All the early colonial inventories of wearing-apparel contain doublets. Richard Sawyer died in 1648 in Windsor, Connecticut; he was a plain average “Goodman Citizen.” A part of his apparel was thus inventoried:—
| £; | s. | d. | |
| 1 musck-colour’d cloth doublitt &; breeches | 1 | ||
| 1 bucks leather doublitt | 12 | ||
| 1 calves leather doublitt | 6 | ||
| 1 liver-colour’d doublitt &; jacket &; breeches | 7 | ||
| 1 haire-colour’d doublitt &; jackett &; breeches | 5 | ||
| 1 paire canvas drawers | 1 | 6 | |
| 1 olde coate. 1 paire old gray breeches | 5 | ||
| 1 stuffe jackett | 2 | 6 |
William Kempe of “Duxborrow,” a settler of importance, died in 1641. His wardrobe was more varied, and ample and rich. He left two buff-coats and leather doublets with silver buttons; cloth doublets, three horsemen’s coats, “frize jerkines,” three cassocks, two cloaks.
Of course we turn to Stubbes to see what he can say for or against doublets. His outcry here is against their size; and those who know the “great pease-cod-bellied doublets” of Elizabeth’s day will agree with him that they look as if a man were wholly gone to “gourmandice and gluttonie.”
A Doublet.
Stubbes has a very good list of coats and jerkins in which he gives incidentally an excellent description by which we may know a mandillion:—
“Their coates and jerkins as they be diuers in colours so be they diuers in fashions; for some be made with collars, some without, some close to the body, some loose, which they call mandilians, couering the whole body down to the thigh, like bags or sacks, that were drawne ouer them, hiding the dimensions and lineaments of the body. Some are buttoned down the breast, some vnder the arme, and some down the backe, some with flaps over the brest, some without, some with great sleeves, some with small, some with none at all, some pleated and crested behind and curiously gathered and some not.”
An old satirical print, dated 1644, gives drawings of men of all the new varieties of religious belief and practices which “pestered Christians” at the beginning of the century. With the exception of the Adamite, whose garb is that of Adam in the Garden of Eden, all ten wear doublets. These vary slightly, much less than in Stubbes’s list of jerkins. One is open up the back with buttons and button-loops. Another has the “four laps on a side,” showing it is a jerkin. Another is opened on the hips; one is slit at back and hips. All save one from neck to hem are buttoned in front with a single row of buttons, with no lapells, collar, or cuffs, and no “flaps,” no ornaments or trimming. A linen shirt-cuff and a plain band finish sleeves and neck of all save the Arminian, who wears a small ruff. Not one of these doublets is a graceful or an elegant garment. All are shapeless and over-plain; and have none of the French smartness that came from the spreading coat-skirts of men’s later wear.