The jack-boots of Stuart days seem absolutely imperishable. They are of black, jacked leather like the leather bottles and black-jacks from which Englishmen drank their ale. So closely are they alike that I do not wonder a French traveller wrote home that Englishmen drank from their boots. These jack-boots were as solid and unpliable as iron, square-toed and clumsy of shape. A pair in perfect preservation which belonged to Lord Fairfax in Virginia is portrayed [here]. Had all colonial gentlemen worn jack-boots, the bootmakers and shoemakers would have been ruined, for a pair would last a lifetime.

Shoe and Knee Buckles.

In 1767 we find William Cabell of Virginia paying these prices for his finery:—

£s.d.
1 Pair single channelled boots with straps 1 2
1 Pair Strong Buckskin Breeches1 10
2 Pairs Fashionable Chain Silver Spurs 2 10
1 Pair Silver Buttons 6
1 fine Magazine Blue Cloth Housing laced12
1 Strong Double Bridle4 6
6 Pair Men’s fine Silk Hose 4 4
Buttons &; trimmings for a coat 5 2

New England dandies wore, as did Monsieur A-la-mode:—

“A pair of smart pumps made up of grain’d leather,
So thin he can’t venture to tread on a feather.”

Buckles were made of pinchbeck, an alloy of four parts of copper and one part of zinc, invented by Christopher Pinchbeck, a London watchmaker of the eighteenth century. Buckles were also “plaited” and double “plaited” with gold and silver (which was the general spelling of plated). Plated buckles were cast in pinchbeck, with a pattern on the surface. A silver coating was laid over this. These buckles were set with marcasite, garnet, and paste jewels; sometimes they were of gold with real diamonds. But much imitation jewellery was worn by all people even of great wealth. Perhaps imitation is an incorrect word. The old paste jewels made no assertion of being diamonds. Steel cut in facets and combined with gold, made beautiful buckles. A number of rich shoe and garter buckles, owned in Salem, are shown [here].

These old buckles were handsome, costly, dignified; they were becoming; they were elegant. Nevertheless, the fashionable world tired of its expensive and appropriate buckles; they suddenly were deemed inconveniently large, and plain shoe-strings took their place. This caused great commotion and ruin among the buckle-makers, who, with the fatuity of other tradespeople—the wig-makers, the hair-powder makers—in like calamitous changes of fashion, petitioned the Prince of Wales, in 1791, to do something to revive their vanishing trade. But it was like placing King Canute against the advancing waves of the sea.