DRESS REGULATED BY ACT OF PARLIAMENT.
The foreign knights and visitors who came to Windsor in Edward the First's reign, and brought with them a continual succession of varying fashions, turned the heads of the young with delight, and of the old with disgust. Douglas, the monk of Glastonbury, is especially denunciative and satirical on this point. He says that in the horrible variety of costume,—"now long, now large, now wide, now straight,"—the style of dress was "destitute and devert from all honesty of old arraye or good usage." It is all, he says, "so nagged and knibbed on every side, and all so shattered and also buttoned, that I with truth shall say, they seem more like to tormentors or devils in their clothing, and also in their shoying and other array, than they seemed to be like men." And the old monk had good foundation for his complaint; and the Commons themselves having, what the Commons now have not, a dread of becoming as extravagant as their betters in the article of dress, actually sought the aid of Parliament. That august assembly met the complaint by restricting the use of furs and furls to the royal family and nobles worth one thousand per annum. Knights and ladies worth four hundred marks yearly, were permitted to deck themselves in cloths of gold and silver, and to wear certain jewellery. Poor knights, squires, and damsels were prohibited from appearing in the costume of those of higher degree. As for the Commons themselves, they could put on nothing better than unadorned woollen cloth; and if an apprentice or a milliner had been bold enough to wear a ring on the finger, it was in peril of a decree that it should be taken off,—not the finger, but the ring,—with confiscation of the forbidden finery.
The consequence was that the Commons, being under prohibition to put on finery, became smitten with a strong desire to assume it; and much did they rejoice when they were ruled over by so consummate a fop as Richard of Bordeaux. All classes were content to do what many classes joyfully do in our own days,—dress beyond their means; and we find in old Harding's "Cronicle" that not only were
"Yemen and gromes in cloth of silk arrayed,
Sattin and damask, in doublettes and in gownnes."
but that all this, as well as habits of "cloth of greene and scarleteen,—cut work and brodwar, was all," as the Chronicler expresses it, "for unpayed;" that is, was not paid for. So that very many among us do not so much despise the wisdom afforded us by the example of our ancestors as didactic poets and commonplace honest writers falsely allege them to do. And those ancestors of Richard the Second's time were especially given to glorify themselves in parti-coloured garments of white and red, such being the colours of the King's livery (as blue and white were those of John of Gaunt); and they who wore these garments, sometimes of half-a-dozen colours in each, why they looked, says an old writer, "as though the fire of St. Anthony, or some such mischance," had cankered and eaten into half their bodies. The long-toed shoes, held up to the knee by a chain and hook, were called crackowes, the fashion thereof coming from Cracrow in Poland. The not less significant name of "devil's receptacles" were given to the wide sleeves of this reign, for the reason, as the Monk of Evesham tells us, that whatever was stolen was thrust into them.
A CAT-CLOCK.
The following curious incident is to be found in Huo's "Chinese Empire:—
"One day when we went to pay a visit to some families of Chinese Christian peasants, we met, near a farm, a young lad, who was taking a buffalo to graze along our path. We asked him carelessly, as we passed, whether it was yet noon. The child raised his head to look at the sun, but it was hidden behind thick clouds, and he could read no answer there. "The sky is so cloudy," said he; "but wait a moment;" and with these words he ran towards the farm, and came back a few minutes afterwards with a cat in his arms. "Look here," said he, "it is not noon yet;" and he showed us the cat's eyes, by pushing up the lids with his hands. We looked at the child with surprise, but he was evidently in earnest; and the cat, though astonished, and not much pleased at the experiment made on her eyes, behaved with most exemplary complaisance. "Very well," said we; "thank you;" and he then let go the cat, who made her escape pretty quickly, and we continued our route.
To say the truth, we had not at all understood the proceeding; but we did not wish to question the little pagan, lest he should find out that we were Europeans by our ignorance. As soon as ever we reached the farm, however, we made haste to ask our Christians whether they could tell the clock by looking into the cat's eyes. They seemed surprised at the question; but as there was no danger in confessing to them our ignorance of the properties of the cat's eyes, we related what had just taken place. That was all that was necessary; our complaisant neophytes immediately gave chase to all the cats in the neighbourhood. They brought us three or four, and explained in what manner they might be made use of for watches. They pointed out that the pupil of their eyes went on constantly growing narrower until twelve o'clock, when they became like a fine line, as thin as a hair, drawn perpendicularly across the eye, and that after twelve the dilation recommenced.