If the nuns of the Anglo-Saxon times were given to gorgeousness, the clergy were not at all uninclined to dandyism. Boniface himself denounced those priests who wore broad studs and images of worms, as servants of Antichrist. Garments so adorned are looked upon by the descendants of this great Anglo-Saxon missionary as the undoubtedly original “M. B. coats.”
The Danes introduced fashions that sadly perplexed the simple tailors of all Anglia. The former, in the days of their paganism, were attired in garments as black as the raven which soared on their national standard. When they came to England they learned to surpass the Anglo-Saxons themselves in the gaiety of their apparel and manners. They even took to combing their hair once a day; became so effeminate as to wash weekly; and changed their body-linen, if not as often as they might, still more frequently than was their wont of old. “By these means,” says old Wallingford, “they pleased the eyes of the women, and frequently seduced the wives and daughters of the nobility.” Alas, that virtue should not be proof against even a half-washed seducer!
One of the greatest of the North Sea chieftains derived his name from his dress, and Ragner Lodbroch means Ralph Leatherbreeches. The Lethbridges of Somersetshire are said to be descendants from this worthy. They might go further in search of an ancestor and fare worse. Lodbroch delighted in blood and plunder; wine he drank by the quart; wealth he acquired by “right of might;” he believed in little, and feared even less. A family anxious to assert its nobility could hardly do better than hold fast by such a hero. Many a genealogical tree springs from a less illustrious root.
The submission with which England received laws of fashion from France is seen in the circumstance that even before the Conquest the English imported the “mode” from beyond Channel, and universally adopted it. This was the case both in speech and dress. The Saxon tongue became as mute at the court of Edward the Confessor as the Flemish language has around the throne of Leopold of Belgium. The respectable sires however of the period did not make themselves so “outlandish” in their garb as did their sons; yet when William tumbled on the sands at Pevensey, half the hostile array prepared to resist his coming, as well as those who looked on and awaited the course of events, were familiar with his form of speech and accustomed to his fashion of dress. The fact that when William was agitated he invariably occupied himself in lacing and untying his cloak, is at least as well worth knowing as that the great Coligny under similar circumstances used to insert two or three toothpicks into his mouth, and there champ them into pulp. Let us add, that the Normans shaved close and washed thoroughly; and the dirty Saxons might have found consolation in the circumstance that their throats were cut by cleanly gentlemen.
They were a costly people however, those Normans; and they not only ruined the Saxons, but themselves, by the extravagance of their dress, and the ever-varying fashions to which they bore an alacrity of allegiance. Some of our wealthiest men of Norman descent, or fancying themselves to be so, adopt in these days a fashion common enough in the period of the Norman Kings, wearing a plumed helm on parade for show, and a “wide-awake” elsewhere for comfort. The Normans even took the venerated smock-frock of the Saxons, and modifying it a little, and lining it with fur for the winter, they wore it as a surcoat over their armour, and called it by the name of bliaus. Any gentleman therefore who wears a blouse and a wide-awake may fancy himself, if he please, as being attired like a Norman knight. Well, in spite of the strength of his fancy and the sameness of the articles in question, he will be as little like to Norman cavalier “as I to Hercules.”
I have said that the Normans generally were remarkable for the splendour and variety of their costume; I may add that some of the Saxons were in no degree behind them. There is Becket, for instance, the champion of the Saxons and advocate of the Commons. When that remarkably humble man went on his famous progress to Paris, the rustics observed, as he rode meekly along, that the king of England must be a marvellous personage indeed, seeing that his Lord Chancellor looked more like a king on his throne than a traveller in the saddle. He was as stately in dress at home as abroad; and he never forgave King Henry for tearing from his shoulders his splendid new scarlet mantle lined with fur, to fling it to a shivering beggar at his side. Excellent practical lesson, it may be observed. Well, it assuredly was all the practical charity ever evinced by the king. And moreover it was inappropriate. We all laughed when the angelic Irving subscribed his gold watch to some benevolent fund; and we should feel no particular increase of respect for our Sovereign and the Lord Primate if they were to stand at Temple Bar, and the former were to distribute the wardrobe of the latter among the mendicants who pass beneath that hideously ridiculous arch.
Foppery in dress was at its height in the reign of Henry III., when men half-ruined themselves in order that they might dress in vestments of the magnificent material called cloth of Baldekins, or of Baldeck, the usually received term for Babylon. The rich Cyclas of this time were also named from the locality where the material was manufactured,—a custom common enough, as may be seen in the names Worsted, Blanket, Cambric, Diaper (d’Yprès), Bayonet, and many others. The general love of dress, and the wealth manifested by the grandeur of the latter, made Innocent IV. to speak of England as a “garden of delights,” and a “truly inexhaustible fountain of riches.” From this fountain his Holiness drank many a draught; and they who were compelled to supply it wished it might choke him. But Innocent made cheap compensation to England by conferring on it the signal honour of adopting its old national “wide-awake,” and after dyeing it red, conferring it on his Cardinals. The scarlet wide-awake was first worn at the Council of Lyons, in 1245. The Cardinals did not exhibit their accustomed vigilance when they permitted the fashion of this covering to glide from that of the wide-awake into that of the “broad-brim” of the Society of Friends. But perhaps it is because of its present fashion that Mr. Bright, who loves Russia and hates the press, has such respect for Rome and such welcome for her aggressions.
“Why do you not wear richer apparel?” once asked a familiar friend of Edward I. “Because,” said the sensible king, “I cannot be more estimable in fine than I am in simple clothing.” If the monarch had only shown as much sense in other matters, he would have been a more profitable king to the state, however little beneficial he may have been to tailors. It was, of course, the fashion now to be rather simply dressed; but there were occasional departures from the rule: such as when the young Prince Edward was invested as a knight, on which occasion the Temple Gardens were crowded with the young nobility, his “companions,” who assembled there to receive a magnificent distribution of purple robes, fine linen garments, and mantles woven with gold. The two latter were furnished by the merchant-tailors; and these, no doubt, blessed the donor as heartily as the trade would now do, were her Majesty to assemble the heirs and younger sons of Peers, have them measured in public, and dressed at her expense for the benefit of trade. There are many younger sons who would be as rejoiced thereat as the tailors themselves.
Old Kit Marlowe, and doubtless from good authority, has graphically described not only Edward the Second, but that fine gentleman, his favourite Gaveston. Of the latter he says:—