the night in that vehicle, arriving at Rochester at four in the morning. More comfortable, four-wheeled coaches are available for hire in London, at a rate of 16s per day plus food for the coachman and feed for the horses. Bear in mind that, if you stop at an inn and your driver hears that the road ahead is very boggy, he may refuse to take his coach that way. Coaches are very easily damaged on the rough roads, and repairs are cripplingly expensive for the coachman.

This expansion of wheeled traffic causes a hostile reaction in some quarters, especially in London, where fulminations against speeding coaches are just as vehement as those against motor cars three centuries later. Inevitably there are accidents. In 1562 twelve-year-old Bridget Serten is killed when a cart crushes her against the wall of Aldgate.
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In his
Survay of London
, John Stow writes:

The number of cars, drays, carts and coaches more than hath been accustomed, the streets and lanes being straightened, must needs be dangerous, as daily experience proveth. The coachman rides behind the horse tails, lasheth them and looketh not behind him; the drayman sitteth and sleepeth on his dray and letteth his horse lead him home. I know that by the good laws and customs of this city shod carts [carts with iron tires on their wheels] are forbidden to enter the same, except upon reasonable causes … also that the forehorse of every carriage should be led by hand – but these good orders are not observed … Now of late years the use of coaches brought out of Germany is taken up and made so common as there is neither distinction of time nor difference of persons observed; for the world runs on wheels with many whose parents were glad to go on foot.
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