(H. S. J.)
II. Costume in Medieval and Modern Europe
i. Pre-Roman and Roman Britain.—Men who had found better clothing than the skins of beasts were in Britain when Caesar landed. Little as we know of England before the English, we have at least the knowledge that Britons, other than the poorer and wilder sort of the north and the fens, wore cloaks and hats, sleeved coats whose skirts were cut above the knee and loose trousers after the fashion of the Gauls. They were not an armoured race, for they would commonly fight naked to the waist, dreadful with tattooing and woad staining, but Pliny describes their close-woven felts as all but sword-proof. Dyers as well as weavers, their cloaks, squares of cloth like a Highland plaid, were of black or blue, rough on the one side, while coats and trousers were bright coloured, striped and checkered, red being the favourite hue. For ornament the British chiefs wore golden torques about their necks and golden arm-rings with brooches and pins of metal or ivory, beads of brass, of jet and amber from their own coasts, and of glass bought of the Southern merchants. Their women had gowns to the ankle, with shorter tunics above them. The Druid bards had their vestments of blue, while the star-gazers and leeches went in green.
Agricola’s Romanizing work must have made great changes in dress as in policy. The British chief with the Latin tongue in his mouth, living in a Roman villa and taking his bath as did the Romans, wore the white woollen toga and the linen tunic, his wife having the stole, the pall and the veil.
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| Fig. 25.—Old EnglishDress. From the Benedictionalof St Æthelwold(c. 963-984). | Fig. 26.—The BlessedVirgin. From the Benedictionalof St Æthelwold(c. 963-984). |
ii. Old English Dress.—The skill of their artists gives us many accurate pictures of the dress of the English before the Norman Conquest, the simple dress of a nation whose men fight, hunt and plough. The man’s chief garment is Before the Conquest. a sleeved tunic hanging to the knee, generally open at the side from hip to hem and in front from the throat to the breast. Sleeves cut loosely above the elbow are close at the forearm. The legs are in hose like a Highlander’s or in long breeches bandaged or cross-gartered below the knee. A short mantle to the calf is brooched at the shoulder or breast (fig. 25). There are long gowns and toga-like cloaks, but these as a rule seem garments for the old man of rank. In the open air the cloak is often pulled over the head, for hats and caps are rare, the Phrygian bonnet being the commonest form. Girdles of folded cloth gather the loose tunic at the waist. Most paintings show the ankle shoe as black, cut with a pointed tab before and behind, the soles being sometimes of wood like the sole of the Lancashire clog of our own days. A nobleman will have his shoes embroidered with silks or coloured yarns, and the like decoration for the hem and collar of his tunic. Poor men wear little but the tunic, often going barelegged, although the hinds in the well-known pictures of the twelve months have shoes, and the shepherd as he watches his flock covers himself with a cloak. In every graveyard of the old English we find the brooches, armlets, rings and pins of a people loving jewelry. Women wore a long gown covering the feet, the loose sleeves sometimes hanging over the hands to the knee. Over this there is often a shorter tunic with short sleeves. Their mantles were short or long, the hood or head rail wrapped round the chin (fig. 26). In broidery and ornament the women’s dress matched that of the men. The Danes, warriors of the sea, soon took the English habit, becoming notable for their many changes of gay clothing.
Plate
| Photo, Walker. | Photo, Alinari. |
| Fig. 21.—GRAVE-STATUE. | Fig. 22.—THE ORATOR (R. Arch. Mus., Florence). |
| Photo, Anderson. | Photo, Moscioni. |
| Fig. 23.—BUST OF PHILIP THE ARABIAN (Vatican). | Fig. 24.—TITUS (Vatican). |
The Norman Conquest is marked by no great change in English clothing, the conquerors inclining towards the island fashions, as we may see by the fact that they gave up their curious habit of shaving the back of the head. But The Normans. with the reign of the second William came the taste for the luxury of clothing and that taste for flowing hair and shoes with sharp points which is lamented by William of Malmesbury. In this reign we have the story of the Red King refusing to put on boots that cost but three shillings—the price of an ox—and wearing the same gladly when his chamberlain told him that they were a new pair worth a mark. Even more than the fashion of long cloaks and trailing gowns whose sleeves hang far below the hands, the fantastic boot and shoe toes bring the curses of the clergy and the moralizings of chroniclers. Fulk Rechin of Anjou is said by Orderic to have invented such gear to hide the monstrous bunions upon his toes, but a worthless Robert, a hanger-on of the court of William II., distinguishes himself and gains the surname of Cornard by stuffing his shoe tips with tow and twisting them like the horns of the ram.
There are many illuminations which give us in plenty the details of all costumes of the 12th century. Thus the devil in a well-known MS. wears the gown of a lady of rank, the bodice tightly laced, the hanging sleeve knotted to 12th and 13th centuries. keep it out of the mud. A MS. at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, shows in a picture of the vision of Henry I. that the men who reap and dig are simply clad in loose skirted tunics with close sleeves, that they have hats with brims, and cloaks caught by a brooch at the shoulder. Hats and caps are common in all classes and take many shapes—the Phrygian cap, the flat bonnet, the brimmed hat and the skull-cap.