i. _Pre-Roman and Roman Britain._--Men who had found better clothing
than the skins of beasts were in Britain when Caesar landed. Little as
we know of England before the English, we have at least the knowledge
that Britons, other than the poorer and wilder sort of the north and the
fens, wore cloaks and hats, sleeved coats whose skirts were cut above
the knee and loose trousers after the fashion of the Gauls. They were
not an armoured race, for they would commonly fight naked to the waist,
dreadful with tattooing and woad staining, but Pliny describes their
close-woven felts as all but sword-proof. Dyers as well as weavers,
their cloaks, squares of cloth like a Highland plaid, were of black or
blue, rough on the one side, while coats and trousers were bright
coloured, striped and checkered, red being the favourite hue. For
ornament the British chiefs wore golden torques about their necks and
golden arm-rings with brooches and pins of metal or ivory, beads of
brass, of jet and amber from their own coasts, and of glass bought of
the Southern merchants. Their women had gowns to the ankle, with shorter
tunics above them. The Druid bards had their vestments of blue, while
the star-gazers and leeches went in green.
Agricola's Romanizing work must have made great changes in dress as in
policy. The British chief with the Latin tongue in his mouth, living in
a Roman villa and taking his bath as did the Romans, wore the white
woollen toga and the linen tunic, his wife having the stole, the pall
and the veil.
[Illustration: FIG. 25.--Old English Dress. From the Benedictional of St
AEthelwold (c. 963-984).]
[Illustration: FIG. 26.--The Blessed Virgin. From the Benedictional of
St AEthelwold (c. 963-984).]
Before the Conquest.
ii. _Old English Dress._--The skill of their artists gives us many
accurate pictures of the dress of the English before the Norman
Conquest, the simple dress of a nation whose men fight, hunt and plough.
The man's chief garment is a sleeved tunic hanging to the knee,
generally open at the side from hip to hem and in front from the throat
to the breast. Sleeves cut loosely above the elbow are close at the
forearm. The legs are in hose like a Highlander's or in long breeches
bandaged or cross-gartered below the knee. A short mantle to the calf is
brooched at the shoulder or breast (fig. 25). There are long gowns and
toga-like cloaks, but these as a rule seem garments for the old man of
rank. In the open air the cloak is often pulled over the head, for hats
and caps are rare, the Phrygian bonnet being the commonest form. Girdles
of folded cloth gather the loose tunic at the waist. Most paintings show
the ankle shoe as black, cut with a pointed tab before and behind, the
soles being sometimes of wood like the sole of the Lancashire clog of
our own days. A nobleman will have his shoes embroidered with silks or
coloured yarns, and the like decoration for the hem and collar of his
tunic. Poor men wear little but the tunic, often going barelegged,
although the hinds in the well-known pictures of the twelve months have
shoes, and the shepherd as he watches his flock covers himself with a
cloak. In every graveyard of the old English we find the brooches,
armlets, rings and pins of a people loving jewelry. Women wore a long
gown covering the feet, the loose sleeves sometimes hanging over the
hands to the knee. Over this there is often a shorter tunic with short
sleeves. Their mantles were short or long, the hood or head rail wrapped
round the chin (fig. 26). In broidery and ornament the women's dress
matched that of the men. The Danes, warriors of the sea, soon took the
English habit, becoming notable for their many changes of gay clothing.