Every one is familiar with the costume of the reigns of Henry VIII. and Edward VI. The ordinary costume of bluff Harry was a full-skirted jacket or doublet, with large sleeves to the wrists; over which was worn a short but equally full cloak or coat, with loose, hanging sleeves, and a broad, rolling collar of fur.
Entrance from the Courtyard of Burghley House.
Many, however, still wore the doublet sleeves as in the last reign: tight to the elbow, puffed out about the shoulders, and the coat sleeveless, allowing this to appear. The cap was square or round, and still worn somewhat sideways, jewelled, and plumed with ostrich feathers. The hose were now often divided into hose and stockings, and the shoes, though sometimes square-toed, yet often resembling the modern shape. The Norman "chausses" were revived under the older name of "trousses," being close hose, fitting exactly to the limbs.
Henry VIII. was most extravagant in dress, and was followed with so much avidity by his subjects in his ostentation, that in the twenty-fourth year of his reign he was obliged to pass a sumptuary law to restrain them; and the style and quality of dress for every different rank was prescribed—as we may suppose, with indifferent success. No person of less degree than a knight was to wear crimson or blue velvet or embroidered apparel, broched or guarded with goldsmith's work, except sons and heirs of knights and barons, who might use crimson velvet, and tinsel in their doublets. Velvet gowns, jackets and coats, furs of martins, &c., chains, bracelets, and collars of gold, were proscribed to all but persons possessing two hundred marks per annum; except the sons and heirs of such persons, who might wear black velvet doublets, coats of black damask, &c.
Henry's own dress was of the most gorgeous kind. He is described at a banquet at "Westminster as arrayed in a suit of short garments of blue velvet and crymosine, with long sleeves all out, and lined with cloth of gold, and the outer garments powdered with castles and sheaves of arrows—the badges of Queen Catherine—of fine ducat gold; the upper part of the hose of like fashion, the lower parts of scarlet, powdered with timbrels of fine gold. His bonnet was of damask silver, flat, "woven in the stall," and therefore wrought with gold, and rich feathers on it. When he met Anne of Cleves he had tricked himself out in a frock of velvet, embroidered all over with flatted gold of damask, mixed with a profusion of lace; the sleeves and breast all cut and lined with cloth of gold, and tied together with great buttons of diamonds, rubies, and orient pearls.
Henry ordered his subjects to cut off their long hair; beards and moustaches were now worn at pleasure.
The reigns of Edward and Mary did not vary greatly in the costume of the men, except that small round flat caps were introduced, and are still retained by the boys of Christ Hospital, which Edward founded.
Couch used by Mary Queen of Scots during her imprisonment.
The whole dress of these boys is that of the apprentices of London of that period—blue coats and yellow stockings being, besides, very common to the citizens then. The jackets of our firemen and water-men are also of that period, the badge being made of metal and placed on the arm instead of being embroidered on the back or breast as before. The square-toed shoes were banished by proclamation in the reign of Queen Mary.
The costume of the ladies of the reign of Henry VIII. is extremely familiar, from the numerous portraits of his six wives, engravings of which are in "Lodge's Portraits." With the exception of the bonnet or coif, which, though worn by Catherine of Arragon, came to be called the Anne Boleyn cap, the dress of the ladies of this reign bears a striking resemblance to that of the ladies of
