How the Splendid Sir Walter Raleigh and Later the Duke of Buckingham
Sought to Dazzle Envious Eyes in the English Court.
At the present time, when so much is said about ostentatious display, when
the luxury of the rich is compared with the luxury of Rome in her decline,
we may be partly reassured by looking back only one or two or three
hundred years. It is but a century since the time of Beau Brummel, the
exquisiteness of whose toilet could hardly be the aim of a modern
gentleman. And the glories of the Pump Room at Bath in the eighteenth
century, when Beau Nash held sway over social England, would not be
emulated by modern dressers. Looking a little farther back we see gallants
in whose effulgence the brilliance of all their successors would pale.
Sir Walter Raleigh wore a white satin pinked vest, close-sleeved to the
wrist; over the body a brown doublet, finely flowered and embroidered with
pearl. In the feather of his hat a large ruby, and a pearl-drop at the
bottom of the sprig, in place of a button; his trunk of breeches, with
his stockings and ribbon garters, fringed at the end, all white; and buff
shoes with white ribbon.
On great court days his shoes were so gorgeously covered with precious
stones as to have exceeded the value of six thousand pounds sterling; and
he had a suit of armor of solid silver, with sword and belt blazing with
diamonds, rubies, and pearls.
King James's favorite, the Duke of Buckingham, had twenty-seven suits of
clothes, the richest that embroidery, lace, silk, velvet, gold, and gems
could contribute. One was of white uncut velvet, set all over, both suit
and cloak, with diamonds valued at eighty thousand pounds, besides a great
feather stuck all over with diamonds, as were his sword, girdle, hat, and
spurs.
Considering how much greater was the value of money at that period, the
cost of the clothing of the Elizabethan and Jacobean gallants was simply
enormous.