The close-fitting velvet cap, enriched with lace, appears in the seventeenth century to have been adopted by the lawyers of the Scotch courts. An example may be seen in the portrait of Sir Thomas Hope, Lord Advocate of Scotland, who died in 1646, which hangs in the Hall of the Advocates of Edinburgh. Another (Fig. 160) appears in the engraving of Sir Alexander Gibson, Bart., Lord Durie, one of the Lords of Session, who died two years previously.
In 1672, when lace—"point lace made of thread"—came under the ban of the Covenanters, with a penalty of "500 merks toties quoties," the wearing such vanities on liveries is strictly forbidden; servants, however, are allowed to wear out their masters' and mistresses' old clothes.
In 1674, his Majesty, understanding that the manufacture of "pearlin and whyt lace made of thread (whereby many people gain their livelihood) was thereby much prejudiced and impaired, declares that from henceforth it shall be free to all and every person within this kingdom to wear 'whyt lace,' as well as the privileged persons above mentioned." Finding these exclusions of little or no avail, in January, 1685, the Act remits the wearing of lace, both native and foreign, to all folks living.
Fig. 160.
Sir Alexander Gibson, Bart. (Lord Durie, Lord of Session. + 1644.)
The dead now came under the scrutiny of the Scotch Parliament, who order all lace or poynt, gold or silver, to be disused at interments, under the penalty of 300 pounds Scots.[[1197]]
From the united effects of poverty, Covenanters and legislation, after the departure of the court for England, luxury, small though it was, declined in Edinburgh.
It was not till 1680, when James II., as Duke of York, accompanied by Mary of Modena and his "duteous" daughter Anne, visited the Scotch capital, that anything like gaiety or dress can be said to have surprised the strait-laced population.
Dryden, sneering at the barbarism of the Scotch capital, writes, in the prologue to a play delivered at Oxford, referring to a portion of the troop that accompanied the court to Scotland—