HUNTING HAT.
Orcagna, Campo Santa, Pisa.
The Greeks, when travelling, protected their heads from the heat or the wet by means of a flat broad-brimmed hat, tied underneath the chin, and allowed to hang on the back when not required on the head. This fashion or device was continued during the Middle Ages, and the hat was often worn over the hood (although this would seem a superfluity), the strings were secured at the breast by means of a moveable ring, which, by being moved up underneath the chin, kept the hat in its place on the head. Such a hat was figured on the wall of the old Palace at Westminster, and has been published in the "Vetusta Monumenta" of the Society of Antiquaries.
During the greater part of the Norman and Plantagenet period the wimple or neck-cloth was common. It was a development of the Anglo-Saxon veil or head-cloth (couvre-chef), and an echo of the mailed coif of the period. It is thus referred to by John de Meun: "Par Dieu! I have often thought in my heart, when I have seen a lady so closely tied up, that her neck-cloth was nailed to her chin, or that she had the pins hooked into her flesh."
Such a wimple is figured from Orcagna (Campo Santo, Pisa) on the opposite page.
The golden net-caul (crestine, creton, crespine, crespinette) appeared during the reigns of Henry III. and Edward I., worn either with or without the wimple and veil, and lasted, in its varying forms, well into the sixteenth century. It either enclosed the hair as within a bag or pouch, or assumed the form of a netted cap, as in the so-called "Beatrice d'Este," attributed to Leonardo da Vinci in the Brera at Milan; or the net-bag above alluded to was elongated so as to form a long pigtail, tied at intervals, often extending almost to the feet, as in the marriage scene in the fresco by Pinturicchio in the Piccolomini Library at Siena. It was often richly ornamented with jewels—
"Their heads were dight well withal,
Everich had on a jolyf coronal
With sixty gems and mo."
FIGURE WITH LONG NET-CAUL.
This, however, refers to the chaplet or garland commonly worn by the ladies of the fourteenth century.
"Thenne was I war of a wommon wonderliche clothed,
Purfylet with pelure the ricchest uppon eorthe,
I-crouned with a coroune, the King hath no bettre;
Alle hir fyve fyngres weore frettet with rynges,
Of the preciousest perre, that prince wered evere;
In Red Scarlet her Rod i-rybaunt with gold;
Ther nis no Qweene qweyntore, that quik is alyve."