Douglas, the monk of Glastonbury, wrote not less angrily in the days of Edward III:
“Englyshmen hawnted so moche unto the folye of strawngers that fro that tyme every yere thei chaungedde them in diverse schappes and disgisingges of clothengge now long, now large, now wide, now streite, and every day clothingges newe destitute and deserte from alle honeste of holde array and gode usage.”[648]
Indeed so angry does the good monk become about these extravagant fashions, that he says,—“If I sethe shalle say, they weren more like to turmentours and Diviles in their clothing and also in schoyng and other aray that they semed no menne.”
Not only did we invent, but we borrowed absurd foreign fashions. Samuel Rowland, in “The Letting of Humours Blood in the Head Vaine,” 1611, says:—
“Behold a most accomplish’d cavaleere,
That the world’s ape of fashions doth appeare;
Walking the streete his humours to disclose,
In the French dowblet and the German hose,
The muffes, cloake, Spanish hat, Tolledo blade,
Italian ruffe, a shoe right Flemish made,
Like the Lord of Misrule, where he comes he’ll revel.”
And Heywood, in the “Rape of Lucrece,” 1638, epigr. xxvi., has:—
“The Spaniard loves his ancient slop,
The Lombard his Venetian;
And some like breechless women go,
The Russ, Turk, Jew, and Grecian;
The thrifty Frenchman wears small waist,
The Dutchman his belly boasteth,
The Englishman is for them all,
And for each fashion coasteth.”
Shakespeare seems to allude to the sign of the Naked Boy in his “Comedy of Errors,” act iv., scene 3, where Dromio says, “What, have you got the picture of old Adam new apparell’d.” At Skipton-in-Craven, there is still a stone bas-relief of the Naked Boy, fixed in the front of a house, with the date 1633.
The Good Woman, or the Silent Women, and at Pershore, in Worcestershire, the Quiet Woman, represent a headless woman carrying her head in her hand. Brady, in his “Clavis Calendaria,” vol. ii., p. 203, says, “The martyrs who had been decapitated were, therefore, usually represented with headless trunks, and the head on some adjoining table, or more commonly in their hands; and it was easy for ignorance and credulity not only to mistake that type, but to be led into belief that those holy persons had actually carried their heads about for the benefit of believers.” The sign, yet preserved, particularly by the oilshops, of the Good Woman, although originally meant as expressive of some female saint, holy or good woman, who had met death by the privation of her head, has been converted into a joke against the females whose alleged loquacity is considered to be satirised by this representation, which, to conform to such meaning, they now more commonly call the Silent Woman. The fact, however, of it being particularly an oilman’s sign, makes it possible that it may have some reference to the heedless [head anciently was pronounced heed] or foolish virgins of the parable, who had no oil in their lamps when the bridegroom came. Where is your head? is still a question addressed to forgetful people.
There is a very curious example of this sign at Widford, near Chelmsford, representing on one side a half-length portrait of Henry VIII., on the reverse, a woman without a head, dressed in the costume of the latter half of the last century, with the inscription Forte Bonne. The addition of the portrait of Henry VIII. has led to the popular belief that the headless woman is meant for Anna Boleyn, though probably it is simply a combination of the King’s Head and Good Woman.