CAPS AND BEAVERS IN COLONIAL DAYS
A
ny student of English history and letters would know that caps would
positively be part of the outfit of every emigrating Englishman. A cap
was, for centuries, both the enforced and desired headwear of English
folk of quiet lives.
City Flat-cap worn by “Bilious” Bale. City Flat-cap worn by “Bilious”
Bale.
Belgic Britons, Welshmen, Irish, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, and Normans all
had worn caps, as well as ancient Greeks and Romans. These English caps
had been of divers colors and manifold forms, some being grotesque
indeed. When we reach the reign of Henry VIII we are made familiar in
the paintings of Holbein with a certain flat-cap which sometimes had a
small jewel or leather or a double fold, but never varied greatly. This
was known as the city flat-cap.
It is shown also in the Holbein portrait of Adam Winthrop, grandfather
of Governor John Winthrop; he was a man of dignity, Master of the Cloth
Workers’ Guild.
The muffin-cap of the boys of Christ’s Hospital is a form of this cap.
This was at first and ever a Londoner’s cap. A poet wrote in 1630:—
“Flat caps as proper are to city gowns
As to armour, helmets, or to kings, their crowns.”
Winthrop also wears the city gown.
This flat-cap was often of gay colors, scarlet being a favorite hue.
“Behold the bonnet upon my head
A staryng colour of scarlet red
I promise you a fyne thred
And a soft wool
It cost a noble.”
These lines were written for the character “Pride,” in the _Interlude
of Nature_, before the year 1500.
A statute was passed in 1571, “If any person above six years of age
(except maidens, ladies, gentlemen, nobles, knights, gentlemen of
twenty marks by year in lands, and their heirs, and such as have born
office of worship) have not worn upon the Sunday or holyday (except it
be in the time of his travell out of the city, town or hamlet where he
dwelleth) one cap of wool, knit, thicked and dressed in England, and
only dressed and furnished by some of the trade of cappers, shall be
fined £;3 4d. for each day’s transgression.” The caps thus worn were
called Statute caps.
This was, of course, to encourage wool-workers in the pride of the
nation. Winthrop, master of a guild whose existence depended on wool,
would, of course, wear a woollen cap had he not been a Londoner. It was
a plain head-covering, but it was also the one worn by King Edward VI.
There was a formal coif or cap worn by men of dignity; always worn, I
think, by judges and elderly lawyers, ere the assumption of the formal
wig. This coif may be seen on the head of the venerable Dr. Dee, and
also on the head of Lord Burleigh, and of Thomas Cecil, surmounted with
the citizen’s flat-cap. One of these caps in heavy black lustring
lingered by chance in my home—worn by some forgotten ancestor. It had a
curious loop, as may be seen on Dr. Dee. This was not a narrow string
for tying the coif on the head; it was a loop. And if there was any
need of fastening the cap on the head, a narrow ribbon or ferret, a
lacing, was put through both loops.
In the inventory of the apparel of the first settlers which I have
given in the early pages of this book, we find that each colonist to
the Massachusetts Bay settlement had one Monmouth cap and five red
milled caps. All the lists of necessary clothing for the planters have
as an item, caps; but a well-made, well-lined hat was also supplied.
Monmouth caps were in general wear in England. Thomas Fuller said,
“Caps were the most ancient, general, warm, and profitable coverings of
men’s heads in this Island.” In making them thousands of people were
employed, especially before the invention of fulling-mills, when caps
were wrought, beaten, and thickened by the hands and feet of men.
Cap-making afforded occupation to fifteen different callings: carders,
spinners, knitters, parters of wool, forcers, thickers, dressers,
walkers, dyers, battellers, shearers, pressers, edgers, liners, and
band-makers.
King James I of England. King James I of England.
The Monmouth caps were worth two shillings each, which were furnished
to the Massachusetts colonists. These were much affected by seafaring
men. We read, in _A Satyr on Sea Officers_, “With Monmouth cap and
cutlass at my side, striding at least a yard at every stride.” “The
Ballad of the Caps,” 1656, gives a wonderful list of caps. Among them
are:
The Monmouth Cap, the Saylors thrum,
And that wherein the tradesmen come,
The Physick, Lawe, the Cap divine,
And that which crowns the Muses nine,
The Cap that Fools do countenance,
The goodly Cap of Maintenance,
And any Cap what e’re it be,
Is still the sign of some degree.
“The sickly Cap both plaine and wrought,
The Fuddling-cap however bought,
The quilted, furred, the velvet, satin,
For which so many pates learn Latin,
The Crewel Cap, the Fustian pate,
The Perriwig, the Cap of Late,
And any Cap what e’er it be
Is still the sign of some degree.”
—“Ballad of the Caps,” 1656.
We seldom have in manuscript or print, in America, titles or names
given to caps or hats, but one occasionally seen is the term
“montero-cap,” spelled also mountero, montiro, montearo; and Washington
Irving tells of “the cedar bird with a little mon-teiro-cap of
feathers.” Montero-caps were frequently recommended to emigrants, and
useful dress they were, being a horseman’s or huntsman’s cap with a
simple round crown, and a flap which went around the sides and back of
the cap and which could be worn turned up or brought down over the back
of the neck, the ears and temples, thus making a most protecting
head-covering. They were, in general, dark colored, of substantial
woollen stuff, but Sterne writes in Tristram Shandy of a montero-cap
which he describes as of superfine Spanish cloth, dyed scarlet in the
grain, mounted all round with fur, except four inches in front, which
was faced with light blue lightly embroidered. It is a montero-cap
which is seen on the head of Bamfylde Moore Carew, the “King of the
Mumpers,” a most genial English rogue, sneak-thief, and cheat of the
eighteenth century, who spent some of his ill-filled years in the
American colonies, whither he was brought after being trepanned, and
where he had to bear the ignominy of wearing an iron collar welded
around his neck.
A montero-cap seems to have been the favorite dress of rogues. In
Head’s _English Rogue_ we read, “Beware of him that rides in a
montero-cap and of him that whispers oft.” The picaro Guzman wore one;
and as montero is the Spanish word for huntsman, Head may have obtained
the word from that special scamp, Guzman, whose life was published in
1633. It is a very ancient name, being given in Cotgrave as a hood, or
as the horseman’s helmet. It is worn still by Arctic travellers and
Alpine climbers. Sets of knitted montero-caps were presented by the
Empress Eugenie to the Arctic expedition of 1875, and the Jackies
dubbed them “Eugenie Wigs.”
Another and widely different class of men wore likewise the
montero-cap, the English and American Quakers. Thomas Ellwood, in the
early days of his Quaker belief, suffered much for his hat, both from
his fellow Quakers and his father, a Church of England man. The Quakers
thought his “large Mountier cap of black velvet, the skirt of which
being turned up in Folds looked somewhat above the common Garb of a
Quaker.” A young priest at another time snatched this montero-cap off
because he wore it in the presence of magistrates, and then Ellwood’s
father fell upon it in this wise:—
“He could not contain himself but running upon me with both hands,
first violently snatcht off my Hat and threw it away and then giving me
some buffets in the head said Sirrah get you up to your chamber. I had
now lost one hat and had but one more. The next Time my Father saw it
on my head he tore it violently from me and laid it up with the other,
I know not where. Wherefore I put my Mountier Cap which was all I had
left to wear on my head, and but a little while I had that, for when my
Father came where I was, I lost that also.”
Fulke Greville (Lord Brooke). Fulke Greville (Lord Brooke).
Finally the father refused to let him wear his “Hive,” as he called the
hat, at the table while eating, and thereafter Ellwood ate with his
father’s servants.
The vogue of beaver hats was an important factor in the settlement of
America.
The first Spanish, Dutch, English, and French colonists all came to
America to seek for gold and furs. The Spaniards found gold, the Dutch
and French found furs, but the English who found fish found the
greatest wealth of all, for food is ever more than raiment.
Of the furs the most important and most valuable was beaver. The
English sent some beaver back to Europe; the very first ship to return
from Plymouth carried back two hogsheads. Winslow sent twenty hogsheads
as early as 1634, and Bradford shows that the trade was deemed
important. But the wild creatures speedily retreated. Johnson declares
that as early as 1645 the beaver trade had left the frontier post of
Springfield, on the Connecticut River.
From the earliest days both the French and English crown had treated
the fishing and fur industries with unusual discretion, giving a
monopoly to the fur trade and leaving the fisheries free, so the latter
constantly increased, while in New England the fur trade passed over to
the Dutch, distinctly to the advantage of the English, for the lazy
trader at a post was neither a good savage nor a good citizen, while
the hardy fishermen and bold sailors of New England brought wealth to
every town. For some years the Dutch appeared to have the best of it,
for they received ten to fifteen thousand beaver skins annually from
New England; and they had trading-posts on Narragansett and Buzzards
Bay. Still the trade drew the Dutch away from agriculture, and the real
success of New Netherland did not come with furs, but with corn.
James Douglas (Earl of Morton). James Douglas (Earl of Morton).
The fur trade was certainly an interesting factor in the growth of the
Dutch settlement. Fort Orange, or Albany, called the _Fuyck_, was the
natural topographical _fuyck_ or trap-net to catch this trade, and in
the very first season of its settlement fifteen hundred beaver and five
hundred otter skins were despatched to Holland. In 1657 Johannes
Dyckman asserted that 40,900 beaver and otter skins were sent that year
from Fort Orange to Fort Amsterdam (New York City). As these skins were
valued at from eight to ten guilders apiece (about $3.50 and with a
purchasing value equal to $20 to-day), it can readily be seen what a
source of wealth seemed opened. The authorities at Fort Orange, the
patroons of Renssalaerwyck and Beverwyck, were not to be permitted to
absorb all this wondrous gain in undisturbed peace. The increment of
the India Company was diverted and hindered in various ways.
Unscrupulous and crafty citizens of Fort Orange (independent
_handaelers_ or handlers) and their thrifty, penny-turning _vrouws_
decoyed the Indian trappers and hunters into their peaceful, honest
kitchens under pretence of kindly Christian welcome to the
peltry-bearing braves; and they filled the guileless savages with Dutch
schnapps, or Barbadoes “kill-devil,” until the befuddled or half-crazed
Indians parted with their precious stores of hard-trapped skins and
threw off their well-perspired and greased beaver coats and exchanged
them for such valuable Dutch wares as knives, scissors, beads, and
jews’-harps, or even a few pints of quickly vanishing rum, instead of
solid Dutch guilders or substantial Dutch blankets. And even before
these strategic Dutch citizens could corral and fleece them, the
incoming fur-bearers had to run as insinuating a gantlet of
_boschloopers_, bush-runners, drummers, or “broakers,” who sallied out
on the narrow Indian paths to buy the coveted furs even before they
were brought into Fort Orange. Much legislation ensued. Scout-buying
was prohibited. Citizens were forbidden “to addresse to speak to the
wilden of trading,” or to entice them to “traffique,” or to harbor them
over night. Indian houses to lodge the trappers were built just outside
the gate, where the dickering would be public. These were built by
rates collected from all “Christian dealers” in furs.
But Indian paths were many, and the water-ways were unpatrolled, and
kitchen doors could be slyly opened in the dusk; so the government, in
spite of laws and shelter-houses, did not get all the beaver skins. Too
many were eager for the lucrative and irregular trade; agricultural
pursuits were alarmingly neglected; other communities became rivals,
and the beavers soon were exterminated from the valley of the Hudson,
and by 1660 the Fort Orange trade was sadly diminished. The governor of
Canada had an itching palm, and lured the Indians—and beaver skins—to
Montreal. Thus “impaired by French wiles,” scarce nine thousand
peltries came in 1687 to Fort Orange. With a few fluttering rallies
until Revolutionary times the fur trade of Albany became extinct; it
passed from both Dutch and French, and was dominated by the Hudson Bay
Fur Company.
So clear a description of the fur of the beaver and the use of the pelt
was given by Adriaen van der Donck, who lived at Fort Orange from the
year 1641 to 1646, and traded for years with the Indians, that it is
well to give his exact words:—
“The beaver’s skin is rough but thickly set with fine fur of an
ash-gray color inclining to blue. The outward points also incline to a
russet or brown color. From the fur of the beaver the best hats are
made that are worn. They are called beavers or castoreums from the
material of which they are made, and they are known by this name over
all Europe. Outside of the coat of fur many shining hairs appear called
wind-hairs, which are more properly winter-hairs, for they fall out in
summer and appear again in winter. The outer coat is of a
chestnut-brown color, the browner the color the better is the fur.
Sometimes it will be a little reddish.
“When hats are made of the fur, the rough hairs are pulled out for they
are useless. The skins are usually first sent to Russia, where they are
highly valued for their outside shining hair, and on this their
greatest recommendation depends with the Russians. The skins are used
there for mantle-linings and are also cut into strips for borders, as
we cut rabbit-skins. Therefore we call the same peltries. Whoever has
there the most and costliest fur-trimmings is deemed a person of very
high rank, as with us the finest stuffs and gold and silver
embroideries are regarded as the appendages of the great. After the
hairs have fallen out, or are worn, and the peltries become old and
dirty and apparently useless, we get the article back, and convert the
fur into hats, before which it cannot be well used for this purpose,
for unless the beaver has been worn, and is greasy and dirty, it will
not felt properly, hence these old peltries are the most valuable. The
coats which the Indians make of beaver-skins and which they have worn
for a long time around their bodies until the skins have become foul
with perspiration and grease are afterwards used by the hatters and
make the best hats.”
One notion about beaver must be told. Its great popularity for many
years arose, it is conjectured, from its original use as a cap for
curative purposes. Such a beaver cap would “unfeignedly” recover to a
man his hearing, and stimulate his memory to a wonder, especially if
the “oil of castor” was rubbed in his hair.
Elihu Yale. Elihu Yale.
The beaver hat was for centuries a choice and costly article of dress;
it went through many bizarre forms. On the head of Henry IV of France
and Navarre, as made known in his portrait, is a hat which effectually
destroys all possibility of dignity. It is a bell-crowned stove-pipe,
of the precise shape worn later by coachmen and by dandies about the
years 1820 to 1830. It is worn very much over one royal ear, like the
hat of a well-set-up, self-important coachman of the palmy days of
English coaching, and gives an air of absurd modernity and cockney
importance to the picture of a king of great dignity. The hat worn by
James I, ere he was King of England, is shown here. It is funnier than
any seen for years in a comic opera. The hat worn by Francis Bacon is a
plain felt, greatly in contrast with his rich laced triple ruff and
cuffs and embroidered garments. That of Thomas Cecil here varies
slightly.
Two very singular shapings of the plain hat may be seen, one here on
the head of Fulke Greville, where the round-topped, high crown is most
disproportionate to the narrow brim. The second, here, shows an extreme
sugar-loaf, almost a pointed crown.
A good hat was very expensive, and important enough to be left among
bequests in a will. They were borrowed and hired for many years, and
even down to the time of Queen Anne we find the rent of a _subscription
hat_ to be £;2 6s. per annum! The hiring out of a hat does not seem
strange when hiring out clothes was a regular business with tailors.
The wife of a person of low estate hired a gown of Queen Elizabeth’s to
be married in. Tailor Thomas Gylles complained of the Yeoman of the
queen’s wardrobe for suffering this. He writes, “The copper cloth of
gold gowns which were made last, and another, were sent into the
country for the marriage of Lord Montague.” The bequest of half-worn
garments was highly regarded. On the very day of Darnley’s funeral,
Mary Queen of Scots gave his clothes to Bothwell, who sent them to his
tailor to be refitted. The tailor, bold with the riot and disorder of
the time, returned them with the impudent message that “the duds of
dead men were given to the hangman.” The duds of men who were hanged
were given to the hangman almost as long as hangings took place. A poor
New England girl, hanged for the murder of her child, went to the
scaffold in her meanest attire, and taunted the executioner that he
would get but a poor suit of clothes from her. The last woman hanged in
Massachusetts wore a white satin gown, which I expect the sheriff’s
daughter much revelled in the following winter at dancing-parties.
Thomas Cecil. Thomas Cecil.
Old Philip Stubbes has given us a wonderful description of English
head-gear:—
“HATS OF SUNDRIE FATIONS”
“Sometymes they vse them sharpe on the Croune, pearking vp like the
Spire, or Shaft of a Steeple, standyng a quarter of a yarde aboue the
Croune of their heades, somemore, some lesse, as please the phantasies
of their inconstant mindes. Othersome be flat and broad on the Crowne,
like the battlemetes of a house. An other sorte haue rounde Crownes,
sometymes with one kinde of Band, sometymes with another, now black,
now white, now russet, now red, now grene, now yellowe, now this, now
that, never content with one colour or fashion two daies to an ende.
And thus in vanitie they spend the Lorde his treasure, consuming their
golden yeres and siluer daies in wickednesse and sinne. And as the
fashions bee rare and strange, so is the stuffe whereof their hattes be
made divers also; for some are of Silke, some of Veluet, some of
Taffatie, some of Sarcenet, some of Wooll, and, whiche is more curious,
some of a certaine kinde of fine Haire; these they call Bever hattes,
or xx. xxx. or xl. shillinges price, fetched from beyonde the seas,
from whence a greate sorte of other vanities doe come besides. And so
common a thing it is, that euery seruyngman, countrieman, and other,
euen all indefferently, dooe weare of these hattes. For he is of no
account or estimation amongst men if he haue not a Veluet or Taffatie
hatte, and that must be Pincked, and Cunnyngly Carved of the beste
fashion. And good profitable hattes be these, for the longer you weare
them the fewer holes they haue. Besides this, of late there is a new
fashion of wearyng their hattes sprong vp amongst them, which they
father vpon a Frenchman, namely, to weare them with bandes, but how
vnsemely (I will not saie how hassie) a fashion that is let the wise
judge; notwithstanding, howeuer it be, if it please them, it shall not
displease me.
“And another sort (as phantasticall as the rest) are content with no
kinde of hat without a greate Bunche of Feathers of diuers and sondrie
Colours, peakyng on top of their heades, not vnlike (I dare not saie)
Cockescombes, but as sternes of pride, and ensignes of vanity. And yet,
notwithstanding these Flutterying Sailes, and Feathered Flagges of
defiaunce of Vertue (for so they be) are so advanced that euery child
hath them in his Hat or Cap; many get good liuing by dying and selling
of them, and not a few proue the selues more than Fooles in wearyng of
them.”
Notwithstanding this list of Stubbes, it is very curious to note that
in general the shape of the real beaver hat remained the same as long
as it was worn uncocked.
Cornelius Steinwyck. Cornelius Steinwyck.
The hat was worn much more constantly within-doors than in the present
day. Pepys states that they were worn in church; even the preacher wore
his hat. Hats were removed in the presence of royalty. An hereditary
honor and privilege granted to one of my ancestors was that he might
wear his hat before the king.
It is somewhat difficult to find out the exact date when the wearing of
hats by men within-doors ceased to be fashionable and became distinctly
low bred. We can turn to contemporary art. In 1707 at a grand banquet
given in France to the Spanish Embassy, a ceremonious state affair with
the women in magnificent full-dress, the men seated at the table and in
the presence of royalty wore their cocked hats—so much for courtly
France.
This wearing of the hat in church, at table, and elsewhere that seems
now strange to us, was largely as an emblem of dignity and authority.
Miss Moore in the _Caldwell Papers_ writes of her grandfather:—
“I’ my grandfather’s time, as I have heard him tell, ilka maister of a
family had his ain seat in his ain house; aye, and sat there with his
hat on, afore the best in the land; and had his ain dish, and was aye
helpit first and keepit up his authority as a man should so. Parents
were parents then; and bairns dared not set up their gabs afore them as
they do now.”
That the covering of the head in church still has a significance on
important occasions, is shown by a rubric from the “Form and Order” for
the Coronation of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra; this provides
that the king remains uncovered during the saying of the Litany and the
beginning of the Communion Service, but when the sermon begun that he
should put on his “Cap of crimson velvet turned up with Ermine, and so
continue,” to the end of the discourse.
Hatbands were just as important for men’s hats as women’s—especially
during the years of the reign of James I. Endymion Porter had his
wife’s diamond necklace to wear on his hat in Spain. It probably looked
like paste beside the gorgeousness of the Duke of Buckingham, who had
“the Mirror of France,” a great diamond, the finest in England, “to
wear alone in your hat with a little blacke feather,” so the king wrote
him. A more curious hat ornament was a glove.
Hat with a Glove as a Favor. Hat with a Glove as a Favor.
This handsome hat is from a portrait of George, Earl of Cumberland. It
has a woman’s glove as a favor. This is said to have been a gift of
Queen Elizabeth after his prowess in a tournament. He always wore this
glove on state occasions. Gloves were worn on a hat in three meanings:
as a memorial of a dead friend, as a favor of a mistress, or as a mark
of challenge. A pretty laced or tasselled handkerchief was also a favor
and was worn like a cockade.
An excellent representation of the Cavalier hat may be seen on the
figure of Oliver Cromwell (here), which shows him dismissing
Parliament. Cornelius Steinwyck’s flat-leafed hat has no feather.
The steeple-crowned hat of both men and women was in vogue in the
second half of the seventeenth century in both England and America, at
the time when the witchcraft tragedies came to a culmination. The long
scarlet cloak was worn at the same date. It is evident that the
conventional witch of to-day, an old woman in scarlet cloak and
steeple-crowned hat, is a relic of that day. Through the striking
circumstances and the striking dress was struck off a figurative type
which is for all time.
William Kempe of “Duxburrow” in 1641 left hats, hat-boxes, rich
hatbands, bone laces, leather hat-cases; also ten “capps.” Hats were
also made of cloth. In the tailor’s bill of work done for Jonathan
Corwin of Salem, in 1679, we read “To making a Broadcloth Hatt 14s. To
making 2 hatts &; 2 jackets for your two sonnes 19s.” In 1672 an
association of Massachusetts hatters asked privileges and protection
from the colonial government to aid and encourage American manufacture,
but they were refused until they made better hats. Shortly after,
however, the exportation of raccoon fur to England was forbidden, or
taxed, as it was found to be useful in the home manufacture of hats.
The eighteenth century saw many and varied forms of the cocked hat; the
nineteenth returned to a straight crown and brim. The description of
these will be given in the due course of the narrative of this book.