In the time of the Plantagenets Flemish tastes prevailed. With the Tudors, Katherine of Aragon, on her marriage with Prince Arthur, introduced the Spanish fashions, and the inventories from Henry VIII. downwards are filled with Spanish work, Spanish stitch, and so forth. Queen Elizabeth leant to the French and Italian modes, and during the Stuarts they were universally adopted.
The ruff was first introduced into England about the reign of Philip and Mary. These sovereigns are both represented on the Great Seal of England with small ruffs about their necks, and with diminutive ones of the same form encircling the wrists.[[878]] This Spanish ruff was not ornamented with lace. On the succession of Queen Elizabeth the ruff had increased to a large size, as we see portrayed on her Great Seal.
The art of starching, though known to the manufacturers of Flanders, did not reach England until 1564, when the Queen first set up a coach. Her coachman, named Gwyllam Boenen, was a Dutchman; his wife understood the art of starching, a secret she seems exclusively to have possessed, and of which the Queen availed herself until the arrival, some time after, of Madame Dinghen van der Plasse, who, with her husband, came from Flanders "for their better safeties,"[[879]] and set up as a clear-starcher in London.
"The most curious wives," says Stowe, "now made themselves ruffs of cambric, and sent them to Madame Dinghen to be starched, who charged high prices. After a time they made themselves ruffs of lawn, and thereupon arose a general scoff, or by-word, that shortly they would make their ruffs of spiders' webs." Mrs. Dinghen at last took their daughters as her pupils. Her usual terms were from four to five pounds for teaching them to starch, and one pound for the art of seething starch.[[880]] The nobility patronised her, but the commonalty looked on her as the evil one, and called her famous liquid "devil's broth."
To keep the ruff erect, bewired[[881]] and starched though it be, was a troublesome affair—its falling a cause of agony to the wearer.
"Not so close, thy breath will draw my ruff,"
exclaims the fop. The tools used in starching and fluting ruffs were called setting-sticks, struts and poking-sticks: the two first were made of wood or bone, the poking-stick of iron, and heated in the fire. By this heated tool the fold acquired that accurate and seemly order which constituted the beauty of this very preposterous attire. It was about the year 1576, according to Stowe, the making of poking-sticks began. They figure in the expenses of Elizabeth, who, in 1592, pays to her blacksmith, one Thomas Larkin, "pro 2 de lez setting-stickes at 2s. 6d." the sum of 5s.[[882]]
We have frequent allusion to the article in the plays of the day:—[[883]]
"Your ruff must stand in print, and for that purpose, get poking-sticks with fair long handles, lest they scorch your hands."[[884]]
Again, in Laugh and Lie Down—[[885]]