Fig. 134.—Hanging sleeve of the fifteenth century.
These sleeves took upon themselves all sorts of forms, and they were made so long and narrow that they resembled very much the elongation of the hood which was called a liripipe. Occasionally it was found necessary to knot them so that they should not trail upon the ground. Very few parts of dress have varied so much as sleeves, and it is said that any costume can be dated by an examination of the sleeves. Nowadays, as in the past, the length of the sleeve and of the gown itself indicates the status of the member of the university. At Oxford, for instance, the undergraduate’s gown is so short that it is hardly worthy of the name, and it is without sleeves that act as such. The scholar’s gown is more voluminous, and the gowns of the bachelors and masters of arts are more important again, while the sleeves belonging to the latter reach nearly to the ground.
When we come, however, to the robes of the Chancellor, which are made of stiffer material, we find that the ancient character of the hanging sleeves is much more marked (see Figure [135]), and there is a train so long that small pages are told off to support it. In the old days, the material of which the gowns were made, and their trimmings indicated the rank of the wearers; and, as Mr. Druitt[30] points out, the bachelor, for instance, was unable to use fur of so costly a kind as that worn by his academical superiors. Stuff or silk gowns still have their significance, and in the hoods which are the survival of a part of dress which was once useful and worn by graduates and undergraduates alike, we find great diversity in the case of the various degrees of different universities.
Fig. 135.—The hanging sleeve of a Chancellor of Oxford University.
As a head covering, the cap took the place of a hood, and the latter fell down behind like that often seen on a modern ulster. We have already noticed (p. [157]) how this peak of the hood was exaggerated, and in old times the liripipe was longer in the case of undergraduates. The modern hood of the universities has grown in size, but it has lost its long streamer. Examples are, of course, most commonly seen in churches, as it is a custom of the clergy to wear their academical hoods over their white surplices. The colour of the hood and of its lining indicates, to the initiated, the university to which the wearer belongs, and the degree which he has taken.
In early times a tippet or cape made of fur or cloth edged or lined with fur, according to the degree, was also worn. To this we have alluded when speaking of the surplice (see page [199]). It seems also to have originally been a kind of hood which developed first into the almuce, one of the processional vestments of the priesthood. This was covered by the ecclesiastical cope, but was worn outside the academical gown. Doctors of Divinity were allowed to wear scarlet tippets, and the colour survives now in their academical hood, and the ordinary black almuce with its fur lining has not been greatly changed in becoming the hood of the Bachelor of Arts.
Sometimes the tippet and sometimes the hood was worn (if we may judge from monumental brasses), but also they were both put on at the same time. The figure of a doctor embroidered on a fifteenth-century cope belonging to the Pro-Cathedral of the Apostles at Clifton, depicts him wearing a tippet edged with white, a red hood, and a red cap. His gown, which is worked in gold thread, is shown with a blue lining.