The gowns themselves, though retaining the same appearance as before, full skirts, no trains, big sleeves, and split to show the under-gown, have the top part of the gown covering the bosom made of a separate material, as, for instance, a gown of fine cloth will have collar and yoke of velvet.
Women wear neat linen caps, made very plain and close to the head, with small ear-pieces.
On the shoulders there is a fashion of wearing kerchiefs of linen or silk, white as a rule; white, in fact, is frequently used for dresses, both for men and women.
The custom of carrying small posies of flowers comes in, and it is interesting to see the Queen, in her portrait by Antonio More, carrying a bunch of violets arranged exactly as the penny bunches sold now in our streets.
There was, in most dresses, a great profusion of gold buttons, and the wearing of gold chains was common—in fact, a gold chain about the neck for a man, and a gold chain girdle for a woman, were part of the ordinary everyday dress.
You will realize that to one born in the reign of Henry VIII. the appearance of people now was very different, and, to anyone as far away as we are now, the intervening reigns of Edward and Mary are interesting as showing the wonderful quiet change that could take place in those few years, and alter man’s exterior from the appearance of a playing-card, stiff, square, blob-footed, to the doublet and hose person with a cart-wheel of a ruff, which recalls to us Elizabethan dress.
