“Some tymes they use them sharpe on the crowne, pearking up like the speare or shaft of a steeple, standing a quarter of a yarde above the crowne of their heades, some more, some lesse, as pleases the fantasies of their inconstant mindes; othersome be flat and broad in the crowne like the battlements of a house. Another sort have round crownes, sometymes with one kinde of bande, sometymes with another, now blacke, now whyte, now russet, now red, now green, now yellowe, now this, now that, never content, with one colour or fashion two daies to an ende.”[576]
Felt hats for a long time were exclusively worn by the aristocracy. Stow tells us that “about the beginning of Henry VIII. began the making of Spanish feltes in England, by Spaniardes and Dutchmen, before which time, and long since the English used to ride, and goe winter and sommer in knitcapps, cloth hoods, and the best sort in silk throm’d Hatts.” These caps were enforced by a statute of 13th Queen Elizabeth, which gives, at the same time, a curious picture of the fashions of that period:—
“If any person above six yeares of age, (except maidens, ladies, gentlewomen, nobles, knights, gentlemen of twenty marks by year in lands, and their heirs, and such as have borne office of worship,) have not worn upon the Sundays and Holidays, (except it be in the time of his travell out of the citie, towne, or hamlet, where he dwelleth,) uppon his head one cap of wool knit, thicked, and dressed in England, and onely dressed and finished by some of the trade of cappers, shall be fined 3s. 4d. for each day’s transgression.”
These caps, termed statute caps, are frequently alluded to by the dramatists and authors of that period. Rosalind, for instance, in “Love’s Labour Lost,” taunts her lover with the words: “Well, better wits have worn plain statute caps.” The act was repealed in the year 1597. The sign of the Cap and Stocking, still in Leicester, commemorates the once-flourishing trade of that town in those articles. The quantity of workmen who found occupations in the manufacture of the above-named “statute caps,” (which came chiefly from Leicestershire and the surrounding districts,) was one of the principal reasons why it was so often protected by parliamentary statutes. Fuller enumerates not less than fifteen callings, “besides other exercises,” all employed in the trade of capmaking, beginning with the woolcarder, and ending with the bandmaker. The Hat and Star, which occurs on the bill of Master Bates in St Paul’s Churchyard, who sold all sorts of fine “caines, whippes, spurres,”[577] &c., if not a simple quartering of two signs, possibly originated in the clasp ornament of precious stones, formerly worn in the hat. The Leghorn Hat, at the end of the last century, was generally a turner’s sign, because the members of that trade sold straw hats imported from Leghorn. In St John Street, Clerkenwell, there was an old established public-house, and place of resort, called the Three Hats. It is mentioned by Bickerstaff in his comedy of “The Hypocrite,” where Mawworm thus alludes to it:—
“Till I went after him, [Dr Cantwell,] I was little better than the devil, my conscience was tanned with sin, like a piece of neat’s leather, and had no more feeling than the sole of my shoe; always a roving after fantastical delights; I used to go every Sunday evening to the Three Hats at Islington; it’s a public-house . . . mayhap your Ladyship may know it. I was a great lover of skittles, too, but now I cannot bear them.”
At this house the earliest prototypes of Astley used to perform in 1758. There was Thomas, an Irishman, surnamed Tartar; then came Johnson, Sampson, Price, and Cunningham. The great Dr Johnson went here to see his namesake.
“Such a man, sir, said he, should be encouraged; for his performance show the extent of human powers in one instance, and thus tend to raise our opinion of the faculties of man. He shows what may be obtained by persevering application; so that every man may hope, by giving as much application, although, perhaps, he may never ride three horses at a time, or dance upon a wire, yet he may be equally expert in whatever profession he has chosen to pursue.”
Royalty also visited the place: “Yesterday his Royal Highness the Duke of York was at the Three Hats, Islington, to see the extraordinary feats of horsemanship exhibited there. There were near five hundred spectators.”[578] Sampson’s wife was the first female equestrian.
Horsemanship
At Mr Dingley’s, the Three Hats, Islington.
“MR SAMPSON begs leave to inform the public, that besides the usual feats which he exhibits, Mrs Sampson, to diversify the entertainment, and prove that the fair sex are by no means inferior to the male, either in Courage or Agility, will, this and every Evening during the Summer, perform various exercises in the same art, in which she hopes to acquit herself to the universal approbation of those Ladies and Gentlemen whose curiosity may induce them to honour her attempt with their company.”[579]