Fig 50.Fig 51.Fig 52.Fig 53.Fig 54.Fig 55.Fig 56.
Fig 50.Fig 51.Fig 52.Fig 53.Fig 54.Fig 55.Fig 56.
Fig 50.Fig 51.
Fig 52.Fig 53.Fig 54.
Fig 55.Fig 56.
During the reign of Queen Elizabeth a great variety of hats and caps were worn. They were mostly made of velvet and richly decorated with jewels, bands of gold or silver lace and feathers. A writer of that time describes them thus: “They wear them sharpe on the crowne, peaking up like the speare or shaft of a steeple, standing a quarter of a yard above the crowne of the head. Some others are flatte and broade on the crowne like the battlements of a house. Another sort have round corners, sometimes with one sort of band, sometimes another; now black, now white, now russet, now red, now green, now yellow, now this, now that—never content with one color or fashion two days to an end; and thus they spend the Lord’s treasure consuming their golden years and silver days in wickedness and sin.” Those must have been glorious days for the hatter when the fashions changed so rapidly that men were obliged to buy a new hat every two or three days.
During this same reign laws were made compelling the lower classes to wear on the Sabbath a cap of peculiar shape and make.
The escape of Lord Nithsdale from the Tower, in the early part of the eighteenth century, was principally effected by the large riding-hoods worn at that time, which he put on, along with his wife’s dress and cloak. Such hoods were ever after called Nithsdales.
On page25are pictures of some of the early forms of English hats. Figs. 76 and 78 belonged to the clergy. Fig. 77 is a Scottish bonnet.