John Lilburne.
Pinched sleeves, pinched partlets, pinched shirts, pinched wimples, pinched ruffs, are often referred to, all washable garments. The good wife of Bath wore a wimple which was “y-pinched full seemly.” Henry VIII wore a pinched habit-shirt of finest lawn, and his fine, healthy skin glowed pink through the folds of the lawn after his hearty exercise at tennis and all kinds of athletic sports, for which he had thrown off his doublet. We are taught to deem him “a spot of grease and blood on England’s page.” There was more muscle than fat in him; he could not be restrained from constant, violent, dangerous exercise; this was one of the causes of the admiration of his subjects.
The pinched partlet made a fine undergarment for the slashed doublet.
So full, so close, were these “pinchings,” that one author complained that men wearing them could not draw their bowstrings well. It was said that the “pinched partlet and puffed sleeves” of a courtier would easily make a lad a doublet and cloak.
In my chapter on Children’s Dress I tell of the pinched shirt worn by Governor Bradford when an infant, and give an illustration of it.
Aglets or tags were a pretty fashion revived for women’s wear three years ago. Under Stuart reign, these aglets were of gold or silver, and set with precious stones such as pear-shaped pearls. For ordinary wear they were of metal, silk, or leather. They secured from untwisting or ravelling the points which were worn for over a century; these were ties or laces of ribbon, or woollen yarn or leather, decorated with tags or aglets at one end. Points were often home-woven, and were deemed a pretty gift to a friend. They were employed instead of buttons in securing clothes, and were used by the earliest settlers, chiefly, I think, as ornaments at the knee or for holding up the stockings in the place of garters. They were regarded as but foolish vanities, and were one of the articles of finery tabooed in early sumptuary laws. In 1651 the general court of Massachusetts expressed its “utter detestation and dislike that men of meane condition, education and calling should take upon them the garbe of gentlemen by the wearinge of poynts at the knees.” Fashion was more powerful than law; the richly trimmed, sashlike garters quickly displaced the modest points.
The Earl of Southampton, friend of Shakespere and of Virginia, as pictured on a later page, wears a doublet with agletted points around his belt, by which breeches and doublet are tied together. This is a striking portrait. The face is very noble. A similar belt was the favorite wear of Charles I.
Martin Frobisher, the hero of the Armada, wears a jerkin fastened down the front with buttons and aigletted points. (See [here].) I suppose, when the fronts of the jerkin were thoroughly joined, each button had a point twisted or tied around it. Frobisher’s lawn ruff is a modest and becoming one. This portrait in the original is full length. The remainder of the costume is very plain; it has no garters, no knee-points, no ribbons, no shoe-roses. The foot-covering is Turkish slippers precisely like the Oriental slippers which are imported to-day.
The Earl of Morton ([here]) wore a jerkin of buff leather curiously pinked and slashed. Fulke Greville’s doublet ([here]) has a singular puff around the waist, like a farthingale.[Here] is shown a doublet of the commonest form; this is worn by Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devonshire. The portrait is painted by Sir Antonio More—the portrait of one artist by another, and a very fine one, too.
Another garment, which is constantly named in lists of clothing, was the cassock. Steevens says a cassock “signifies a horseman’s loose coat, and is used in that sense by the writers of the age of Shakespere.” It was apparently a garment much like a doublet or jerkin, and the names were used interchangeably. I think the cassock was longer than the doublet, and without “laps.” The straight, long coats shown on the gentlemen in the picture [here] were cassocks. The name finally became applied only to the coat or gown of the clergy. In the will of Robert Saltonstall, made in 1650, he names a “Plush Cassock,” but cloth cassocks were the commonest wear.