Sir Walter Raleigh and Son.
His laced-in, stiffened waist, his absurd breeches, his ruffs and sashes and knots, his great shoe-roses, his jewelled hatband, make this a fantastic picture, one of little dignity, though of vast cost. The jewels on his shoes were said to have cost thirty thousand pounds; and the perfect pearls in his ear, as seen in another portrait, must have been an inch and a half long. He had doublets entirely covered with a pattern of jewels. In another portrait ([here]) his little son, poor child, stands by his side in similar stiff attire. The famous portrait of Sir Philip Sidney and his brother is equally comic in its absurdity of costume for young lads.
Read these words descriptive of another courtier, of the reign of James; his favorite, the Duke of Buckingham:—
“With great buttons of diamonds, and with diamond hat bands, cockades and ear-rings, yoked with great and manifold knots of pearls. At his going over to Paris in 1625 he had twenty-seven suits of clothes made the richest that embroidery, gems, lace, silk, velvet, gold and stones could contribute; one of which was a white uncut velvet set all over suit and cloak with diamonds valued at £14,000 besides a great feather stuck all over with diamonds, as were also his sword, girdle, hat-band and spurs.”
These were all courtiers, but we should in general think of an English merchant as dressed richly but plainly; yet here is the dress of Marmaduke Rawdon, a merchant of that day:—
“The apparell he rid in, with his chaine of gold and hat band was vallued in a thousand Spanish ducats; being two hundred and seventy and five pounds sterling. His hatband was of esmeralds set in gold; his suite was of a fine cloth trim’d with a small silke and gold fringe; the buttons of his suite fine gold—goldsmith’s work; his rapier and dagger richly hatcht with gold.”
The white velvet dress of Buckingham showed one of the extreme fashions of the day, the wearing of pure white. Horace Walpole had a full-length painting of Lord Falkland all in white save his black gloves. Another of Sir Godfrey Hart, 1600, is all in white save scarlet heels to the shoes. These scarlet heels were worn long in every court. Who will ever forget their clatter in the pages of Saint Simon, as they ran in frantic haste through hall and corridor—in terror, in cupidity, in satisfaction, in zeal to curry favor, in desire to herald the news, in hope to obtain office, in every mean and detestable spirit—ran from the bedside of the dying king? We can still hear, after two centuries, the noisy, heartless tapping of those hurrying red heels.
Robert Devereux