GLOVE OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS
Formerly judges were forbidden to wear gloves when engaged in their official duties, but are no longer bound by this restriction, and receive as a memorial of a maiden assize (that is, when there are no prisoners to be tried) a pair of white kid gloves from the sheriff, and during the time fairs were held their duration was marked by hanging a glove outside the town hall. As long as it remained there all persons in the place were exempt from arrest, but directly it was removed it was the signal for closing the fair, and the privilege was at an end.
Throwing down a glove was regarded as a challenge to combat, and this curious old custom is still retained in the English coronation ceremony. Kings were also invested with authority by the delivery of a glove. As un gage d'amour it has for centuries been esteemed, and in the days of chivalry it was usual for knights to wear their ladies' gloves in their helmets, as a talisman of success in arms. In old records we also meet with the term "glove money," a sum paid to servants with which they were to provide this portion of their livery, and till quite recently it was the custom to present those who attended weddings and funerals with gloves as a souvenir.
Shakespeare often mentions gloves, and some assert that he was the son of a glover. A pair which belonged to the dramatist is still preserved. They are of brown leather, ornamented with a stamped pattern, and are edged with gold fringe. They were presented by the actor Garrick to the Mayor and Corporation of Stratford-on-Avon at the Shakespearian commemoration in 1789.
GLOVE OF QUEEN ELIZABETH.
Many royal gloves have found a place in private collections. Henry VI.'s glove has a gauntlet, is made of tanned leather, and is lined with deer-skin, and the hawking glove of Henry VIII. is another interesting relic of a bygone age. The King kept his hawks at Charing Cross, and in the inventories taken after this monarch's death we read of "three payre of hawkes' gloves, with two lined with velvet;" and again at Hampton Court there were "seven hawkes' gloves embroidered." The hawking glove, of which an illustration is given, may be seen in the Ashmolean Museum. It is of a simple character, evidently intended for use rather than ornament.
Gloves were not generally worn by women till after the Reformation; but during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries their use gradually extended to the middle classes. Queen Elizabeth's glove may be seen at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and is believed to have been worn at the visit of the Virgin Queen to the University in 1566. It is fringed with gold, and is nearly half a yard in length; it is made of white leather worked with gold thread, and the cuff is lined with drab silk. Mary Queen of Scots' glove in the Saffron Walden Museum is of light buff leather, wrought with silver wire and silk of different colours. It is lined with crimson satin, edged with gold lace enriched with sequins, and the opening is connected with bands of satin finished with lace insertion. This glove was presented on the morning of her execution to a member of the Dayrell family, who was in attendance at Fotheringay Castle. In happier days Queen Mary gave an exquisitely embroidered pair of gloves, with a design in which angels' heads and flowers appear—her own work—to her husband, Lord Darnley; and the gloves generally of the Tudor period were more ornate than those which adorn beauty's hands on the eve of the nineteenth century, and were, in most cases, wrought with the needle.
Though the history of gloves savours of romance, there is every reason to believe that they have sometimes been used with sinister motives, as a large trade was done at one time in poisoned gloves, delicately perfumed, to conceal their deadly purpose.