“Fashion has brought in deep ruffs and shallow ruffs, thick ruffs and thin ruffs, double ruffs and no ruffs. When the Judge of the quick and the dead shall appear he will not know those who have so defaced the fashion he hath created.”
—Sermon, JOHN KING, Bishop of London, 1590.
“Now up aloft I mount unto the Ruffe
Which into foolish Mortals pride doth puffe;
Yet Ruffe’s antiquitie is here but small—
Within these eighty Tears not one at all
For the 8th Henry, as I understand
Was the first King that ever wore a Band
And but a Falling Band, plaine with a Hem
All other people know no use of them.”
—“The Prayse of Clean Linnen,” JOHN TAYLOR, the “Water Poet,” 1640.
CHAPTER VI
RUFFS AND BANDS
e have in this poem of the old “Water Poet” a definite statement of the date of the introduction of ruffs for English wear. We are afforded in the portraiture given in this book ample proof of the fall of the ruff.
A Bowdoin Portrait.
Like many of the most striking fashions of olden times, the ruff was Spanish. French gentlemen had worn frills or ruffs about 1540; soon after, these appeared in England; by the date of Elizabeth’s accession the ruff had become the most imposing article of English men’s and women’s dress. It was worn exclusively by fine folk; for it was too frail and too costly for the common wear of the common people, though lawn ruffs were seen on many of low degree. A ruff such as was worn by a courtier contained eighteen or nineteen yards of fine linen lawn. A quarter of a yard wide was the fashionable width in England. Ruffs were carefully pleated in triple box-plaits as shown in the Bowdoin portrait [here]. Then they were bound with a firm neck-binding.