The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England (32 page)

Hats.
At the start of the reign the knitted or cloth cap is the ubiquitous item of headgear. In the 1560s felt hats with crowns become fashionable, and people in towns start to pay more attention to what they wear on their heads. Different-coloured hatbands are used, some of them with embroidery or jewels. Dyed feathers are also worn in the hatband: London merchants import feathers worth £1,863 for this purpose in 1559–60. The brim is sometimes curled up along the sides and attached to the hat. Most of all, the crown starts to rise – and rise. By the 1580s hats with a 15-inch-high crown are not unknown. Philip Stubbes rubs his hands with glee and declares:

As the fashions be rare and strange, so is the stuff whereof their hats be made divers also: for some are of silk, some of velvet, some of taffeta, some of sarcenet, some of wool, and (which is more curious), some of a certain kind of fine hair. These they call beaver hats, of 20s, 30s or 40s a piece, fetched from beyond the seas, from whence a great sort of other vanities come besides. For he is of no account or estimation among them if he have not a velvet or taffeta hat, and that must be pinked and cunningly carved of the best fashion.
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Although many men disobey the 1571 Act enforcing the wearing of wool caps on Sundays, the fact that such legislation is passed gives you an idea of how common the cap is among ordinary folk. Most of these are dyed black – or as black as the wearer can afford: true black is expensive. Although high-crowned hats start to be worn from the 1560s, you will still find gentlemen wearing caps in the latter part of the reign. In 1589 Sir Christopher Hatton sports a very fetching black velvet cap with jewels round the band and a white feather springing from a golden badge.

Shoes and boots.
The Elizabethan worker’s shoes and boots are made of leather, with thick soles. The same goes for his social superior. The difference lies in the quality of the leather, the size and the decoration (such as pinking and colouring). The best leather is Spanish, called cordwain in England; those who work with it are called cordwainers. Working men tend to wear short boots of hard leather – ankle boots and calf-high start-ups – whereas gentlemen wear high boots of soft leather, such as buskins (knee-length) and gamaches (long boots). Galoshes are overshoes, worn for protecting your pumps and cork-soled shoes when out of doors. Otherwise men’s shoes are similar to women’s. The production price of a pair of ordinary shoes varies from 10d per pair to 1s 1¼d; the sale price (after the retailer’s mark-up) is accordingly more than this, between 1s and 18d.
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It goes without saying that many men might wear only a selection of the above items. In 1599 the rector of Long Ditton in Surrey, John Brownewend, possesses two gowns, three cloaks, two doublets, two coats, three pairs of breeches, six pairs of stockings, two hats, two belts, seven shirts, eight ruffs, six handkerchiefs and six nightcaps. In 1586 William Kytchiner, yeoman of Effingham in the same county, has one cloak of ‘London dye’, a grey russet cloak, a mandilion, three doublets, a black frieze jerkin, two pairs of boot hose, a pair of boots, a pair of stockings, two pairs of breeches, two hats, four nightcaps, four shirts, two ruffs, a scarf and an old moth-eaten friese gown. In comparison, George Byrche, the vicar of Witley in Surrey, sets little store by his wardrobe, having just two gowns, a coat, a doublet, a pair of hose and a hat in 1569.
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Many men make do with what amounts to one suit of clothing, albeit with a change of overgarment.

How much can you expect to spend on clothes? Let’s say you are a butcher or baker, and you enter a London tailors’ shop in 1597. There you will find all the tailors sitting around cross-legged on their benches. You ask the head man for a cloak, a coat, a little jerkin, a pair of hosen and a Spanish cape to be made for you. The cost might be as little as 2s 6d, plus food and drink for the workers.
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However, you should note that the made-to-measure nature of the garments does not by itself guarantee quality; bad tailoring is more often to be found in the sixteenth century than in the modern world where a tailored piece of clothing is, by definition, a high-quality item. If you are looking
for real quality from a London tailor, the suit made for an ambassador to the court in 1595 will give you a better indication of cost:

If that does not quite satisfy you, do not worry; in fashionable Elizabethan England, the sky’s the limit, especially if you are a gentleman trying to make an impression at court. According to Philip Stubbes, some men have been known to pay £10 just on one shirt.
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Men’s Hair and Beards

Enter a barber’s shop in London, or have a barber come to your house, and you will have such a range of hairstyles presented to you that you will be quite bewildered. Would you like a Dutch cut or a French one? A Spanish one or an Italian? New? Old-style? Gentlemanly? Common? Would the esteemed gentleman/goodman like to look ‘terrible to his enemies or amiable to his friends, grim and stern in countenance or pleasant and demure’? When it comes to the actual haircut, you will have your head rubbed down with linen cloths (‘rubbers’) and combed several times with ivory combs of increasing fineness. Only then does the cut begin. Note that most men carry their own two-sided comb: one side is of widely spaced teeth for disentangling hair; the other is narrow teeth, for combing out the nits that may be living in it. Wealthy men have combs of ivory; less wealthy men carry combs of carved wood.
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With beards, there is also considerable scope for personal invention. William Harrison exhorts his readers to consider the shape of their faces when discussing their beards with their barbers. Dignified courtiers such as Sir Christopher Hatton, Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir William Cecil go for the full moustache and beard, simply trimming them to look neat. A young gentleman with curly hair might rather have a small moustache and otherwise be clean-shaven. Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, opts for the bushy-beard look in later life. George Clifford, earl of Cumberland, who has very distinctive long curling brown hair, has a pointed beard and wide moustache when he sits for his portrait as the queen’s champion in 1592. His predecessor in that role, Sir Henry Lee, whose hair is short and curling, chooses a thin moustache and a small, tapering goatee-like beard when he is painted in 1568, shaving not only his cheeks, but his sideburns. This is not dissimilar to the style adopted by Shakespeare, Richard Burbage, Edmund Spenser and other writers and actors at the end of the reign, all of whom have short, trimmed pointed beards and moustaches. In contrast, Sir Philip Sidney, the dashing young poet, is completely clean-shaven in the 1580s. So is the physician Andrew Boorde: he hates beards because, when he had one, he was sick in it and it took a very long time to remove the smell. Note that to be clean-shaven, you should try to go to the barber once a week; after two weeks the clean-shaven look is wearing thin. The regulations of the Inns of Court in London deem a student officially to have a beard if he has not shaved for three weeks.

Men’s Acccessories

There are three items that all men carry, or should be expected to have about their person. The first is a comb, already mentioned. The next is a sharp knife, for eating and other day-to-day tasks. The third is a purse for coins: normally a small leather or cloth bag on the end of a leather cord attached to the belt. Beyond these three, there is an unpredictable variety.

Wealthy men wear jewellery. For a royal favourite this might mean a jewelled gold chain with a pendant jewel containing the queen’s image. Alternatively it might mean a ring. Rings are not always worn on the finger: when given as a gift, you might wear it on a band
around your arm or on a chain around the neck. This fondness for jewellery doesn’t yet extend to earrings, however. Although a famous seventeenth-century portrait of Shakespeare shows him sporting a simple earring in his left ear, it is highly unlikely you will see any men with pierced ears in Elizabeth’s reign.

Another important accessory is weaponry. The aristocrat may well wear a breastplate or gorget (collar armour) when having a portrait painted – and may even wear a full suit of armour if taking part in a celebratory joust – but apart from these he will rarely don armour. For him – and for you, if you move in such circles – it is the sword that matters. Swords are status symbols: in London no one can carry one unless he is a knight. You can buy them easily enough: a 34-ounce silver-handled rapier fit for a lord will cost you £11 in the 1580s; or, at the bottom end of the market, you can pick up a second-hand sword and dagger for 3s 4d.
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William Harrison comments that ‘seldom shall you see any of my countrymen about 18 or 20 years old to go without a dagger at least at his back or by his side’. Of course, having such weapons close to hand inclines people to use them. In this respect, a little fashion accessory is a dangerous thing.

Not all swords are merely status symbols. Outside towns, even men of modest means will own weapons of some sort, in line with the legislation for the militia (the amateur force for the defence of the realm). Men with goods worth between £10 and £20 have to provide a bow, a sheaf of arrows, a steel helmet and a bill or halberd when the militia is called out. Those with goods worth between £20 and £40 have to provide two bows with arrows, two steel helmets, one halberd and one steel ‘almain rivet’ (light armour for a foot soldier, consisting of a breastplate and back plate with thigh guards). So it goes on, with higher allocations of armour to be provided by those with greater wealth and income from land. At the top end of the scale, anyone with £1,000 per year from land is required to keep six horses or geldings with harnesses and saddles, ten light horses or geldings with sufficient harnesses and saddles, forty steel corselets, forty almain rivets or coats of plate armour, forty pikes, thirty long bows with thirty sheaves of arrows, twenty steel helmets, ten bills, ten morrions (crested steel helmets) and twenty hackbuts or arquebuses (long-barrelled guns). Men who do not have sufficient wherewithal to supply arms and armour very often have to use them on behalf of their social superiors, donning the almain rivets and carrying
the bills that their manorial lords keep for the purpose. This is why you will find so many coats of armour and weapons hung up in manor houses. Militia men are regularly inspected for the state of the armour they carry; and selected men undergo regular training too – they are called ‘the trained bands’ – so if you are selected to serve in the militia, this is what you may well end up wearing.
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Other accessories relate to people’s work and occupations. Physicians and surgeons often have to ride out of town to see their patients, so on top of their long, fur-trimmed gowns they wear gabardines (overcoats) and caps. Gentlemen wear spurs when riding, partly as a sign of status and partly for urging their horses on. Miners wear practical garb similar to that of normal labourers (a thigh-length coat or doublet and belt, knee-length breeches and boots), but with the addition of a protective, padded round cap and a candleholder between their teeth. Up on the downs the shepherds have their smocks, hats and crooks. Mariners wear trousers or slops, and loose upper garments over their shirts. The butler in a gentleman’s house can frequently be seen in an apron, as can many working men and women, from butchers and smiths (in leather aprons) to brewers, bakers, fishmongers and cooks (in aprons made of canvas and serge).

Nightwear

Most men wear a nightshirt and cap in bed. Francis, the above-mentioned late-in-rising schoolboy, sleeps in his day shirt at night, and probably most boys of his age do likewise, changing their shirt in the morning if they have a clean spare. Even if you reserve a separate shirt to wear in bed, it will be essentially the same garment as a day shirt. If there is any difference it will be that the nightshirt has a collar, rather than the ties to attach a ruff. The nightcap normally takes the form of an easily washed linen cap, saving the pillowcase from the grease of the hair. A few gentlemen have adopted the ladies’ fashion of wearing a nightgown – a loose, comfortable lined gown, which can be worn over the nightshirt – although these are not actually for sleeping in, but for keeping warm when getting dressed or having your hair rubbed.
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