The fair footed it bravely in low shoes adorned with large ribbon Tudor roses, which were also allotted the delicate duty of ornamenting elaborate garters. The plainer variety of shoe was of wood covered with velvet or leather, stitched with silk and fastened with buckles or rosettes; and a wooden shoe in vogue was known as the pantoffle, and not unlike that chopine worn in Italy at this time and later, when it attained the pinnacle of the preposterous. This shoe was, however, known in England only in a modified form.
None of the fashions of the day could truthfully be called comfortable. Comfort obviously was banished from consideration, and each innovation during the sixteenth century shows its demands more and more disregarded.
The hoop appeared, and held the best affections in its grasp of iron, wood, or whalebone, the indispensable edicts against it following quickly upon its popularity. Rich and poor alike fell victims to its aggressive charms, and alike insisted upon its wear, and, on the occasion of her marriage with Prince Arthur of Wales, Catherine of Medici wore the dress of Spain and a mantilla bordered with gold and precious stones, and her skirt was distended by several hoops.
The wives of that merry polygamist Henry VIII. were sympathetically attached to beautiful clothes, and Anne Boleyn is credited with wearing a cap of blue velvet trimmed with golden bells, and a vest of velvet starred with silver, and over it a surcoat of watered silk lined with miniver, with large pendent sleeves; blue velvet brodequins were on her feet, with a diamond star on each instep, and above her long curls was placed an aureole of plaited gold. It is a well-known fact that Anne, because of some slight deformity of the hand, held affectionately to the charms of the hanging sleeve after it had been discarded in favour of the full puffed and slashed sleeve. There is an attractive picture of her by Holbein, with the hair drawn from her forehead in small curls, and a plait hanging from the top of the head over one ear, the crown being worn rather far back and kept in place by a jewelled caul.
To Spain historians have granted the laurel of the ruff, which became first popular in England in the reign of Henry VIII.; and Anne Boleyn introduced lappets made of velvet and adorned with precious stones, either pointed at the hem or square and broad.
During those days the length of the gown denoted the rank of the wearer, countesses and baronesses and ladies of lower degree stamping their estate upon the dimensions of their train. Embroidery decorated the gowns and petticoats alike, many of the dresses being cut open in front to display a satin kirtle and an apron embroidered in gold and many colours. The bodice of the dress sometimes differed in colour from the skirt, and the sleeves would match the skirt; and there was much variety in head-dress, the velvet cap tasselled and set with jewels above a floating veil being a popular style. But cauls, coifs, and French hoods, and the high bands in front, were in evidence, together with a white three-cornered cap, the original no doubt of the Marie Stuart cap of succeeding years.
The men were as prodigal as the women, and spared no expense or time or thought in their pursuit of the sumptuous and the elegant; their shoes and garters and hats glittered with gems, and they wore rings and chains in profusion, raising the trades of tailors and goldsmiths and cloth-makers to supreme importance. Jack of Newbury, a famous cloth merchant of the time of Henry VIII., is described as appearing before that monarch in a plain russet coat and a pair of white kersey slops, the stockings of the same piece being sewn to his slops. Slops was a term developed from "slip," and signified any garment easily adjusted, and an example of its use occurs in Much Ado About Nothing, a phrase running "as, a German from the waist downward, all slops"; hence may the suspicious glean that the Teuton habit of costume was not mainly trim.
IN THE TIME OF HENRY VII.
Men yielded to the general craze for an expanded hip, wearing great breeches stuffed with hair or bran or wool, and exhibiting no less than feminine enthusiasm in the width of their ruffles. Their hose, of different detail, was either of cloth or silk, and blazed with colour, being ornamented with gold or threads of Venetian silver, though the King himself preferred cloth hose, which also had the honour of decorating Queen Elizabeth, until she chanced to meet with the silk stocking, to which she thereafter clung with tenacity.