"Wear a gold chain at every quarter sessions."
—Pegge. Many instances of this fashion are to be met with in these volumes. The Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London wear chains of gold on public days at this time.
[268] Belonging to a sundial.—Johnson's Dictionary.
[269] Azimuths, called also vertical circles, are great circles intersecting each other in the zenith and nadir, and cutting the horizon at right angles, in all the points thereof.—Chambers's Dictionary.
[270] An Arabic word, written variously by various authors, and signifies a circle drawn parallel to the horizon. It is generally used in the plural, and means a series of parallel circles, drawn through the several degrees of the meridian.—Johnson's Dictionary.
[271] See Bishop Wilkins's "Voyage to the Moon," p. 110.—Pegge.
[272] See note to "Green's Tu quoque," p. 200.
[273] Two playhouses. The Fortune belonged to the celebrated Edward Alleyn, and stood in Whitecross Street. The Red Bull was situated in St John Street.
[274] This alludes to the fashion then much followed, of wearing bands washed and dyed with yellow starch. The inventress of them was Mrs Turner, a woman of an infamous character; who, being concerned in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, was executed at Tyburn in a lawn ruff of her favourite colour. "With her," says Howell, in his "Letters," p. 19, edit. 1754, "I believe that yellow starch, which so much disfigured our nation, and rendered them so ridiculous and fantastic, will receive its funeral." And of the same opinion was Sir Simonds D'Ewes who, in [his "Autobiography," edit. Halliwell, p. 79], says, "Mrs Turner had first brought upp that vaine and foolish use of yellow starch, ... and therefore, when shee was afterwards executed at Tiburne, the hangman had his bande and cuffs of the same couler, which made many, after that day, of either sex, to forbeare the use of that coulered starch, till at last it grew generallie to bee detested and disused." This execution happened in the year 1615; but the reformation predicted by Howell, and partly asserted by D'Ewes to have happened, was not the consequence, as will appear from the following passage, extracted from a pamphlet called "The Irish Hubbub, or the English Hue and Crie," by Barnaby Rich, 4o, 1622, p. 40: "Yet the open exclamation that was made by Turner's wife at the houre of her death, in the place where shee was executed, cannot be hidden, when, before the whole multitude that were there present, she so bitterly protested against the vanitie of those yellow starcht bands, that her outcries (as it was thought) had taken such impression in the hearts of her hearers, that yellow starcht bands would have been ashamed (for ever after to have shewed themselves about the neckes, either of men that were wise, or women that were honest) but we see our expectations have failed us, for they beganne even then to be more generall than they were before." Again, p. 41: "You knowe tobacco is in great trading, but you shall be merchants, and onely for egges: for whereas one pipe of tobacco will suffice three or four men at once; now ten or twenty eggs will hardly suffice to starch one of these yellow bands: a fashion that I thinke shortly will be as conversant amongst taylors, tapsters, and tinkers, as now they have brought tobacco. But a great magistrate, to disgrace it, enjoyned the hangman of London to become one of that fraternitie, and to follow the fashion; and, the better to enable him, he bestowed of him some benevolence to pay for his laundry: and who was now so briske, with a yellow feather in his hat, and a yellow starcht band about his necke, walking in the streets of London, as was master hangman? so that my young masters, that have sithence fallen into that trimme, they doe but imitate the hangman's president, the which, how ridiculous a matter it is, I will leave to themselves to thinke on." And that the fashion prevailed some years after Mrs Turner's death may be proved from Sir Simon D'Ewes's relation of the procession of King James from Whitehall to the Parliament House, Westminster, 30th January 1620 [i.e., 1621]: "In the king's short progresse from Whitehall to Westminster, these passages following were accounted somewhat remarkable—And fourthlie, that, looking upp to one window, as he passed, full of gentlewomen or ladies, all in yellow bandes, he cried out aloud, 'A pox take yee, are yee ther?' at which, being much ashamed, they all withdrew themselves suddenlie from the window."
[275] When the king visited the different parts of the country.