A CROMWELLIAN MAN (1649-1660)
Notice the careful plainness of his dress, and his very wide-topped boots.
The women dressed their hair more plainly, the less serious retained the little bunches of side curls, but the others smoothed their hair away under linen caps or black hoods tied under their chins. Another thing the women did was to cut from their bodices all the little strips but the one in the middle of the back, and this they left, like a tail, behind. Some, of course, dressed as before with the difference in colour and in ornament that made for severity. It had an effect on the country insomuch as the country people ceased to be extravagant in the materials for garments and in many like ways, and so lay by good fortunes for their families—these families coming later into the gay court of Charles II. had all the more to lavish on the follies of his fashions.
The Puritan is as well-known a figure as any in history; an intelligent child could draw you a picture or describe you a Puritan as well as he could describe the Noah of Noah’s Ark. He has become part of the stock for an Academy humourist, a thousand anecdote pictures have been painted of him; very often his nose is red, generally he has a book in his hand, laughing maids bring him jacks of ale, jeering Cavaliers swagger past him: his black cloak, board shoes, wide Geneva bands are as much part of our national picture as Punch or Harlequin.
A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF THE CROMWELLS (1649-1660)