Women of England

by Bartlett Burleigh James

And many a pilowe, and every bere (pillow cover)

Of clothe of Raines to slepe on softe;

Him thare (need) not to turnen ofte."

This description of a bed in the latter part of the fourteenth century holds good for the succeeding century, although the bed increased in luxuriousness of hangings. Feather beds and bed covers are frequently mentioned in the bequests of the times; by their description, they show the increase in the comfort and richness of beds, and, by their mention in wills, the value that was placed upon them. With the increase of privacy which the bedchambers afforded at this time, the practice of several people sleeping in the same room was less general.

The women of the manor house, who may be regarded as succeeding the women of the castles, were notable for their intelligence, purity, and good sense, as revealed to us by the letters and literature of the times. Their features, as depicted in illustrations, give evidence of refinement and culture as well as beauty; to these attractions was added that of graceful carriage. Although their dresses fitted closely to the figure, tight lacing had not yet become the custom. Paris was then, as now, the glass of fashion for the women of Europe, and the English woman considered her form to approach perfection the more nearly as it conformed to the model established in France. At this period, the ladies were given to similar extremes of dress and adornment to those which have furnished an indictment against them since fashion first held sway over the feminine mind. All classes of society were influenced by the all-important matter of style, and the women of each grade of the social scale found their chief contentment in copying the manners and dress of those above them. Earlier we found occasion to notice, in brief, the sumptuary legislation by which it was sought to limit extravagances in fashion; but the laws have yet to be framed which can serve permanently to control woman's desires. So that we shall, perforce, have to continue our discussion of the evolution—or as the moralists of the Middle Ages would have expressed it, if they had possessed the facility of verbal coinage which is common enough with us, the "devilution"—of woman's attire, just as though law had never attempted its regulation.

The intricacies of the women's coiffure were many. The practice of dyeing the hair or otherwise altering its color is of ancient date. Among the Saxons and Normans it seems to have been confined to the men, for during those periods the women kept their heads so completely covered that there was no inducement for them to resort to such practices; but at the time of which we are now treating the custom had some vogue among the ladies, although it does not appear to have become general until the reign of Elizabeth, when the ladies had reduced the art to such a nicety that they were able to produce various colors and, indeed, almost to change the substance of the hair itself:

"Lees she can make, that turn a hair that's old,

Or colour'd, into a hue of gold."

A religious writer of the fifteenth century, declaiming against the various adornments of the hair and the arts which were employed to stimulate its growth as well as alter its color, and against the practice of wearing false hair, says: "to all these absurdities, they add that of supplying the defects of their own hair, by partially or totally adopting the harvest of other heads." To point a moral, he then gravely relates an anecdote to the effect that during the time of a public procession at Paris, which had drawn a great multitude of people together, an ape leaped upon the head of a certain fine lady, and seizing her veil, tore it from her head; with it came her peruke of false hair, so that it was discovered by the crowd that her beautiful tresses were not her own; thus, by the very means to which she had resorted to attract the admiration of the beholders, she received their contempt and ridicule.

A preposterous form of headdress arose in the time of Henry IV. and became more exaggerated throughout the fifteenth century; this was styled the horned headdress. It began with a heart-shaped headdress, which rose higher on either side until, in the reign of Henry V., the points of the heart had become veritable horns. This ungraceful coiffure assumed all sorts of extravagant and absurd varieties. It became a favorite mark for the shafts of the satirists and the jests of the wits, to say nothing of themes for sermons; but the fair ladies, invulnerable to all such criticisms, were not to be deterred from indulging their pet follies. One of the first references to the prevailing style was that made by John de Meun in his poem called the Codical: "If I dare say it without making them [that is, the ladies] angry, I should dispraise their hosing, their vesture, their girding, their head-dresses, their hoods thrown back with their horns elevated and brought forward, as if it were to wound us. I know not whether they call them gallowses or brackets, that prop up the horns which they think are so handsome; but of this I am certain, that Saint Elizabeth obtained not Paradise by the wearing of such trumpery." But this style of hair dress was not made by the hair after all, but by the wimple, which was raised on either side of the head and supported by a frame or by pins. John de Meun flourished at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and had he lived in the fifteenth, when the horned headdress par excellence, made up of prongs of hair protruding forward from the forehead, was in vogue, he would have been still more aghast. These horns were carefully constructed with the aid of rolls of linen. Sometimes they had two long wings on either side, and received the name of "butterflies." The high, pointed cap which was worn was covered with a piece of fine lawn, which hung to the ground, and the greater part of which was tucked under the wearer's arm. By a writer of the day we are told that the ladies of the middle rank wore caps of cloth which consisted of several breadths or bands twisted round the head, with two wings on each side "like asses' ears." As one wanders through the mazes of description of the hair dress of the period, he is prepared to agree with the author to whom we have just referred, that "it is no easy matter to give a proper description in writing of the different fashions in the dresses of the ladies"; and so we shall submit the case in terms of still another writer's description; Philip Stubbs says: "Then followeth the trimming and tricking of their heads, in laying out their hair to the show; which, of force, must be curled, frizzled, and crisped, laid out in wreaths and borders, and from one ear to another; and, lest it should fall down, it is underpropped with forkes, wires, and I cannot tell what; then, on the edges of their bolstered hair, for it standeth crested round about their frontiers, and hanging over their faces, like pendices or vailes, with glass windows on every side, there is laide great wreathes of gold and silver, curiously wrought, and cunningly applied toe the temples of their heads; and, for feare of lacking anything to set forth their pride withal, at their hair thus wreathed and crested, are hanged bugles, I dare not say bables, ouches, ringes of gold, silver, glasses, and such other gew-gawes, which I, being unskillful in woman's tearmes, cannot easily recompt." He then discusses the "capital ornaments" upon the "toppes of these stately turrets," which he informs us consisted of a French hood, hat, cap, kerchief, and such like. He laments the fact that to such excesses did the fashions go, and so widely were the women influenced by them, "that every artificer's wife almost will not stike to goe in her hat of velvet every day; every merchant's wife, and meane gentlewoman, in their French hoods; and every poor cottager's daughter's daughter in her taffeta hat, or else wool at least, well lined with silk, velvet, or taffeta." He adds that they had other ornaments for the head, "made net-wise," and which he says he believes were termed "cawles," the object of this tinsel being to have the head with its ornaments glisten and shine like a mass of gold. He then dismisses with a word the "forked cappes" and "such like apish toyes of infinite variety."