Daily Life in Elizabethan England (28 page)

Such trunkhose were increasingly likely to have pockets, and were worn with stockings rather than long hose.

Codpieces continued to be worn on the outside of trunkhose. They were sometimes quite elaborate and often in a shape that strikes the modern eye as downright obscene. Fashionable gentlemen occasionally had them made as pockets in which they could store candy and other knickknacks!

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Codpieces became more subdued toward the latter part of the period and had fallen out of fashion by the end of the century.

During the latter part of Elizabeth’s reign, a new style of lower-body garment appeared, known as
breeches.
They were sometimes called
Venetian breeches
or just
Venetians
to distinguish them from underwear. Venetian breeches were essentially knee-length trousers, originally cut rather close to the body but becoming more voluminous toward the end of the reign. They normally reached below the knee, although some styles stopped short of it. The commoner’s Venetians were made of wool and might be lined with linen. Cheaper Venetians were made of linen canvas.

Venetians were sometimes trimmed along the outseam and around the

pockets. They could be fastened at the waist with buttons or with hooks and eyes. Venetians were not worn with codpieces; instead, they had a fly-opening that tied or buttoned. Like the later styles of trunkhose, they were worn with stockings.

Men’s upper-body garments did not change nearly as much during the course of Elizabeth’s reign. The characteristic upper-body garment was the doublet, a short, fitted jacket with a narrow waist. The doublet was William Brooke, 10th Lord Cobham and his Family, 1567, by Master of the Countess of Warwick (fl.1567–69). [Longleat House, Wiltshire, UK/ The Bridgeman Art Library]

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made of wool, canvas, or a fine fabric, or sometimes of leather. It might be padded and quilted, or decorated with slashes. It either buttoned, hooked, or laced up the front. It was often adorned with wings at the shoulders and pickadills about the waist. As with women’s bodices, the doublet might have detachable sleeves that hooked or laced in. Early in the reign, the doublet was cut straight around the bottom edge, but in time it became fashionable for the front to dip downward in a sharp V shape. In the latter half of the period, doublets were cut with a distinctive
peascod belly,
a padded protruding flare at the front that imitated the design of military breastplates (on a breastplate this shape helped to deflect blows). An additional garment called a
jerkin
could be worn over the doublet when temperature or fashion demanded. The jerkin was essentially of the same design as a doublet, except that it might be sleeveless.

The doublet was worn by a very wide section of society, although the quality of the materials and the degree of tailoring and decoration varied enormously. People toward the lower end of the social scale might wear a coat instead. In its most elaborate form the coat resembled a plain doublet, except that it had long skirts. Fashionable men sometimes wore such coats over their doublets. The simplest form of coat was not fitted at all but dropped straight down from the shoulders; it might be belted at the waist.

OTHER GARMENTS

Stockings

Lower leg garments were called stockings, netherstocks, or hose; they were worn by all women, and by men to go with trunkhose or Venetians.

At the beginning of the reign, stockings were typically made of woven cloth, but knitted stockings of silk or wool displaced them over the course of the reign.

Stockings might be white or colored; they were sometimes decorated with silk embroidery about the top and down the sides—colors included red, green, and black. In addition, people sometimes wore heavy colored overstockings outside comfortable white ones. Riders might wear protective overstockings of heavy linen, known as boothose. If a man wore breeches that stopped above the knee, the stockings could be pulled up over the breeches; otherwise they went underneath.

Neither cloth nor knitted stockings were able to stay up reliably without help, so both men and women held them in place with garters. Women gartered their stockings at the
gartering place,
the narrow spot between the knee and upper calf. Men’s stockings gartered there or just above the knee, depending on the length of the breeches or trunkhose. Another style for men was
cross-gartering,
where the garter wrapped around the leg both above and below the knee, crossing behind it. Ordinary people’s garters
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Daily Life in Elizabethan England

were made of woven or knit wool, or of leather straps with buckles. Fancier garters might be made of silk.

Shoes

Men’s and women’s shoes in the late 16th century were generally blunt-toed and flat: heeled shoes were not common until the 17th century. Most shoes were made of leather, although highly fashionable shoes for courtly use were sometimes made of fabrics such as velvet or silk. The shoe was secured on the foot with laces or a buckle. Decorations on fancy shoes included embroidery, cutwork, ribbon edging, pearls, gems, and slashes (sometimes puffed). Boots were generally worn only by men and only for riding, although working men sometimes wore low ankle-boots.

Collars and Cuffs

Early in Elizabeth’s reign, both men’s and women’s shirts were heavily gathered at the neck; this had given rise to the practice of sewing a ruff into the neckband. Eventually, a new style emerged in which a separate ruff was tied around the neck. Both men and women wore ruffs, which became progressively larger and more intricate in fashionable circles. In 1565 starch was introduced to the laundry process. This method of stiffening enabled the ruff to grow even larger, requiring meticulous care to set it properly. By 1580–85 ruffs were so large that they needed the support of a wire framework to fan them around the head. Ruffs were made of fine linen, sometimes edged with lace. They were often worn with matching hand ruffs at the wrists. The starch was sometimes impregnated with a colorant that gave the ruff a tint—pink, yellow, mauve, or blue.

In the latter part of Elizabeth’s reign, the
falling band
became fashionable among men. This had evolved from the neckband of the shirt; it was essentially a separate collar, which again tied around the neck. The simplest type was made of white linen of light to medium weight; fancier ones were adorned with lace or embroidery. Women did not wear falling bands, but they sometimes pinned a kerchief around their shoulders.

Outer and Inner Garments

Elizabethan England was generally a chilly place, so there existed a wide variety of garments for furnishing additional warmth; some of them were also crucial to the wearer’s fashionable look. Between their shirt and outer garments, people sometimes wore a knitted undergarment called a
waistcoat.
Linen or knitted jackets were sometimes worn for extra warmth indoors. Loose gowns were a very common garment for both men and women. They were often open, reaching to the knee or ankle on men, to the ankle on women. Gowns of this sort might be adorned with false
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sleeves. Women were most likely to wear these indoors, whereas men, especially older men of the middle and upper classes, might wear them outside as well. They were typically made of very heavy fabric, often lined or trimmed with fur. Another warm garment was the cassock, a flaring coat especially favored by soldiers and sailors, but also worn by both men and women in general, particularly commoners. Among fashionable men, the circular or semicircular cape was especially favored: it might be long, or a merely decorative short cape reaching only to the waist.

Hair and Headgear

Men tended to wear their hair short in the early part of Elizabeth’s reign, but longer hair became fashionable in the latter half. Although a few men were clean shaven, the overwhelming majority wore a moustache and beard, which might be handsomely trimmed to a point. Trimming the hair and beard was the work of a professional barber.

Men generally kept their heads covered—the main exception was when they doffed their hats or caps as a mark of respect before their social superiors. An exclusively masculine form of headgear was the brimless knitted cap, which resembled the modern toque. Men sometimes also wore toque-style linen caps indoors.

The flat caps that had dominated the first half of the century were still in use, although they became less fashionable as the reign progressed and eventually became the mark of the London citizen or apprentice. Common cap materials were wool, felt, or leather, and linen might be used to line the interior. Flat caps were either knit of woolen yarn or sewn of woven fabric. In an effort to support the cap-knitting industry, it was mandated by law in 1571 that male commoners wear knitted flat caps on Sundays and holidays; for this reason they came to be known as
statute caps.
The law was widely disobeyed and was repealed in 1597, but the flat cap was nonetheless one of the most common styles among ordinary men.

Hats might be made of wool, woolen felt, or leather; more expensive materials included velvet and silk. Some of the finest were made of felted animal fur, particularly beaver. Straw hats were especially common among country folk. Hats became increasingly fashionable as the flat cap became less so, and among men in the latter part of the reign, the height of fashion was represented by the high-crowned hats known as
copotains.
Another style of hat had a somewhat lower crown and a broad brim. Hats were often decorated with a hatband, which might be cut long such that a tail hung down at the back. The hatband might be adorned with a feather or a jeweled hat pin.

Elizabethan women wore their hair long, although they generally

pinned it up. It was kept off the forehead and was not cut into bangs.

A fashionable lady or a young unmarried woman might leave her hair uncovered, but most women wore at least a simple cap known as a
coif.

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The coif was typically of linen, and some were ornately embroidered. On top of the coif the woman might wear any one of a variety of head adornments. The simplest was the forehead cloth, a triangular piece of linen with ties, which went over the front of the head and tied at the nape of the neck. Another form of headgear was the French hood, a fabric bonnet shaped with interior wires; it was especially fashionable in the early part of the reign. Women also wore flat caps, and in the latter part of the reign, hats became increasingly common, in all the various styles worn by men.

Fasteners

The buttons of a commoner’s clothes were often made of a wooden

bead covered with fabric, or fabric scraps wrapped in a disk of fabric from the garment. The more expensive option was metal—pewter, brass, silver, or gold. Buttons were typically spherical and of the shank type, small and numerous, rather than large and widely spaced. In contrast with modern garments, they were generally sewn along the edge of the fabric rather than slightly in from the edge.

A characteristic feature of Elizabethan clothing was the
point,
a ribbon or lace made of leather or braided silk and fitted with metal tips (called
tags
or
aglets
). Points were used to attach the breeches to the doublet or the skirt to the bodice, to lace in a pair of sleeves, or to close up a doublet or jerkin. They were passed through matching pairs of holes in the garments and tied in a half-bow. Hooks and eyes were used for the same range of purposes. In addition, Elizabethans depended heavily on pins to hold their clothes together: a man’s ruff or falling band was typically pinned in place, while a woman would use pins extensively for her headgear, neckwear, and other garments.

Belts, Knives, and Purses

The belt, known as a
girdle,
was an important part of people’s attire, not for holding up garments but as a place from which to hang personal possessions. Gentlemen’s girdles were thin, with a fixed buckle in the front, and a sliding buckle on the side to adjust for size, with hooks for a hanger to hold a rapier. Ladies were likely to have chain girdles or girdles made of fine fabric. Among ordinary people, thin leather girdles or girdles of woven tape were common. A girdle might support a knife in a leather sheath; often it held a leather purse, closing with a drawstring or a flap.

Purses might hold one or more small knit or cloth pouches. Toward the end of the century, belt-purses became less important for men, as pockets became more common.

Gentlemen, and many of lower station, often carried swords on their girdles. The fashionable sword of the period was the rapier, which featured a blade about a yard long and weighed some 2½ to 3 pounds. Rapi-Clothing and Accoutrements
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