Katherine, and true stitch,[821] laid-work,[822] net-work, black-work,[823]
white-work, and cut-work.
Of chain-stitch we have many entries, such as Six caules of knot-work,
worked with chain-stitch and bound "cum tapem" (tape), of sister's (nun's)
thread.[824] A scarf of white stitch-work appears also among the New Year's
Gifts.
As regards the use, however, of these ornaments, the Queen stood no
nonsense. Luxury for herself was quite a different affair from that of the
people; for, on finding that the London apprentices had adopted the white
stitching and garding as a decoration for their collars, she put a stop to
all such finery by ordering[825] the first transgressor to be publicly
whipped in the hall of his Company.
Laid-work, which maybe answers to our modern plumetis, or simply signified
a braid-work, adorned the royal garters, "Frauncie," which worked "cum
laidwork," stitched and trimmed "in ambobus lateribus" with gold and silver
lace, from which hung silver pendants, "tufted cum serico color," cost her
Majesty thirty-three shillings the pair.[826]
{302}The description of these right royal articles appears to have given as
much trouble to describe as it does ourselves to translate the meaning of
her accountant.
The drawn-work, "opus tract'," seems to have been but a drawing of thread
worked over silk. We have smocks thus wrought and decorated "cum lez ruffs
et wrestbands."[827]
In addition to the already enumerated laces of Queen Elizabeth are the
bride laces of Coventry blue,[828] worn and given to the guests at
weddings, mentioned in the _Masques_ of Ben Jonson:[829]--
"CLOD.--And I have lost, beside my purse, my best bride-lace I had at
Joan Turnips' wedding.
"FRANCES.--Ay, and I have lost my thimble and a skein of Coventry blue I
had to work Gregory Litchfield a handkerchief."
When the Queen visited Kenilworth in 1577, a Bridall took place for the
pastime of her Majesty. "First," writes the Chancellor, "came all the lusty
lads and bold bachelors of the parish, every wight with his blue
bridesman's bride lace upon a braunch of green broom." What these bride
laces exactly were we cannot now tell. They continued in fashion till the
Puritans put down all festivals, ruined the {303}commerce of Coventry, and
the fabric of blue thread ceased for ever. It was probably a showy kind of
coarse trimming, like that implied by Mopsa in the _Winter's Tale_, when
she says--
"You promised me a tawdry lace:"[830]
articles which, judging from the song of Autolycus--
"Will you buy any tape,
Or lace for your cape?"
were already hawked about among the pedlars' wares throughout the country:
one of the "many laces" mentioned by Shakespeare.[831]
Dismissing, then, her stitches, her laces, and the 3,000 gowns she left in
her wardrobe behind her--for, as Shakespeare says, "Fashion wears out more
apparel than the man"[832]--we must confine ourselves to those articles
immediately under our notice, cut-work, bone lace, and purle.
Cut-work--"opus scissum," as it is termed by the Keeper of the Great
Wardrobe--was used by Queen Elizabeth to the greatest extent. She wore it
on her ruffs, "with lilies of the like, set with small seed pearl"; on her
doublets, "flourished with squares of silver owes"; on her forepart of
lawn, "flourished with silver and spangles";[833] on her
{304}cushion-cloths,[834] her veils, her tooth-cloths,[835] her smocks and
her nightcaps.[836] All nourished, spangled, and edged in a manner so
stupendous as to defy description. It was dizened out in one of these
last-named articles[837] that young Gilbert Talbot, son of Lord Shrewsbury,
caught a sight of the Queen while walking in the tilt-yard. Queen Elizabeth
at the window in her nightcap! What a goodly sight! That evening she gave
Talbot a good flap on the forehead, and told her chamberlain how the youth
had seen her "unready and in her night stuff," and how ashamed she was
thereof.
Cut-work first appears in the New Year's Offerings of 1577-8, where, among
the most distinguished of the givers, we find the name of Sir Philip
Sidney, who on one occasion offers to his royal mistress a suit of ruffs of
cut-work, on another a smock--strange presents according to our modern
ideas. We read, however, that the offering of the youthful hero gave no
offence, but was most graciously received. Singular enough, there is no
entry of cut-work in the Great Wardrobe Accounts before that of 1584-5,
where there is a charge for mending, washing and starching a bodice and
cuffs of good white lawn, worked in divers places with broad spaces of
Italian cut-work, 20 shillings,[838] and another for the same operation to
a veil of white cut-work trimmed with needlework lace.[839] Cut-work was
probably still a rarity; and really, on reading the quantity offered to
Elizabeth on each recurring new year, there was scarcely any necessity for
her to purchase it herself. By the year 1586-7 the Queen's stock had
apparently diminished. Now, for the first time, she invests the sum of
sixty shillings in six yards of good ruff lawn, well worked, with cut-work,
and edged with good white lace.[840] {305}From this date the Great Wardrobe
Accounts swarm with entries such as a "sut' de lez ruffes de lawne," with
spaces of "opere sciss',"[841] "un' caule de lawne alb' sciss' cum le
edge," of similar work;[842] a "toga cum traine de opere sciss';"[843] all
minutely detailed in the most excruciating gibberish. Sometimes the
cut-work is of Italian[844] fabric, sometimes of Flanders;[845] the ruffs
edged with bone lace,[846] needle lace,[847] or purle.[848]
The needle lace is described as "curiously worked," "operat' cum acu
curiose fact'," at 32s. the yard.[849] The dearest is specified as
Italian.[850] We give a specimen (Coloured Plate XV.) of English
workmanship, said to be of this period, which is very elaborate.[851]
The thread used for lace is termed "filo soror," or nun's thread, such as
was fabricated in the convents of Flanders and Italy.[852] If, however,
Lydgate, in his ballad of "London Lackpenny," is an authority, that of
Paris was most prized:--
"Another he taked me by his hand,
Here is Paris thredde, the finest in the land."
Queen Elizabeth was not patriotic; she got and wore her {306}bone lace from
whom she could, and from all countries. If she did not patronize English
manufacture, on the other hand, she did not encourage foreign artizans; for
when, in 1572, the Flemish refugees desired an asylum in England, they were
forcibly expelled from her shores. In the census of 1571, giving the names
of all the strangers in the City of London,[853] including the two makers
of Billament lace already cited, we have but four foreigners of the lace
craft: one described as "Mary Jurdaine, widow, of the French nation, and
maker of purled lace"; the other, the before-mentioned "Callys de Hove, of
Burgundy."[854]
Various Acts[855] were issued during the reign of Elizabeth in order to
suppress the inordinate use of apparel. That of May, 1562,[856] though
corrected by Cecil himself, less summary than that framed against the
"white-work" of the apprentice boys, was of little or no avail.
In 1568 a complaint was made to the Queen against the frauds practised by
the "16 appointed waiters," in reference to the importation of
haberdashery, etc., by which it appears that her Majesty was a loser of "5
or 600 l. by yere at least" in the customs on "parsement, cap rebone bone
lace, cheyne lace," etc.,[857] but with what effect we know not. The annual
import of these articles is therein stated at £10,000, an enormous increase
since the year 1559, when, among the "necessary and unnecessary wares"
brought into the port of London,[858] together with "babies" (dolls),
"glasses to looke in," "glasses to drinke in," pottes, gingerbread,
cabbages, and other matters, we find enumerated, "Laces of all sortes, £775
6s. 8d.," just one-half less than the more necessary, though less refined
item of "eles fresh and salt."[859]
In 1573 Elizabeth again endeavoured to suppress "the silk glittering with
silver and gold lace," but in vain.
{307}The Queen was a great lover of foreign novelties. All will call to
mind how she overhauled the French finery of poor Mary Stuart[860] on its
way to her prison, purloining and selecting for her own use any
new-fashioned article she craved. We even find Cecil, on the sly, penning a
letter to Sir Henry Norris, her Majesty's envoy to the court of France,
"that the Queen's Majesty would fain have a tailor that has skill to make
her apparel both after the French and Italian manner, and she thinketh you
might use some means to obtain such one as suiteth the Queen without
mentioning any manner of request in the Queen's Majesty's name." His lady
wife is to get one privately, without the knowledge coming to the Queen
Mother's ears, "as she does not want to be beholden to her."
It is not to be wondered at, then, that the New Year's Gifts and Great
Wardrobe Accounts[861] teem with entries of "doublets of peche satten all
over covered with cut-work and lyned with a lace of Venyse gold,[862]
kyrtells of white satten embroidered with purles of gold-like clouds, and
layed round about with a bone lace of Venys gold."[863] This gold lace
appears upon her petticoats everywhere varied by bone lace of Venys
silver.[864]
That the Queen drew much fine thread point from the same locality her
portraits testify, especially that preserved in the royal gallery of
Gripsholm, in Sweden, once the property of her ill-fated admirer, Eric XIV.
She wears a ruff, cuffs, tucker, and apron of geometric lace, of exquisite
fineness, stained of a pale citron colour, similar to the liquid invented
by Mrs. Turner, of Overbury memory, or, maybe, adopted from the
saffron-tinted smocks of the Irish, the wearing of which she herself had
prohibited. We find among her entries laces of Jean[865] and Spanish lace;
she did not even disdain bone lace of copper, and copper and silver {308}at
18d. the ounce.[866] Some of her furnishers are English. One Wylliam Bowll
supplies the Queen with "lace of crowne purle."[867] Of her sylkwoman,
Alice Mountague, she has bone lace wrought with silver and spangles, sold
by the owner at nine shillings.[868]
The Queen's smocks are entered as wrought with black work and edged with
bone lace of gold of various kinds. We have ourselves seen a smock said to
have been transmitted as an heirloom in one family from generation to
generation.[869] It is of linen cloth embroidered in red silk, with her
favourite pattern of oak-leaves and butterflies (Fig. 122). Many entries of
these articles, besides that of Sir Philip Sidney's, appear among the New
Year's Gifts.[870]
[Illustration: Fig. 122.
QUEEN ELIZABETH'S SMOCK.]
It was then the custom for the sponsors to give {309}"christening shirts,"
with little bands and cuffs edged with laces of gold and various kinds--a
relic of the ancient custom of presenting white clothes to the neophytes
when converted to Christianity. The "bearing cloth,"[871] as the mantle
used to cover the child when carried to baptism was called,[872] was also
richly trimmed with lace and cut-work, and the Tree of Knowledge, the Holy
Dove (Fig. 123), or the Flowerpot of the Annunciation (Fig. 124), was
worked in "hollie-work" on the crown of the infant's cap or "biggin."
[Illustration: Fig. 123.]
[Illustration: Fig. 124.]
CHRISTENING CAPS, NEEDLE-MADE BRUSSELS.--Eighteenth century.
Aprons, too, of lace appeared in this reign. The Queen, as we have
mentioned, wears one in her portrait at Gripsholm.[873]
"Those aprons white, of finest thread,
So choicelie tied, so dearly bought;
So finely fringed, so nicely spread;
So quaintly cut, so richly wrought,"
writes the author of _Pleasant Quippes for Upstart Gentlewomen_, {310}in
1596. The fashion continued to the end of the eighteenth century.
Laced handkerchiefs now came into fashion. "Maydes and gentlewomen," writes
Stowe, "gave to their favourites, as tokens of their love, little
handkerchiefs of about three or four inches square, wrought round about,"
with a button at each corner.[874] The best were edged with a small gold
lace. Gentlemen wore them in their hats as favours of their mistresses.
Some cost sixpence, some twelvepence, and the richest sixteenpence.
Of the difference between purles and true lace it is difficult now to
decide. The former word is of frequent occurrence among the New Year's
Gifts, where we have "sleeves covered all over with purle,"[875] and, in
one case, the sleeves are offered unmade, with "a piece of purle upon a
paper to edge them."[876] It was yet an article of great value and worthy
almost of entail, for, in 1573, Elizabeth Sedgwicke, of Wathrape, widow,
bequeaths to her daughter Lassells, of Walbron, "an edge of perlle for a
remembrance, desirying her to give it to one of her daughters."[877]
We now turn, before quitting the sixteenth century, to that most portentous
of all fabrications--Queen Elizabeth's ruff.
In the time of the Plantagenets Flemish tastes prevailed. With the Tudors,
Katherine of Aragon, on her marriage with Prince Arthur, introduced the
Spanish fashions, and the inventories from Henry VIII. downwards are filled
with Spanish work, Spanish stitch, and so forth. Queen Elizabeth leant to
the French and Italian modes, and during the Stuarts they were universally
adopted.
The ruff was first introduced into England about the reign of Philip and
Mary. These sovereigns are both represented on the Great Seal of England
with small ruffs about {311}their necks, and with diminutive ones of the
same form encircling the wrists.[878] This Spanish ruff was not ornamented
with lace. On the succession of Queen Elizabeth the ruff had increased to a
large size, as we see portrayed on her Great Seal.
The art of starching, though known to the manufacturers of Flanders, did
not reach England until 1564, when the Queen first set up a coach. Her
coachman, named Gwyllam Boenen, was a Dutchman; his wife understood the art
of starching, a secret she seems exclusively to have possessed, and of
which the Queen availed herself until the arrival, some time after, of
Madame Dinghen van der Plasse, who, with her husband, came from Flanders
"for their better safeties,"[879] and set up as a clear-starcher in London.
"The most curious wives," says Stowe, "now made themselves ruffs of
cambric, and sent them to Madame Dinghen to be starched, who charged high
prices. After a time they made themselves ruffs of lawn, and thereupon
arose a general scoff, or by-word, that shortly they would make their ruffs
of spiders' webs." Mrs. Dinghen at last took their daughters as her pupils.
Her usual terms were from four to five pounds for teaching them to starch,
and one pound for the art of seething starch.[880] The nobility patronised
her, but the commonalty looked on her as the evil one, and called her
famous liquid "devil's broth."
To keep the ruff erect, bewired[881] and starched though it be, was a
troublesome affair--its falling a cause of agony to the wearer.
"Not so close, thy breath will draw my ruff,"
exclaims the fop. The tools used in starching and fluting {312}ruffs were
called setting-sticks, struts and poking-sticks: the two first were made of
wood or bone, the poking-stick of iron, and heated in the fire. By this
heated tool the fold acquired that accurate and seemly order which
constituted the beauty of this very preposterous attire. It was about the
year 1576, according to Stowe, the making of poking-sticks began. They
figure in the expenses of Elizabeth, who, in 1592, pays to her blacksmith,
one Thomas Larkin, "pro 2 de lez setting-stickes at 2s. 6d." the sum of
5s.[882]
We have frequent allusion to the article in the plays of the day:--[883]
"Your ruff must stand in print, and for that purpose, get poking-sticks
with fair long handles, lest they scorch your hands."[884]
Again, in _Laugh and Lie Down_--[885]
"There she sat with her poking-stick, stiffening a fall."
When the use of starch and poking-sticks had rendered the arrangement of a
ruff easy, the size began rapidly to increase. "Both men and women wore
them intolerably large, being a quarter of a yard deep, and twelve lengths
in a ruff."[886] In London this fashion was termed the French ruff; in
France, on the other hand, it was called "the English monster."[887] Queen
Elizabeth wore hers higher and stiffer than anyone in Europe, save the
Queen of Navarre, for she had a "yellow throat," and was desirous to
conceal it.[888] Woe betide any fair lady of the court who dared let her
white skin appear uncovered in the presence of majesty. Her ruffs were made
of the finest cut-work, enriched with gold, silver, and even precious
stones. Though she consumed endless yards of cut-work, purle, needlework
lace, bone lace of gold, of silver, enriched with pearls, and bugles,
{313}and spangles in the fabrication of the "three-piled ruff,"[889] she by
no means extended such liberty to her subjects, for she selected grave
citizens and placed them at every gate of the city to cut the ruffs if they
exceeded the prescribed depth. These "pillars of pride" form a numerous
item among the New Year's Gifts. Each lady seems to have racked her brain
to invent some novelty as yet unheard of to gratify the Queen's vanity. On
the new year 1559-60, the Countess of Worcester offers a ruff of lawn
cut-work set with twenty small knots like mullets, garnished with small
sparks of rubies and pearls.[890]
The cut-work ruff is decorated or enriched with ornament of every
description. Nothing could be too gorgeous or too extravagant.[891] Great
was the wrath of old Philip Stubbes[892] at these monstrosities, which,
standing out a quarter of a yard or more, "if Æolus with his blasts or
Neptune with his stormes chaunce to hit upon the crazie bark or their
bruised ruffes, then they goe flip flap in the winde like ragges that flew
abroade, lying upon their shoulders like the dishclout of a slut. But wot
ye what? the devill, as he, in the fulnesse of his malice, first invented
these great ruffes," etc., with a great deal more, which, as it comes
rather under the head of costume than lace, we omit, as foreign to our
subject.
Lace has always been made of human hair, and of this we have frequent
mention in the expenses of Queen Elizabeth. We believe the invention to be
far older than her reign, for there is frequent allusion to it in the early
romaunces. In the _Chevalier aux ij Epées_ (MS. Bib. Nat.), a lady requires
of King Ris that he should present her with a mantle fringed with the
beards of nine conquered kings, and hemmed with that of King Arthur, who
was yet to conquer. The mantle is to have "de sa barbe le tassel." {314}The
entries of Elizabeth, however, are of a less heroic nature; and though we
are well aware it was the custom of old ladies to weave into lace their
silver-grey locks, and much as the fashion of hair bracelets and chains
prevails, in Queen Elizabeth's case, setting aside all sentiment, we cannot
help fancying the "laquei fact' de crine brayded cum lez risinge
puffs,"[893] as well as the "devices fact' de crine similiter les scallop
shells,"[894] to have been nothing more than "stuffings"--false additions,
to swell the majesty of the royal "pirrywygge."
That point tresse, as this hair-lace is called, was known in her day, we
have evidence in the Chartley inventory of Mary Stuart, in which is
mentioned, "Un petit quarré fait à point tresse ouvré par la vieille
Comtesse de Lennox elle estant à la Tour"; a tribute of affection the old
countess would scarcely have offered to her daughter-in-law had she
regarded her as implicated in the murder of her son. The writer saw at
Chantilly an aged lace-maker employed in making a lace ground of hair on
the pillow, used, she was informed, by wig-makers to give the parting of
the hair; but the fabric must be identical with the point tresse sent by
the mother of Darnley to the Queen of Scots. Point tresse, when made out of
the hair of aged people, is occasionally to be met with on the Continent,
where, from its rarity, it fetches a high price. Some districts gained a
reputation for their work, according to Turner:--"And Bedford's matrons
wove their snowy locks." It may be detected by the glittering of the hair
when held up to catch the sunbeams, or by frizzing when exposed to the test
of fire, instead of blazing.
With this mention of point tresse we conclude the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
{315}CHAPTER XXIV.
JAMES I. TO THE RESTORATION.
----
JAMES I.
"Now up aloft I mount unto the Ruffe,
Which into foolish mortals pride doth puffe;
Yet Ruffe's antiquity is here but small:
Within these eighty years not one at all.
For the 8th Henry, as I understand,
Was the first king that ever wore a Band,
And but a falling band plaine with a hem,
All other people knew no use of them."
Taylor, "Water-Poet." 1640.
The ruff single, double, three piled, and Dædalian,[895] to the delight of
the satirists, retained its sway during the early days of King James I. It
was the "commode" of the eighteenth--the crinoline of the nineteenth
century. Every play teems with allusions to this monstrosity. One compares
it to
"A pinched lanthorn
Which schoolboys made in winter;"[896]
while a second[897] talks of a
"Starched ruff, like a new pigeon-house."
The lover, in the play of the _Antiquary_,[898] complains to his mistress
in pathetic terms--
"Do you not remember how you fooled me, and set me to pin pleats in your
ruff two hours together?"
{316}Stubbes stood not alone in his anathemas. The dignitaries of the
Church of England waxed wroth, and violent were their pulpit invectives.
"Fashion," emphatically preached John King,[899] Bishop of London, "has
brought in deep ruffs[900] and shallow ruffs, thick ruffs and thin ruffs,
double ruffs and no ruffs. When the Judge of quick and dead shall appear,
he will not know those who have so defaced the fashion he hath created."
The Bishop of Exeter, too, Joseph Hall, a good man, but no prophet, little
wotting how lace-making would furnish bread and comfort to the women of his
own diocese for centuries to come, in a sermon preached at the Spitel,
after a long vituperation against its profaneness, concludes with these
words: "But if none of our persuasions can prevail, hear this, ye garish
popinjays of our time, if ye will not be ashamed to clothe yourselves after
this shameless fashion, Heaven shall clothe you with shame and confusion.
Hear this, ye plaister-faced Jezabels, if ye will not leave your daubs and
your washes, Heaven will one day wash them off with fire and brimstone."
Whether these denunciations had the effect of lessening the ruffs we know
not; probably it only rendered them more exaggerated.
Of these offending adjuncts to the toilet of both sexes we have fine
illustrations in the paintings of the day, as well as in the monuments of
our cathedrals and churches.[901] They were composed of the finest
geometric lace, such as we see portrayed in the works of Vinciolo and
others. The artists of the day took particular pleasure in depicting them
with the most exquisite minuteness.
These ruffs must have proved expensive for the wearer, though in James I.'s
time, as Ben Jonson has it, men thought little of "turning four or five
hundred acres of their best land into two or three trunks of apparel."[902]
According to the Wardrobe Accounts,[903] "twenty-five yards of fyne bone
lace" was required to edge a ruff, without counting the ground, composed
either of lace squares or cut-work. Queen Anne, his consort, pays £5 for
her wrought ruff, for "shewing" which eighteen yards of fine lace are
purchased at 5s. 8d.[904]
PLATE LXXIX.
[Illustration: MARY SIDNEY, COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE, IN 1614.
1555?--1621.--Probably by Marc Gheeraedts. National Portrait Gallery.
Photo by Walker and Cockerell.]
_To face page 316._
{317}The ruffs of the City ladye were kept downe by the old sumptuary law
of Elizabeth.
"See, now, that you have not your 'city ruff' on, Mistress Sue," says
Mistress Simple in the _City Match_.[905]