Lively John was probably lying a little in the cause of immigration, but it is certain that the desire for fine clothes early called for a check, and at an early session of the Virginia House of Burgesses, a sumptuary law was passed “against excess in apparell,” directing “that every man be ceffed in the church for all publique contributions—if he be unmarried, according to his own apparrell; if he be married, according to his own and his wives, or either of their apparell.” Here, surely, is a suggestion from the past, for the fashionable church of the present.
A later law in the provinces enacts that “no silke stuffe in garments or in peeces, except for hoods or scarfes, nor silver or gold lace, nor bonelace of silke or thread, nor ribbands wrought with silver or gold in them, shall be brought into this country to sell, after the first of February.” A Maryland statute proposes that two sorts of “cloaths” only be worn, one for summer, the other for winter. But this was going too far, and the law was never enforced.
It was permitted to none but Members of the Council and Heads of Hundreds in Virginia to wear the coveted gold on their clothes, or to wear any silk not made by themselves. This last prohibition was intended not so much to discourage pomp and pride, as to stimulate the infant industry of silk production, which from the beginning had been a pet scheme of the colonists. They had imported silk-worms and planted mulberry trees; and as an inducement to go into the business, the Burgesses offered a premium of five thousand pounds of tobacco to any one making a hundred pounds of wound silk in any one year.
His Gracious Majesty, Charles the Second, sent to his loyal subjects in Virginia, a letter, still to be seen in the college library at Williamsburg. It is written by his Majesty’s private secretary and signed with the sacred “Charles R.” It is addressed to Governor Berkeley, and runs:
“Trusty & Wellbeloved, We Greet You Well. Wee have received wth much content ye dutifull respects of Our Colony in ye present lately made us by you & ye councell there, of ye first product of ye new Manufacture of Silke, which as a mark of Our Princely acceptation of yor duteys & for yr particular encouragement, etc.—Wee have commanded to be wrought up for ye use of Our owne person.”
From this letter has sprung the legend, dear to loyalist hearts, that the robe worn by Charles at his coronation was woven of Virginia silk.
So much material was needed “for ye use of our owne person,” that the offering of silk was no doubt very welcome. The King’s favorite, Buckingham, had twenty-seven suits, one of them of white uncut velvet, set all over with diamonds and worn with diamond hat-bands, cockades and ear-rings, and yoked with ropes and knots of pearls.
It was an era of wild extravagance. Not satisfied with the elegance of the time of Charles First, his son’s courtiers added plumes to the wide-brimmed hats, enlarged the bows on the shoes, donned great wigs, loaded their vests with embroidery, and over their coats hung short cloaks, worth a fortune.
The women dressed as befitted the court of a dissolute king. Their artificial curls were trained in “heart-breakers” and “love-locks.” The whiteness of their skin was enhanced by powder and set off by patches. Their shoulders rose above bodices of costly brocade hung with jewels which had sometimes ruined both buyer and wearer.
The Puritans, by their opposition to the Court, escaped the evil influences of these extravagances. But the Colonial Cavaliers, who bowed before the King lower than the courtiers at home, of course imitated his dress, so far as their fortunes allowed. Every frigate that came into port at Jamestown or St. Maries brought the latest London fashions. A little before Colonel Fitzhugh in Virginia was ordering his Riding Camblet cloak from London, Mr. Samuel Pepys was writing in his journal, “This morning came home my fine camlete cloak with gold buttons.” While this gentleman was attiring himself in his new shoulder-belt and tunique laced with silk, “and so very handsome to church,” Sir William Berkeley and Governor Calvert were opening their eyes of a Sunday morning three thousand miles away, and making ready to get into their rosetted shoes, and to lace their breeches and hose together with points as fanciful as his, and, like him, perhaps, having their heads “combed by ye maide for powder and other troubles.” No doubt Lady Berkeley, in her fine lace bands, her coverchef and deep veil, was as fine as Madam Pepys in her paragon pettycoat and “just a corps.”