Silk-stockings, which were first worn by the Queen in 1560. Mrs. Montagu, her silk-woman, having presented her with a pair of this material in that year, soon became almost universal among the ladies, and formed one of the most expensive articles of their dress.
Shoes with very high heels, in imitation of the Venetian chopine, a species of stilt sometimes better than a foot in height, was the prevalent mode, and carried, for the sake of increasing the stature, to a most ridiculous excess. It never reached, indeed, this enormous dimension in England, but seems, from a passage in Hamlet, to have been of such a definite size, as to admit of a reference to it as a mark of admeasurement, for the Prince remarks, "Your Ladyship is nearer to heaven, than when I saw you last, by the altitude of a chopine."[98:A]
Fans, constructed of ostrich feathers, inserted into handles of gold, silver, or ivory, and wrought with great skill in various elegant forms, were so commonly worn that the author of "Quippes for upstart newfangled Gentlewemen," 1595, exclaims,—
"Were fannes, and flappes of feathers, found
To flit away the flisking flies,—
The wit of women we might praise,
But seeing they are still in hand,
In house, in field, in church, in street;
In summer, winter, water, land,
In colde, in heate, in drie, in weet;