A man of the time of Henry II.
The King himself is described as being careless of dress, chatty, outspoken. His hair was close-cropped, his neck was thick, and his eyes were prominent; his cheek-bones were high, and his lips coarse.
The costume of this reign was very plain in design, but rich in stuffs. Gilt spurs were attached to the boots by red leather straps, gloves were worn with jewels in the backs of them, and the mantles seem to have been ornamented with designs.
A MAN OF THE TIME OF HENRY II. (1154-1189)
He wears the short cloak, and his long tunic is held by a brooch at the neck and is girdled by a long-tongued belt. There are gloves on his hands.
The time of patterns upon clothes began. The patterns were simple, as crescents, lozenges, stars.
William de Magna Villa had come back from the Holy Land with a new fabric, a precious silk called ‘imperial,’ which was made in a workshop patronized by the Byzantine Emperors.
The long tunic and the short supertunic were still worn, but these were not so frequently split up at the side.
High boots reaching to the calf of the leg were in common use.
That part of the hood which fell upon the shoulders was now cut in a neat pattern round the edge.
Silks, into which gold thread was sewn or woven, made fine clothes, and cloth cloaks lined with expensive furs, even to the cost of a thousand pounds of our money, were worn.
The loose trouser was going out altogether, and in its stead the hose were made to fit more closely to the leg, and were all of gay colours; they were gartered with gold bands crossed, the ends of which had tassels, which hung down when the garter was crossed and tied about the knee.
Henry, despite his own careless appearance, wasnicknamed Court Manteau, or Short Mantle, on account of a short cloak or mantle he is supposed to have brought into fashion.
The shirts of the men, which showed at the opening of the tunic, were buttoned with small gold buttons or studs of gold sewn into the linen.
The initial difference in this reign was the more usual occurrence of patterns in diaper upon the clothes.
The length of a yard was fixed by the length of the King’s arm.
With the few exceptions mentioned, the costume is the same as in the time of Stephen.
It is curious to note what scraps of pleasant gossip come to us from these early times: St. Thomas à Becket dining off a pheasant the day before his martyrdom; the angry King calling to his knights, ‘How a fellow that hath eaten my bread, a beggar that first came to my Court on a lame horse, dares to insult his King and the Royal Family, and tread upon my whole kingdom, and not one of the cowards I nourish at my table, not one will deliver me of this turbulent priest!’—the veins no doubt swelling on his bull-like neck, the prominent eyes bloodshot with temper, the resultof that angry speech, to end in the King’s public penance before the martyr’s tomb.
Picture the scene at Canterbury on August 23, 1179, when Louis VII., King of France, dressed in the manner and habit of a pilgrim, came to the shrine and offered there his cup of gold and a royal precious stone, and vowed a gift of a hundred hogsheads of wine as a yearly rental to the convent.
A common sight in London streets at this time was a tin medal of St. Thomas hung about the necks of the pilgrims.
And here I cannot help but give another picture. Henry II., passing through Wales on his way to Ireland in 1172, hears the exploits of King Arthur which are sung to him by the Welsh bards. In this song the bards mention the place of King Arthur’s burial, at Glastonbury Abbey in the churchyard. When Henry comes back from Ireland he visits the Abbot of Glastonbury, and repeats to him the story of King Arthur’s tomb.
One can picture the search: the King talking eagerly to the Abbot; the monks or lay-brothers digging in the place indicated by the words of the song; the knights in armour, their mantles wrapped about them, standing by.
Then, as the monks search 7 feet below the surface, a spade rings upon stone. Picture the interest, the excitement of these antiquarians. It is a broad stone which is uncovered, and upon it is a thin leaden plate in the form of a corpse, bearing the inscription:
‘HIC JACET SEPULTUS INCLYTUS REX ARTURIUS IN INSULA AVALONIA.’
They draw up this great stone, and with greedy eyes read the inscription. The monks continue to dig. Presently, at the depth of 16 feet, they find the trunk of a tree, and in its hollowed shape lie Arthur and his Queen—Arthur and Guinevere, two names which to us now are part of England, part of ourselves, as much as our patron St. George.
Here they lie upon the turf, and all the party gaze on their remains. The skull of Arthur is covered with wounds; his bones are enormous. The Queen’s body is in a good state of preservation, and her hair is neatly plaited, and is of the colour of gold. Suddenly she falls to dust.
They bury them again with great care. So lay our national hero since he died at the Battle ofCamlan in Cornwall in the year 542, and after death was conveyed by sea to Glastonbury, and all traces of his burial-place lost except in the songs of the people until such day as Henry found him and his Queen.
A woman of the time of Henry II.; a circular pin
About this time came the fashion of the chin-band, and again the glory of the hair was hidden under the wimple.
To dress a lady’s hair for this time the hair must be brushed out, and then divided into two parts: these are to be plaited, and then brought round the crown of the head and fastened in front above the forehead. The front pieces of hair are to be neatly pushed back from the forehead, to show a high brow. Now a cloth of linen is taken, folded under the chin, and brought over the top of the head, and there pinned. Then another thin band of linen is placed round the head and fastened neatly at the back; and overall a piece of fine linen is draped, and so arranged that it shall just cover the forehead-band and fall on to the shoulders. This last piece of linen is fastened to the chin-band and the forehead-strap by pins.
Four steps to dress a woman's hair
This fashion gave rise in later times to a linen cap; the forehead-strap was increased in height and stiffened so that it rose slightly above the crown of the head, and the wimple, instead of hanging over it, was sewn down inside it, and fell over the top of the cap. Later the cap was sewn in pleats.
The gown of this time was quite loose, with a deep band round the neck and round the hem of the skirts, which were very full. So far as one can tell, it was put on over the head, having no other opening but at the neck, and was held at the waist by an ornamental girdle.
The chemise showed above the neck of the gown, which was fastened by the usual round brooch.
A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF HENRY II. (1154-1189)
There is a chin-band to be seen passing under the wimple; this band is pinned to hold it round the head.
The sleeves were well fitting, rather loose at the elbow, and fell shaped over the wrist, where therewas a deep border of embroidery. It is quite possible that the cuffs and hem may have been made of fur.
The shoes were, as usual to the last two reigns, rather blunt at the toe, and generally fitting without buckle, button, or strap round the ankle, where they were rolled back.
Above the waist the tied girdle was still worn, but this was being supplanted by a broad belt of silk or ornamented leather, which fastened by means of a buckle. The tongue of the belt was made very long, and when buckled hung down below the knee.
The cloaks, from the light way in which they are held, appear to have been made of silk or some such fine material as fine cloth. They are held on to the shoulders by a running band of stuff or a silk cord, the ends of which pass through two fasteners sewn on to the cloak, and these are knotted or have some projecting ornament which prevents the cord from slipping out of the fastener.
In this way one sees the cloak hanging from the shoulders behind, and the cord stretched tight across the breast, or the cord knotted in a second place, and so bringing the cloak more over the shoulders.
The effigy of the Queen at Fontevraud shows her dress covered with diagonal bars of gold, in the triangles of which there are gold crescents placed from point to point, and no doubt other ladies of her time had their emblems or badges embroidered into their gowns.
Reigned ten years: 1189-1199.
Born 1157. Married, 1191, to Berengaria of Navarre.
A man of the time of Richard I.; a hood; a shoe
The King had but little influence over dress in his time, seeing that he left England as soon as he was made King, and only came back for two months in 1194 to raise money and to be crowned again.
The general costume was then as plain as it had ever been, with long tunics and broad belts fastened by a big buckle.
The difference in costume between this short reign and that of Henry II. is almost imperceptible;if any difference may be noted, it is in the tinge of Orientalism in the garments.
There is more of the long and flowing robe, more of the capacious mantle, the wider sleeve.
No doubt the many who came from the Crusades made a good deal of difference to English homes, and actual dresses and tunics from the East, of gorgeous colours and Eastern designs, were, one must suppose, to be seen in England.
Cloth of gold and cloth of gold and silks—that is, warf of silk and weft of gold—were much prized, and were called by various names from the Persian, as ‘ciclatoun,’ ‘siglaton.’
Such stuff, when of great thickness and value—so thick that six threads of silk or hemp were in the warf—was called ‘samite.’
Later, when the cloth of gold was more in use, and the name had changed from ‘ciclatoun’ to ‘bundekin,’ and from that to ‘tissue,’ to keep such fine cloth from fraying or tarnishing, they put very thin sheets of paper away between the folds of the garments; so to this day we call such paper tissue-paper.
Leaf-gold was used sometimes over silk to give pattern and richness to it.
A MAN OF THE TIME OF RICHARD I. (1189-1199)
A curious survival of this time, which has a connection with costume, was the case of Abraham Thornton in 1818. Abraham Thornton was accused of having drowned Mary Ashford, but he was acquitted by the jury. This acquittal did not satisfy popular feeling, and the brother of Mary Ashford appealed. Now Thornton was well advised as to his next proceeding, and, following the still existent law of this early time of which I write, he went to Westminster Hall, where he threw down, as a gage of battle, an antique gauntlet without fingers or thumb, of white tanned skin ornamented with silk fringes and sewn work, crossed by a narrow band of leather, the fastenings of leather tags and thongs.
This done, he declared himself ready to defend himself in a fight, and so to uphold his innocence, saying that he was within his rights, and that no judge could compel him to come before a jury.
This was held to be good and within the law, so Abraham Thornton won his case, as the brother refused to pick up the gauntlet. The scandal of this procedure caused the abolishment of the trial by battle, which had remained in the country’s laws from the time of Henry II. until 1819.
It was a time of foreign war and improvement in military armour and arms. Richard I. favoured the cross-bow, and brought it into general use in England to be used in conjunction with the old 4-foot bow and the great bow 6 feet long with the cloth-yard arrow—a bow which could send a shaft through a 4-inch door.
For some time this military movement, together with the influence of the East, kept England from any advance or great change in costume; indeed, the Orientalism reached a pitch in the age of Henry III. which, so far as costume is concerned, may be called the Age of Draperies.
To recall such a time in pictures, one must then see visions of loose-tuniced men, with heavy cloaks; of men in short tunics with sleeves tight or loose at the wrists; of hoods with capes to them, the cape-edge sometimes cut in a round design; of soft leather boots and shoes, the boots reaching to the calf of the leg. To see in the streets bright Oriental colours and cloaks edged with broad bands of pattern; to see hooded heads and bared heads on which the hair was long; to see many long-bearded men; to see old men leaning on tan-handled sticks; the sailor in a cap or coif tiedunder his chin; the builder, stonemason, and skilled workman in the same coif; to see, as a whole, a brilliant shifting colour scheme in which armour gleamed and leather tunics supplied a dull, fine background. Among these one might see, at a town, by the shore, a thief of a sailor being carried through the streets with his head shaven, tarred and feathered.
A woman of the time of Richard I.; a pouch
It is difficult to describe an influence in clothes.
It is difficult nowadays to say in millinery where Paris begins and London accepts. The hint of Paris in a gown suggests taste; the whole of Paris in a gown savours of servile imitation.
No well-dressed Englishwoman should, or does, look French, but she may have a subtle cachet of France if she choose.
The perfection of art is to conceal the means tothe end; the perfection of dress is to hide the milliner in the millinery.
The ladies of Richard I.’s time did not wear Oriental clothes, but they had a flavour of Orientalism pervading their dress—rather masculine Orientalism than feminine.
The long cloak with the cord that held it over the shoulders; the long, loose gown of fine colours and simple designs; the soft, low, heelless shoes; the long, unbound hair, or the hair held up and concealed under an untied wimple—these gave a touch of something foreign to the dress.
Away in the country there was little to dress for, and what clothes they had were made in the house. Stuffs brought home from Cyprus, from Palestine, from Asia Minor, were laboriously conveyed to the house, and there made up into gowns. Local smiths and silver-workers made them buckles and brooches and ornamental studs for their long belts, or clasps for their purses.
A wreck would break up on the shore near by, and the news would arrive, perhaps, that some bales of stuff were washed ashore and were to be sold.
A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF RICHARD I. (1189-1199)
Her very full cloak is kept in place by the cord which passes through loops. A large buckle holds the neck of the gown well together. The gown is ornamented with a simple diaper pattern; the hem and neck are deeply embroidered.
The female anchorites of these days were busy gossips, and from their hermitage or shelter by abridge on the road would see the world go by, and pick up friends by means of gifts of bandages or purses made by them, despite the fact that this traffic was forbidden to them.
So the lady in the country might get news of her lord abroad, and hear that certain silks and stuffs were on their way home.
The gowns they wore were long, flowing and loose; they were girded about the middle with leathern or silk belts, which drew the gown loosely together. The end of the belt, after being buckled, hung down to about the knee. These gowns were close at the neck, and there fastened by a brooch; the sleeves were wide until they came to the wrist, over which they fitted closely.
The cloaks were ample, and were held on by brooches or laces across the bosom.
The shoes were the shape of the foot, sewn, embroidered, elaborate.
The wimples were pieces of silk or white linen held to the hair in front by pins, and allowed to flow over the head at the back.
There were still remaining at this date women who wore the tight-fitting gown laced at the back, and who tied their chins up in gorgets.
Reigned seventeen years: 1199-1216.
Born 1167. Married, in 1189, to Hadwisa, of Gloucester, whom he divorced; married, in 1200, to Isabella of Angoulême.
There was a garment in this reign which was the keynote of costume at the time, and this was the surcoat. It had been worn over the armour for some time, but in this reign it began to be an initial part of dress.
Take a piece of stuff about 9 or 10 yards in length and about 22 inches wide; cut a hole in the centre of this wide enough to admit of a man’s head passing through, and you have a surcoat.
A simple surcoat pattern
A MAN OF THE TIME OF JOHN (1199-1216)
Under this garment the men wore a flowing gown, the sleeves of which were so wide that theyreached at the base from the shoulder to the waist, and narrowed off to a tight band at the wrist.
These two garments were held together by a leather belt buckled about the middle, with the tongue of the belt hanging down.
Broad borders of design edged the gowns at the foot and at the neck, and heraldic devices were sewn upon the surcoats.
King John himself, the quick, social, humorous man, dressed very finely. He loved the company of ladies and their love, but in spite of his love for them, he starved and tortured them, starved and beat children, was insolent, selfish, and wholly indifferent to the truth. He laughed aloud during the Mass, but for all that was superstitious to the degree of hanging relics about his neck; and he was buried in a monk’s cowl, which was strapped under his chin.
Silk was becoming more common in England, and the cultivation of the silkworm was in some measure gaining hold. In 1213 the Abbot of Cirencester, Alexander of Neckham, wrote upon the habits of the silkworm.
Irish cloth of red colour was largely in favour, presumably for cloaks and hoods.
The general costume of this reign was very much the same as that of Henry II. and Richard I.—the long loose gown, the heavy cloak, the long hair cut at the neck, the fashion of beards, the shoes, belts, hoods, and heavy fur cloaks, all much the same as before, the only real difference being in the general use of the surcoat and the very convenient looseness of the sleeves under the arms.
A man of the time of John; an alternative cuff
There is an inclination in writing of a costume one can visualize mentally to leave out much that might be useful to the student who knows little or nothing of the period of dress in which one is writing; so perhaps it will be better to now dress a man completely.
First, long hair and a neatly-trimmed beard; over this a hood and cape or a circular cap, with a slight projection on the top of it.
Second, a shirt of white, like a modern soft shirt.
Third, tights of cloth or wool.
Fourth, shoes strapped over the instep or tiedwith thongs, or fitting at the ankle like a slipper, or boots of soft leather turned over a little at the top, at the base of the calf of the leg.
A man of the time of John
Fifth, a gown, loosely fitting, buckled at the neck, with sleeves wide at the top and tight at the wrist, or quite loose and coming to just below the elbow, or a tunic reaching only to the knees, both gown and tunic fastened with a belt.
Sixth, a surcoat sometimes, at others a cloak held together by a brooch, or made for travelling with a hood.
This completes an ordinary wardrobe of the time.
As may be seen from the plate, no change in costume took place.
The hair plaited and bound round the head or allowed to flow loose upon the shoulders.
Over the hair a gorget binding up the neck and chin. Over all a wimple pinned to the gorget.
A long loose gown with brooch at the neck.Sleeves tight at the wrist. The whole gown held in at the waist by a belt, with one long end hanging down.
Shoes made to fit the shape of the foot, and very elaborately embroidered and sewn.
A long cloak with buckle or lace fastening.
In this reign there were thirty English towns which had carried on a trade in dyed cloths for fifty years.
A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF JOHN (1199-1216)
One may just see the purse beneath the cloak, where it hangs from the belt. The cloak itself is of fine diaper-patterned material.
Reigned fifty-six years: 1216-1272.
Born 1207. Married, 1236, to Eleanor of Provence.
A man of the time of Henry III.
Despite the fact that historians allude to the extravagance of this reign, there is little in the actual form of the costume to bear out the idea. Extravagant it was in a large way, and costly for one who would appear well dressed; but the fopperies lay more in the stuffs than in the cut of the garments worn.
It was an age of draperies.
This age must call up pictures of bewrapped people swathed in heavy cloaks of cloth of Flanders dyed with the famous Flemish madder dye; of people in silk cloaks and gowns from Italy; of people in loose tunics made of English cloth.
This long reign of over fifty years is a transitional period in the history of clothes, as in its course the draped man developed very slowly towards the coated man, and the loose-hung clothes very gradually began to shape themselves to the body.
The transition from tunic and cloak and Oriental draperies is so slow and so little marked by definite change that to the ordinary observer the Edwardian cotehardie seems to have sprung from nowhere: man seems to have, on a sudden, dropped his stately wraps and mantles and discarded his chrysalis form to appear in tight lines following the figure—a form infinitely more gay and alluring to the eye than the ponderous figure that walks through the end of the thirteenth century.
Up to and through the time from the Conquest until the end of Henry III.’s reign the clothes of England appear—that is, they appear to me—to be lordly, rich, fine, but never courtier-like and elegant.
A MAN OF THE TIME OF HENRY III. (1216-1272)
Heavy cloak and fulness of dress characteristic of this time.
If one may take fashion as a person, one may say: Fashion arrived in 1066 in swaddling-clothes, and so remained enveloped in rich cloaks and flowing draperies until 1240, when the boy began to show a more active interest in life; this interestgrew until, in 1270, it developed into a distaste for heavy clothes; but the boy knew of no way as yet in which to rid himself of the trailings of his mother cloak. Then, in about 1272, he invented a cloak more like a strange, long tunic, through which he might thrust his arms for freedom; on this cloak he caused his hood to be fastened, and so made himself three garments in one, and gave himself greater ease.
Then dawned the fourteenth century—the youth of clothes—and our fashion boy shot up, dropped his mantles and heaviness, and came out from thence slim and youthful in a cotehardie.
Of such a time as this it is not easy to say the right and helpful thing, because, given a flowing gown and a capacious mantle, imagination does the rest. Cut does not enter into the arena.
Imagine a stage picture of this time: a mass of wonderful, brilliant colours—a crowd of men in long, loose gowns or surcoats; a crowd of ladies in long, loose gowns; both men and women hung with cloaks or mantles of good stuffs and gay colours. A background of humbler persons in homespun tunics with cloth or frieze hoods over their heads. Here and there a fop—out of hisdate, a quarter-century before his time—in a loose coat with pocket-holes in front and a buttoned neck to his coat, his shoes very pointed and laced at the sides, his hair long, curled, and bound by a fillet or encompassed with a cap with an upturned brim.
Two men of the time of Henry III.
The beginning of the coat was this: the surcoat, which up till now was split at both sides from the shoulder to the hem, was now sewn up, leaving only a wide armhole from the base of the ribs to the shoulder. This surcoat was loose and easy, and was held in at the waist by a belt. In due time a surcoat appeared which was slightly shaped to the figure, was split up in front instead of at the sides, and in which the armholes were smaller and the neck tighter, and fastened by two or three buttons. In front of this surcoat two pocket-holes showed. This surcoat was also fastened by a belt at the waist.
In common with the general feeling towards more elaborate clothes, the shoes grew beyond their normal shape, and now, no longer conformingto the shape of the foot, they became elongated at the toes, and stuck out in a sharp point; this point was loose and soft, waiting for a future day when men should make it still longer and stuff it with tow and moss.
Of all the shapes of nature, no shape has been so marvellously maltreated as the human foot. It has suffered as no other portion of the body has suffered: it has endured exceeding length and exceeding narrowness; it has been swelled into broad, club-like shapes; it has been artificially raised from the ground, ended off square, pressed into tight points, curved under, and finally, as to-day, placed in hard, shining, tight leather boxes. All this has been done to one of the most beautiful parts of the human anatomy by the votaries of fashion, who have in turn been delighted to expose the curves of their bodies, the round swelling of their hips, the beauties of their nether limbs, the whiteness of their bosoms, the turn of their elbows and arms, and the rotundity of their shoulders, but who have, for some mysterious reasons, been for hundreds of years ashamed of the nakedness of their feet.
Let me give a wardrobe for a man of this time.
A hood with a cape to it; the peak of the hood made full, but about half a hand’s breadth longer than necessary to the hood; the cape cut sometimes at the edge into a number of short slits.
A cap of soft stuff to fit the head, with or without an upturned brim. A fillet of silk or metal for the hair.
A gown made very loose and open at the neck, wide in the body, the sleeves loose or tight to the wrist. The gown long or short, on the ground or to the knee, and almost invariably belted at the waist by a long belt of leather with ornamental studs.
A surcoat split from shoulder to hem, or sewn up except for a wide armhole.
A coat shaped very slightly to the figure, having pocket-holes in front, small armholes, and a buttoned neck.
A great oblong-shaped piece of stuff for a cloak, or a heavy, round cloak with an attached hood.
Tights of cloth or sewn silk—that is, pieces of silk cut and sewn to the shape of the leg.
Shoes with long points—about 2 inches beyond the toes—fastened by a strap in front, or laced at the sides, or made to pull on and fit at the ankle,the last sometimes with a V-shaped piece cut away on either side.
There was a tendency to beads, and a universal custom of long hair.
In all such clothes as are mentioned above every rich stuff of cloth, silk, wool, and frieze may be used, and fur linings and fur hats are constant, as also are furred edges to garments.
There was a slight increase of heraldic ornament, and a certain amount of foreign diaper patterning on the clothes.
Now the lady must needs begin to repair the ravages of time and touch the cheek that no longer knows the bloom of youth with—rouge.
This in itself shows the change in the age. Since the Britons—poor, simple souls—had sought to embellish Nature by staining themselves blue with woad and yellow with ochre, no paint had touched the faces of the fashionable until this reign. Perhaps discreet historians had left that fact veiled, holding the secrets of the lady’s toilet too sacred for the black of print; but now the murder came out. The fact in itself is part of the psychology ofclothes. Paint the face, and you have a hint towards the condition of fashion.
Again, as in the case of the men, no determined cut shows which will point to this age as one of such and such a garment or such an innovation, but—and this I would leave to your imagination—there was a distinction that was not great enough to be a difference.
The gowns were loose and flowing, and were gathered in at the waist by a girdle, or, rather, a belt, the tongue of which hung down in front; but as the end of the reign approached, the gowns were shaped a little more to the figure.
A lady might possess such clothes as these: the gowns I have mentioned above, the sleeves of which were tight all the way from the shoulder to the wrist, or were loose and cut short just below the elbow, showing the tight sleeves of the under-gown.
Shoes very elaborately embroidered and pointed at the toes.
A rich cloak made oblong in shape and very ample in cut.
A shaped mantle with strings to hold it together over the shoulders.
A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF HENRY III. (1216-1272)
This will show how very slight were the changes in woman’s dress; a plain cloak, a plain gown, and a wimple over the head.
For the head a wimple made of white linen or perhaps of silk; this she would put above her head, leaving the neck bare.
A long belt for her waist, and, if she were a great lady, a pair of gloves to wear or stick into her belt.
From the Conquest to the reign of Edward I.
A countryman
Until the present day the countryman has dressed in a manner most fitted to his surroundings; now the billycock hat, a devil-derived offspring from a Greek source, the Sunday suit of shiny black with purple trousers, the satin tie of Cambridge blue, and the stiff shirt, have almost robbed the peasant of his poetical appearance.
Civilization seems to have arrived at our villages with a pocketful of petty religious differences, a bagful of public-houses, a bundle of penny and halfpenny papers full of stories to show the fascination of crime and—these Sunday clothes.
The week’s workdays still show a sense of the picturesque in corduroys and jerseys or blue shirts, but the landscape is blotted with men wearing out old Sunday clothes, so that the painter of rural scenes with rural characters must either lie or go abroad.
As for the countrywoman, she, I am thankful to say, still retains a sense of duty and beauty, and, except on Sunday, remains more or less respectably clad. Chivalry prevents one from saying more.
A countryman
In the old days—from the Conquest until the end of the thirteenth century—the peasant was dressed in perfect clothes.
The villages were self-providing; they grew by then wool and hemp for the spindles. From this was made yarn for materials to be made up into coats and shirts. The homespun frieze that the peasant wore upon his back was hung by the nobleman upon his walls. The village bootmaker made, besides skin sandals to be tied with thongs upon the feet, leather trousers and belts.
The mole-catcher provided skin for hats. Hoodsof a plain shape were made from the hides of sheep or wolves, the wool or hair being left on the hood. Cloaks lined with sheepskin served to keep away the winter cold.
To protect their legs from thorns the men wore bandages of twisted straw wrapped round their trousers, or leather thongs cross-gartered to the knee.
The fleece of the sheep was woven in the summer into clothes of wool for the winter. Gloves were made, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, of wool and soft leather; these were shaped like the modern baby’s glove, a pouch for the hand and fingers and a place for the thumb.
A coarse shirt was worn, over which a tunic, very loosely made, was placed, and belted at the waist. The tunic hardly varied in shape from the Conquest to the time of Elizabeth, being but a sack-like garment with wide sleeves reaching a little below the elbow. The hood was ample and the cloak wide.
The women wore gowns of a like material to the men—loose gowns which reached to the ankles and gave scope for easy movement. They wore their hair tied up in a wimple of coarse linen.
A PEASANT OF EARLY ENGLAND(WILLIAM I.-HENRY III.)
His hood is made from sheepskin, the wool outside, the hem trimmed into points. His legs are bound up with garters of plaited straw. His shoes are of the roughest make of coarse leather. He has the shepherd’s horn slung over his shoulder.
The people of the North were more ruggedly clothed than the Southerners, and until the monks founded the sheep-farming industry in Yorkshire the people of those parts had no doubt to depend for their supply of wool upon the more cultivated peoples.
Two countrymen
Picture these people, then, in very simple natural wool-coloured dresses going about their ordinary country life, attending their bees, their pigs, sheep, and cattle, eating their kele soup, made of colewort and other herbs.
See them ragged and hungry, being fed by Remigius, Bishop of Lincoln, after all the misery caused by the Conquest; or despairing during the Great Frost of 1205, which began on St. Hilary’s Day, January 11, and lasted until March 22, and was so severe that the land was like iron, and could not be dug or tilled.
When better days arrived, and farming was taken more seriously by the great lords, when Grosseteste, the Bishop of Lincoln, wrote his book on farming and estate management for Margaret, the Dowager-Countessof Lincoln, then clothes and stuffs manufactured in the towns became cheaper and more easy to obtain, and the very rough skin clothes and undressed hides began to vanish from among the clothes of the country, and the rough gartered trouser gave way before cloth cut to fit the leg.
On lord and peasant alike the sun of this early age sets, and with the sunset comes the warning bell—thecouvre-feu—so, on their beds of straw-covered floors, let them sleep....
Reigned thirty-five years: 1272-1307.
Born 1239. Married, 1254, Eleanor of Castile; 1299, Margaret of France.
Until the performance of the Sherborne Pageant, I had never had the opportunity of seeing a mass of people, under proper, open-air conditions, dressed in the peasant costume of Early England.
For once traditional stage notions of costume were cast aside, and an attempt was made, which was perfectly successful, to dress people in the colours of their time.
The mass of simple colours—bright reds, blues, and greens—was a perfect expression of the date, giving, as nothing else could give, an appearance of an illuminated book come to life.
One might imagine that such a primary-coloured crowd would have appeared un-English, and tooOriental or Italian; but with the background of trees and stone walls, the English summer sky distressed with clouds, the moving cloud shadows and the velvet grass, these fierce hard colours looked distinctly English, undoubtedly of their date, and gave the spirit of the ages, from a clothes point of view, as no other colours could have done. In doing this they attested to the historical truth of the play.
It seemed natural to see an English crowd one blazing jewel-work of colour, and, by the excellent taste and knowledge of the designer, the jewel-like hardness of colour was consistently kept.
It was interesting to see the difference made to this crowd by the advent of a number of monks in uniform black or brown, and to see the setting in which these jewel-like peasants shone—the play of brilliant hues amid the more sombre browns and blacks, the shifting of the blues and reds, the strong notes of emerald green—all, like the symmetrical accidents of the kaleidoscope, settling into their places in perfect harmony.
The entire scene bore the impress of the spiritof historical truth, and it is by such pageants that we can imagine coloured pictures of an England of the past.
Again, we could observe the effect of the light-reflecting armour, cold, shimmering steel, coming in a play of colour against the background of peasants, and thereby one could note the exact appearance of an ordinary English day of such a date as this of which I now write, the end of the thirteenth century.
The mournful procession bearing the body of Queen Eleanor of Castile, resting at Waltham, would show a picture in the same colours as the early part of the Sherborne Pageant.
Colour in England changed very little from the Conquest to the end of the reign of Edward I.; the predominant steel and leather, the gay, simple colours of the crowds, the groups of one colour, as of monks and men-at-arms, gave an effect of constantly changing but ever uniform colours and designs of colour, exactly, as I said before, like the shifting patterns of the kaleidoscope.
It was not until the reign of Edward II. that the effect of colour changed and became pied, and later, with the advent of stamped velvets, heavilydesigned brocades, and the shining of satins, we get that general effect best recalled to us by memories of Italian pictures; we get, as it were, a varnish of golden-brown over the crude beauties of the earlier times.
It is intensely important to a knowledge of costume to remember the larger changes in the aspect of crowds from the colour point of view. A knowledge of history—by which I do not mean a parrot-like acquirement of dates and Acts of Parliament, but an insight into history as a living thing—is largely transmitted to us by pictures; and, as pictures practically begin for us with the Tudors, we must judge of coloured England from illuminated books. In these you will go from white, green, red, and purple, to such colours as I have just described: more vivid blues, reds, and greens, varied with brown, black, and the colour of steel, into the chequered pages of pied people and striped dresses, into rich-coloured people, people in black; and as you close the book and arrive at the wall-picture, back to the rich-coloured people again.