with the question of women having their heads covered while at church:
"The wife and the husband should take their way unto the church, in
seemly apparel, with unaffected gait, and speech refrained; having love
unfeigned; pure in body and pure in heart; fitly decked for prayer to
God. And this further let the woman have: let her wholly cover her head
(unless perchance she be at home), for so dressed she will have respect
and be withdrawn from gazing eyes. And if thus with modesty, and with a
veil, she covereth her own eyes, she shall neither be misled herself,
nor shall she draw others, by the exposure of her face, into the
dangerous path of sin. For this willeth the Word; seeing that it is meet
for the woman that she pray with covered head.... But then so as they,
who are joined to Christ, adorn themselves, in a more solemn fashion,
for assemblies of the church, even such should they ever be, even so be
fashioned, all the days of their life. 'To be, not seem to be,' let that
be their watchword; gentle, reverent, full of holy love, at one time not
less than at another.
"But it is not so, indeed. Somehow doth it come about, that, with change
of place, they change both their habit and their manners; even as the
polypus is said to change each one his colour to the semblance of the
rock whereby he dwells."
It will be remembered that not long ago objection was taken by a
minister to women appearing in his church without any hats. It would
appear that the whole custom is a relic of that still observed in
eastern countries, where women cover not only their heads, but also
their faces, though, as pointed out in an earlier chapter (see page
13), in some places it is still considered more immodest to uncover the
back of the head than to expose any other part of the person; and in
Egypt, for instance, an Arab woman disturbed when drawing water will
throw her single garment over her head in order to hide it.
One is rather afraid that those ladies who follow the lines laid down
by St. Clement as to covering their heads in church sometimes obey his
injunctions in the letter rather than in the spirit. For scoffers have
been found who say that one of the reasons why fashionable ladies go
to church is to show their own new hats and gowns and to look at those
belonging to their neighbours. The question of covering the head was
touched upon when dealing with servants' dress in connection with the
cap of the housemaid. (See page 149.)
The greatest contrast between Sunday and weekday clothes is to be looked
for in the country among agricultural labourers, as the cessation of
labour gives an opportunity for discarding the rough and heavy garments
of the field in favour of something lighter and of better quality, and
this quite apart from the religious idea which no doubt first led to
the practice. Probably the custom of putting on Sunday clothes in the
country will survive until the rural exodus, which has unfortunately
begun, has led to the complete depopulation of our villages.
XXII
ACADEMICAL DRESS
GOWNS AND HANGING SLEEVES--THE FORERUNNER OF THE HOOD--THE ORIGIN
OF THE DOCTOR'S HAT--THE EVOLUTION OF THE MORTAR-BOARD
Many complaints have been very justly made against the solemnity, if
not the ugliness, of men's modern evening dress. On important occasions
it may be more or less enlivened by the ribbons and stars of various
orders, but we really get a return to something of mediæval brightness
at those functions connected with the universities at which academical
dress is worn. Then the black coats and trousers are practically hidden,
in many cases by scarlet, by purple, and other coloured gowns.
Occasionally there are combinations of colours which are trying to the
eyes of many, but on the whole the effect is one that is pleasing and
worthy of repetition. Academical dress is in itself a survival, and the
gay colours are almost enough to tell us this. Records exist which show
that in the fifteenth century they were already adopted by the graduates
of our universities.
The evidence which has been brought forward as to the origin of academic
costume points to its having been derived from that of the clergy; but
there are interesting connections with civil dress, as we shall see. One
of the special features of many academic gowns is their long hanging
sleeves, and we shall find that so long ago as the time of William Rufus
sleeves had grown so long that it had become convenient to make a hole
through them through which the hand and forearm could be protruded. (See
Figure 134.)
[Illustration: FIG. 134.--Hanging sleeve of the fifteenth century.]
These sleeves took upon themselves all sorts of forms, and they were
made so long and narrow that they resembled very much the elongation
of the hood which was called a liripipe. Occasionally it was found
necessary to knot them so that they should not trail upon the ground.
Very few parts of dress have varied so much as sleeves, and it is
said that any costume can be dated by an examination of the sleeves.
Nowadays, as in the past, the length of the sleeve and of the gown
itself indicates the status of the member of the university. At Oxford,
for instance, the undergraduate's gown is so short that it is hardly
worthy of the name, and it is without sleeves that act as such. The
scholar's gown is more voluminous, and the gowns of the bachelors and
masters of arts are more important again, while the sleeves belonging to
the latter reach nearly to the ground.
When we come, however, to the robes of the Chancellor, which are made
of stiffer material, we find that the ancient character of the hanging
sleeves is much more marked (see Figure 135), and there is a train so
long that small pages are told off to support it. In the old days, the
material of which the gowns were made, and their trimmings indicated the
rank of the wearers; and, as Mr. Druitt[30] points out, the bachelor,
for instance, was unable to use fur of so costly a kind as that worn
by his academical superiors. Stuff or silk gowns still have their
significance, and in the hoods which are the survival of a part of
dress which was once useful and worn by graduates and undergraduates
alike, we find great diversity in the case of the various degrees of
different universities.
[Illustration: FIG. 135.--The hanging sleeve of a Chancellor of Oxford
University.]
As a head covering, the cap took the place of a hood, and the latter
fell down behind like that often seen on a modern ulster. We have
already noticed (p. 157) how this peak of the hood was exaggerated, and
in old times the liripipe was longer in the case of undergraduates. The
modern hood of the universities has grown in size, but it has lost its
long streamer. Examples are, of course, most commonly seen in churches,
as it is a custom of the clergy to wear their academical hoods over
their white surplices. The colour of the hood and of its lining
indicates, to the initiated, the university to which the wearer belongs,
and the degree which he has taken.
In early times a tippet or cape made of fur or cloth edged or lined with
fur, according to the degree, was also worn. To this we have alluded
when speaking of the surplice (see page 199). It seems also to have
originally been a kind of hood which developed first into the almuce,
one of the processional vestments of the priesthood. This was covered by
the ecclesiastical cope, but was worn outside the academical gown.
Doctors of Divinity were allowed to wear scarlet tippets, and the colour
survives now in their academical hood, and the ordinary black almuce
with its fur lining has not been greatly changed in becoming the hood of
the Bachelor of Arts.
Sometimes the tippet and sometimes the hood was worn (if we may judge
from monumental brasses), but also they were both put on at the same
time. The figure of a doctor embroidered on a fifteenth-century cope
belonging to the Pro-Cathedral of the Apostles at Clifton, depicts him
wearing a tippet edged with white, a red hood, and a red cap. His gown,
which is worked in gold thread, is shown with a blue lining.
Perhaps no form of head-dress is more strange than the college cap or
mortar-board, or, in technical language, _pileus quadratus_, or cater
cap. This skull-cap, with its curious square top, is not the only kind
of academical head-dress. There is the round cap which is especially
that of the doctor, while the mortar-board or trencher already mentioned
is used by masters and bachelors, as well as by undergraduates and
scholars. The former head-dress seems to have been very little altered,
and was developed somewhere about the fourteenth century or earlier from
the ecclesiastical skull-cap, which was something like an old-fashioned
man's nightcap, with a tuft. The square cap is an undoubted descendant
of the ecclesiastical cap of dignity, and in England this also came
from the skull-cap already mentioned. Towards the end of the fifteenth
century, while still used by ecclesiastics, it began to assume a square
or cusped shape. Prof. E. C. Clark[31] agrees with the opinion expressed
to him by the late Dr. Littledale, that folds were introduced into the
soft material in order to make the cap easier to hold, for by them it
was stiffened. The folds became four wings, and so converted the
round top into a square. From this it was but a short step to the
ecclesiastical biretta of the present day. Any further exaggeration
of its top would cause the cap to fall down on the face, and would
naturally suggest the insertion of something to stiffen it and hold it
out, and in the end the square top of the cap was made of cardboard
covered with cloth, and a skull-cap was fixed to it underneath. (See
Figure 136.)
[Illustration: FIG. 136.--A college cap or trencher.]
[Illustration: FIG. 137.--Cranmer's hat, illustrating a stage in the
evolution of a mortar-board (after Fairholt).]
[Illustration: FIG. 138.--The hat of a bishop of the Stuart Period
showing a stage at which the stiffening now seen in the mortar-board was
becoming necessary (after Fairholt).]
There is a likeness between the round hat of the doctor and the Tudor
flat cap, and Fairholt would derive the mortar-board from the same
head-dress; and as illustrating the story of its evolution, he compares
the cap shown in the portrait of Cranmer (see Figure 137) in the British
Museum with that of a bishop of the time of Charles I (see Figure 138);
and here again the need for stiffening is obvious, if the enlargement of
the crown of the cap be carried any further.
XXIII
LEGAL DRESS
VESTIGES OF THE COIF--HOODS AND GOWNS--SIGNS OF MOURNING
It would be strange if the majesty of the law did not depend to some
extent upon dress, and there is no doubt but that an impressiveness
which would otherwise be absent from our courts is given by wigs and
gowns. The wigs themselves are an interesting survival, and presumably
are not more uncomfortable to the few who now wear them than they were
to many in times gone by. We will describe here a few interesting
vestiges among those which are to be met with in legal costume.
Any one who has an opportunity of looking on to the top of a judge's wig
will notice a small circular depression about three inches across. (See
Figure 139.) This has a very interesting history, and in order to trace
it we shall have to look at the long wigs of the serjeants-at-law,
from whose ranks in the past most of the judges used to come. On the
serjeant's wig we shall find that there is a similar depression, and
that it is filled with a circular white patch, having a black centre,
and reminding one of two large pieces of court plaster, one stuck over
the other. (See Figure 140.)
[Illustration: FIG. 139.--The wig of a modern judge.]
The white piece represents the coif, or close-fitting cap of white
lawn or silk which resembles that of a nun, and with which the
serjeants-at-law on their creation were decked. From this cap, the body
to which the serjeants-at-law belonged was called the Order of the
Coif. It seems that the origin of this head-dress cannot definitely be
settled. Mr. Druitt[32] and Mr. Paley Baildon are content to consider it
as part of the insignia of the serjeants-at-law, in the same way that
the round cap indicates the possessor of a doctor's degree, and they are
not inclined to give credence to the suggestion that the coif was to
hide the tonsure or to prevent its absence from being noticed. The black
patch represents a black skull-cap that was worn over the coif.
[Illustration: FIG. 140.--The vestige of the coif from the wig of a
serjeant-at-law.]
After having been in existence for many hundreds of years, the order
of serjeants-at-law was abolished by Mr. Gladstone. Lord Lindley, we
believe, is the last member who survives. A black skull-cap is also worn
by a judge, but it is not to be confounded with the cap of dignity which
is used by him when pronouncing sentence, and which was ordered to be
worn in church when on circuit. Ordinarily, the judge does not wear his
scarlet gown, but a black one, the girdle of which has grown to a very
great width.
The drab colour of the trimmings, which does not harmonize well with the
rest of the gown, has recently begun to give way to primrose, and the
change is due to the initiative of the late Lord Coleridge.
It is said that black gowns which are worn by the King's Counsel and
other barristers superseded the coloured ones on the death of Queen
Mary II, and in reality were intended as mourning which has never been
discarded. Legal gowns have come down with very little change from the
Middle Ages, and are doubtless derived from ecclesiastical through
academical costume. The original robes of the serjeants-at-law were
somewhat striking in colour, for taking a line down the centre of the
black, one half was of a mustard colour and the other red, while the
latter was further ornamented with green stripes. The robe of the Barons
of the Exchequer was of a beautiful heliotrope tint.
The material of the gown of the King's Counsel is indicated by the
phrase "taking silk." One peculiarity of the garment is that it has a
large collar resembling that of court-ushers and of vergers in churches.
The ordinary dress of the King's Counsel which he wears in court is
interesting on account of the ornamental cuffs and the escalloped flaps
of the pockets of the coat and waistcoat, which resemble those of Court
dress.
[Illustration: FIG. 141.--A barrister's gown showing the vestigial hood
and its streamer. The buttons and braid which once temporarily looped up
the sleeves now fix it permanently.]
On the barrister's gown there is a tiny hood on the left shoulder
resembling that from which the chaperon was developed, and from the
vestige runs a streamer which comes over the left shoulder and hangs
down in front of the gown. (See Figure 141.) There is also a series of
buttons as well as pieces of braid on the sleeves which are survivals,
and we have not the hanging sleeves of the King's Counsel, which are
comparable to those seen in many academic gowns. Small falling bands
are of course generally worn by members of the legal profession, and
barristers and King's Counsel when in mourning have a little pleat down
the middle of each band. Perhaps the most curious additions to legal
costume used in order to indicate mourning are the little white lawn or
muslin cuffs, like those of widows, which the King's Counsel wear on
their sleeves when the Court is in mourning, or when they themselves
have suffered bereavement.
XXIV
STATE AND COURT ATTIRE
CORONATION DRESS--PARLIAMENTARY ROBES--MISTAKES IN COURT
DRESS--VESTIGES OF THE WIG AND OF THE CHAPERON--COURT CARDS
The English sovereigns are heads of the Church as well as of the State,
and in connection with their coronation dress there are, as might be
expected, many survivals from the past. The vestments used on the
occasion in question agree almost entirely with those which we have
described as being worn by a bishop at mass. We may except, however, the
amice and the maniple, while the sceptre and crown take the place of the
crosier and the mitre. The first vestment to be put on is of linen, and
is an albe or rochet, and up to the time of James II it was provided
with sleeves--it is known as the _Colobium sindonis_. Over this is
placed the tunicle or dalmatic. This is made of silk, and across it is
worn the stole in the same way as deacons were ordered to do in the year
561. The custom is still followed in Greece and Rome, whereas priests
generally put on the stole immediately after the albe.
Over the dalmatic comes the imperial mantle which seems to have been
originally a chasuble, but is now slit up in front. This garment, which
is of cloth of gold, is embroidered with eagles, that are interesting as
probably representing the claim of the King of England to be Emperor of
Britain and Lord Paramount over all the Islands of the West. In
Charles II's reign further ornaments occurred in the shape of roses and
fleur-de-lys, and on Queen Victoria's mantle there were roses, half red
and half white, as well as thistles, shamrocks, and fleur-de-lys, while
the eagles were embroidered in silver.
At the coronation of King Edward VII the vestments which we have
described were all used with the exception of the albe, and to the other
devices on the imperial mantle the lotus flower was added as a symbol
for India, as the King was the first sovereign to be crowned as Emperor
of India.
The robe which the King wears at the opening of Parliament has a cape
of ermine made up in miniver style, and it is lined throughout with the
same fur. We might here say that ordinary ermine is decorated with the
tails of the stoat, which remain black when this animal puts on its
winter dress, whereas in the case of miniver the fur is spotted all over
with little black pieces made from the skin of some other animal. This
has not always been the same, but at the present time Persian lamb is
used.
The magnificence of the King's parliamentary robe and its train of
crimson velvet may be gathered from the fact that in the making of the
miniver, upwards of ten thousand pieces of black fur were used. In a
portrait of the King, taken when wearing this robe, he is shown in the
uniform of a Field Marshal, and holds in his hand the Field Marshal's
baton. The latter originally was a box in which the general carried the
orders of his sovereign, and it is rather curious that what was once the
emblem of the servant should come to be used by a crowned head himself.
The rank of noblemen is indicated on their parliamentary robes by the
number of bands of ermine with which they are decorated. A Baron has
two, a Viscount two and a half, an Earl three, a Marquis three and a
half, and a Duke four, whereas on their coronation robes the same effect
is gained by a similar number of rows of black spots on the miniver,
which forms a kind of cape.
As in connection with life at Court there are a number of special
uniforms and official dresses which are carefully prescribed, it is
likely that we should find among the dress of those surrounding the
sovereign, many and excellent examples of survivals. There is, indeed,
one uniform which has come down to us practically unaltered from the
year 1485. This is the dress worn by the Yeomen of the Guard, who may be
looked upon as the King's Retainers. (See Figure 142.)
It is an obvious example of the point that we have dwelt upon in
connection with badges and liveries, for borne on the back and chest are
the royal crown and initials. Of course, the latter have altered from
time to time, and when the King came to the throne the Tudor crown,
which had been superseded by that of St. Edward, was replaced.
[Illustration: FIG. 142.--A Yeoman of the Guard of the present reign.]
The development of the badges on the coat is interesting. In Henry VII's
reign there was the crown and the red and white rose. In the time of
Anne the thistle was added, and the rose was placed upon a stalk. The
Tudor crown was also replaced, for during the Stuart period, St.
Edward's crown had appeared, and the royal motto was added. In the
Georgian period St. Edward's crown again was made use of, while
George III added the shamrock. Now, in King Edward VII's time, we have
the Tudor crown, the rose, thistle, and shamrock, the motto "Dieu et mon
droit," and the initials "E.R."
What the original uniform was, is not quite certain, but practically the
same kind of coat was worn in Henry VIII's reign that appears now. The
ruff would appear to be Elizabethan, though the hat is earlier. The
officers used to wear a similar but more gorgeous uniform, but when
William IV commanded that only officers of the army should be given
commissions in the Guard, the present dress, which is that of a field
officer of the Peninsular period, was introduced. When King Edward VII
came to the throne he left the decision as to whether they should wear
the old Tudor dress, to the officers themselves, and they decided in
favour of the more modern military one. We might mention the halberds
that are carried by the Yeomen, and also allude to some of the duties
which they have carried out, from the making of the King's bed in early
times to searching the Houses of Parliament before the session opens,
which is a memory of Guy Fawkes, and of attending, as they have done for
centuries, at the giving of alms by the sovereign in Westminster Abbey
on Maundy Thursday.
Very many uniforms seen at Court show the turned-back edges and
the lining of the tails, described when we were dealing with the
evolution of the coat (see p. 34)--for instance, in the case of the
gentlemen-at-arms, and of several officials. We may mention also the
Scottish Archers who wear a green coat with a turned-back part--which
represents the lining--of red velvet.
The style of Court dress which may be worn to-day by civilians has
become somewhat simpler, though ruffles and frills are still to be found
in connection, and may be worn with, what is known as old-style dress
that is always adopted by the legal profession. The knee-breeches come
from the time of William III, and the coat in its original form dates
back to the time of Napoleon. The sides of the coat have, however, been
cut away, and this was done during the last reign, when the alteration
was made for the convenience of those who were not accustomed to wear a
sword.
The more recent simplification of Court dress has, however, provided
pitfalls for the unwary, and all sorts of curious mistakes in small
details are made. To show how easy it is to put a button too many here,
or too few there, we may describe the differences between the old and
new styles. On the old there are seven buttons up the front of the coat
and three on the cuffs. In the new, there are but six in the first case
and none in the second. Again, in the simplified coat there are no
buttons below the flaps (which represent pockets), and but four buttons
behind on the tails. In the old style there are three buttons below the
flaps--while there are similar ornaments on the waistcoat, which is
skirted--and there are six buttons on the tails. Then in addition there
is the wig-bag, to which we shall refer in a moment, at the back of the
coat collar, as well as the frills and ruffles. Although on the lace of
these as much may be spent as on the rest of the costume, the cost of
the simpler dress is really not much less than that of the other. A
survival is, of course, to be seen in the sword and in the simplified
costume, it is worn in a frog instead of on a sling.
We have made it evident how much a man now depends upon his tailor for
correctness in the detail of his Court dress, and it is amusing to find
that wig-bags are put on to modern-style coats, and that the number of
buttons is often quite wrong; but if these are the faults of the tailor,
it is the man himself who is responsible who goes to Court with his
sword hanging at his right side. We have not heard of military men
making such a mistake, but officers have been known to appear with their
cross-belts over the wrong shoulder. It is a good thing for some that
Court etiquette is not so strict as it has been in the past.