“The Women also have doublets and Jerkins as men have, buttoned up the brest, and made with Wings, Welts and Pinions on shoulder points as men’s apparell is for all the world, &; though this be a kind of attire appropriate only to Man yet they blush not to wear it.”

Anne Hibbins, the witch, had a black satin doublet among other substantial attire.

A fellow-barrister of Governor John Winthrop, Sergeant Erasmus Earle, a most uxorious husband, was writing love-letters to his wife Frances, who lived out of London, at the same time that Winthrop was writing to Margaret Winthrop. Earle was much concerned over a certain doublet he had ordered for his wife. He had bought the blue bayes for this garment in two pieces, and he could not decide whether the shorter piece should go into the sleeve or the body, whether it should have skirts or not. If it did not, then he had bought too much silver lace, which troubled him sorely.

Margaret Winthrop had better instincts; to her husband’s query as to sending trimming for her doublet and gown, she answers, “When I see the cloth I will send word what trimming will serve;” and she writes to London, insisting on “the civilest fashion now in use,” and for Sister Downing, who is still in England, to give Tailor Smith directions “that he may make it the better.” Mr. Smith sent scissors and a hundred needles and the like homely gifts across seas as “tokens” to various members of the Winthrop household, showing his friendly intimacy with them all. For many years after America was settled we find no evidence that women’s garments were ever made by mantua-makers. All the bills which exist are from tailors. One of William Sweatland for work done for Jonathan Corwin of Salem is in the library of the American Antiquarian Society:—

£s.d.
“Sept. 29, 1679. To plaiting a gown for Mrs.36
To makeing a Childs Coat6
To makeing a Scarlet petticoat with Silver Lace for Mrs.9
For new makeing a plush somar for Mrs.6
Dec. 22, 1679. For makeing a somar for your Maide10
Mar. 10, 1679. To a yard of Callico2
To 1 Douzen and 1/2 of silver buttons16
To Thread4
To makeing a broad cloth hatte14
To makeing a haire Camcottcoat9
To makeing new halfsleeves to a silk Coascett1
March 25. To altering and fitting a paire of Stays for Mrs1
Ap. 2, 1680, to makeing a Gowne for ye Maide10
May 20. For removing buttons of yr coat.6
Juli 25, 1630. For makeing two Hatts and Jacketts for your two sonnes19
Aug. 14. To makeing a white Scarsonnett plaited Gowne for Mrs8
To makeing a black broad cloth Coat for yourselfe9
Sept. 3, 1868. To makeing a Silke Laced Gowne for Mrs18
Oct. 7, 1860, to makeing a Young Childs Coate4
To faceing your Owne Coat Sleeves1
To new plaiting a petty Coat for Mrs16
Nov. 7. To makeing a black broad Cloth Gowne for Mrs18
Feb. 26, 1680-1. To Searing a Petty Coat for Mrs6
—-—-—-
Sum is, £;8 4s.10d.”

From many bills and inventories we learn that the time of the settlement of Plymouth and Boston reached a transitional period in women’s dress as it did in men’s. Mrs. Winthrop had doublets as had Governor Winthrop, but I think her daughter wore gowns when her sons wore coats. The doublet for a woman was shaped like that of a man, and was of double thickness like a man’s. It might be sleeveless, with a row of welts or wings around the armhole; or if it had sleeves the welts, or a roll or cap, still remained. The trimming of the arm-scye was universal, both for men and women. A fuller description of the doublet than has ever before been written will be given in the chapter upon the Evolution of the Coat. The “somar” which is the samare, named also in the bill of the Salem tailor, seems to have been a Dutch garment, and was so much worn in New York that I prefer to write of it in the following chapter. We are then left with the gown; the gown which took definite shape in Elizabeth’s day. Of course no one could describe it like Stubbes. I frankly confess my inability to approach him. Read his words, so concise yet full of color and conveying detail; I protest it is wonderful.

“Their Gowns be no less famous, some of silk velvet grogram taffety fine cloth of forty shillings a yard. But if the whole gown be not silke or velvet then the same shall be layed with lace two or three fingers broade all over the gowne or the most parte. Or if not so (as Lace is not fine enough sometimes) then it must be garded with great gardes of costly Lace, and as these gowns be of sundry colours so they be of divers fashions changing with the Moon. Some with sleeves hanging down to their skirts, trayling on the ground, and cast over the shoulders like a cow’s tayle. These have sleeves much shorter, cut up the arme, and pointed with Silke-ribons very gallantly tyed with true loves knottes—(for soe they call them). Some have capes fastened down to the middist of their backs, faced with velvet or else with some fine wrought silk Taffeetie at the least, and fringed about Bravely, and (to sum up all in a word) some are pleated and ryveled down the back wonderfully with more knacks than I can declare.”

The guards of lace a finger broad laid on over the seams of the gown are described by Pepys in his day. He had some of these guards of gold lace taken from the seams of one of his wife’s old gowns to overlay the seams of one of his own cassocks and rig it up for wear, just as he took his wife’s old muff, like a thrifty husband, and bought her a new muff, like a kind one. Not such a domestic frugalist was he, though, as his contemporary, the great political economist, Dudley North, Baron Guildford, Lord Sheriff of London, who loved to sit with his wife ripping off the old guards of lace from her gown, “unpicking” her gown, he called it, and was not at all secret about it. Both men walked abroad to survey the gems and guards worn by their neighbors’ wives, and to bring home word of new stuffs, new trimmings, to their own wives. Really a seventeenth-century husband was not so bad. Note in my Life of Margaret Winthrop how Winthrop’s fellow-barrister, Sergeant Erasmus Earle, bought camlet and lace, and patterns for doublets for his wife Frances Fontayne, and ran from London clothier to London mantua-maker, and then to London haberdasher and London tailor, to learn the newest weaves of cloth, the newest drawing in of the sleeves. I know no nineteenth-century husband of that name who would hunt materials and sleeve patterns, and buy doublet laces and find gown-guards for his wife. And then the gown sleeves! What a description by Stubbes of the virago-sleeve “tied in and knotted with silk ribbons in love-knots!” It is all wonderful to read.

We learn from these tailors’ bills that tailors’ work embraced far more articles than to-day; in the Orbis Sensualium Pictus, 1659, a tailor’s shop has hanging upon the wall woollen hats, breeches, waistcoats, jackets, women’s cloaks, and petticoats. There are also either long hose or lasts for stretching hose, for they made stockings, leggins, gaiters, buskins; also a number of boxes which look like muff-boxes. One tailor at work is seated upon a platform raised about a foot from the floor. His seat is a curious bench with two legs about two feet long and two about one foot long. The base of the two long legs are on the floor, the other two set upon the platform. The tailor’s feet are on the platform, thus his work is held well up before his face. Sometimes his legs are crossed upon the platform in front of him. The platform was necessary, or, at any rate, advisable for another reason. The habits of Englishmen at that time, their manners and customs, I mean, were not tidy; and floors were very dirty. Any garment resting on the floor would have been too soiled for a gentleman’s wear before it was donned at all.

I have discovered one thing about old-time tailors,—they were just as trying as their successors, and had as many tricks of trade. A writer in 1582 says, “If a tailor makes your gown too little, he covers his fault with a broad stomacher; if too great, with a number of pleats; if too short, with a fine guard; if too long with a false gathering.”