Ruffs and Hose
‘Alas, poor verdingales must lie in the streete,
To house them no doore in the citee made meete,
Syns at our narrow doores they in cannot win,
Send them to Oxforde, at Brodegates to get in.’
Poem by poet and translator John Heywood, 1560
It was the young 16-year-old Spanish Princess, Catherine of Aragon, who first introduced England to the vardingale. Wearing it in 1501, when she arrived in England to marry Prince Arthur Tudor, it would become the fashion for well over a century, going from a modest garment to the extravagant ‘wheel and drum’ farthingales favoured by her step-daughter Elizabeth I (1533–1603). No longer were dresses going to be allowed to hang free, as they had done in the medieval period with a woman’s neckline the prime focus of attention. From the moment Catherine stepped ashore after her treacherous three-month journey from her old homeland to her new, the Englishwoman’s dress was to be shaped and dramatically increased in size.
‘Verdugadas’, ‘vertugale’ and the ‘verdingale’ derives from the Spanish word ‘verdugos’, meaning ‘smooth twigs put out by a tree that has been cut or pruned’, and relates to the fact this new skirt was held away from the body by horizontal seams thread through with wood. Differing from later farthingales which became the stiffened petticoat that a woman’s dress was draped over, this skirt, first seen in Spain in the late 1470s, was an outer garment, its cone shape achieved via hoops, called aros, gradually increasing in size from the waist to the hem.
Pedro Garcia de Benabarre painted the earliest image of this dress in 1470 as part of a larger work. The earliest references to this style of dress come from a courtier-historian by the name of Palencia, who, writing about Juana of Portugal, Queen of Castile, thought she wore the creation to hide a pregnancy. There is no proof of this, but the fashion spread like wildfire as it was copied by the Queen’s ladies and adopted by Queen Isabel of Portugal. Isabella’s confessor, Hernando de Talavera, a Spanish monk, was less than complimentary about this style of clothing and was not afraid to voice his horror:
There is another dress which is very ugly, for it makes women appear very fat and as wide as tongues. It is true that by nature women should be short, with slender or narrow shoulders, breasts and back, and small heads, and that their faces should be thin and small … and also that they should be wide and big round the back and belly and the hips so that they can have space for children they conceive and carry for nine months … But although this is true, the aforesaid dress greatly exceeds and more than greatly exceeds, the natural proportions, and instead of making woman beautiful and well-proportioned, makes them ugly, monstrous and deformed until they cease to look like women and look like bells … Finally, such dress is very deceitful and very ugly. It is in truth great deceit in a woman who is slender, hipless, and very thin, to give herself hips and a shape with cloth and wool; if carried out in moderation it might be overlooked and at most would be a venial sin. But done in such a way, without moderation and with exaggeration, it is undoubtedly a deception and a lie of great guilt and consequently a great sin … Thus it is a sin when women who are small of stature wear chopines to feign a height they do not possess, especially as Our Lord has willed it that women are usually short of body and smaller than men, since they have to be ruled by them as their superiors, or when they with rags, wool, petticoats or hoops, affect a width which they do not possess. There is no doubt that deception and lies are a moral sin when carried out in the above evil and sinful manner; thus the padded hips and hoop skirts are very harmful and very wicked garments; with reason they have been forbidden under pain of excommunication.
‘Verdugadas’, ‘vertugale’ and the ‘verdingale’ derive from the Spanish word ‘verdugos’, meaning ‘smooth twigs put out by a tree that has been cut or pruned’, and relates to the fact that this new skirt was held away from the body by horizontal seams threaded through with wood. (Author’s collection)
This dress did not just raise eyebrows in Spain. When it was introduced into Italy in 1498 it was immediately banned and in many towns abandoned altogether. It was England that embraced it in 1501 and until its eventual demise in the first decade of the seventeenth century it was worn by both commoner and queen alike.
Once the farthingale became the underskirt the material used in its construction became less important. No longer richly decorated, the choices of fabric were basically buckram and tuke, which were similar to canvas and therefore heavy enough to make the cone shape. Depending on finances, lightweight wool, taffeta or velvet could also be used and it’s known that Queen Elizabeth I wore silk farthingales often edged with kersey – a type of wool – as a bottom border as it prolonged the life of the delicate fabric which was always in contact with the floor. The ropes – also known as bent ropes or bents – that held the farthingale out in its unique shape were also made from long lengths of the material, with a tailor named Walter Fyshe in 1560 using 7½yd of ‘twisted’ kersey, so as to give it the strength to make such ropes. It is also possible that the ropes were actually made of rope, though this may have proved to be too heavy. In 1565 the stiffening changed from twisted material to reeds, which were much lighter. In 1580 whalebone was also known to have been used.
Just as few would fail to recognise the early Tudor cone-shaped skirt for women and the wide, square profile for men, they would also fail to miss the other accessory that contributed to the distinctive silhouette – the sleeve. When Henry VIII penned his love for Anne Boleyn in the song ‘Greensleeves’ (thought to be his own work) he immortalised the humble sleeve, revering it as the embodiment of something far more precious. Yet, in Tudor times sleeves were precious. Detachable and therefore easily lost, sleeves and undersleeves – which resembled gauntlets – were taken care of and could make or break any outfit. Not just an integral part of a woman’s garment, sleeves could be added to doublets and jerkins, usually pinned or tied, the fixings well concealed under padded ‘wings’ on the shoulder.
Sleeves were given as gifts, embroidered, quilted or slashed and were a thing apart, a totally independent item. Without rules that said a sleeve had to match their rich gown or peasant bodice, sleeves could be of any colour and often were. Fur was a popular adornment on sleeves, though it had to be worn in accordance with the sumptuary laws. These laws attempted to restrict the opulence of dress in order to curb extravagance and to stop moral decline. To the medieval and Tudor mind it was paramount they be able to distinguish at a single glance a milkmaid from a countess or a member of the merchant classes, who now rising swiftly within the class system had more money than blue blood. Surely if this was not possible the very fabric of society would unravel? Sumptuary laws were also there to protect fortunes, to stop the ‘ruin of a multitude of serviceable young men and gentlemen of good families’ by preventing them from squandering money on fashionable clothing and, as in a Statute of Apparel issued from Westminster dated 7 May 1562, to stop the ‘decay of horses within the realm’, as quoted in John Strype, Annals of the Reformation and Establishment of Religion, Vol. 2, Part 1. A strange connection one would think, but the Queen was insistent that every man should be capable of providing the country with the service of good horses should war arise. She was not about to tolerate those of her male subjects in an appropriate position to be unable to defend her realm by ‘reason of his wife’s apparel’ or the fact she was allowed to spend too much on clothes she shouldn’t be wearing anyway.
Of course dress could be elaborate if you were of the correct station in life and sleeves were a case in point to prove it. The fur that adorned the sleeves of the gentry or aristocratic ladies’ ‘trumpet’ sleeves could be as exotic as Lucerne or lynx fur, genet, the fur of the civet cat, or Foins, the name given to the pelts of the more common weasel-like animal namely the beech marten. Slashed sleeves were popular in both Germany, France and England by the end of the 1520s and continued to be a favourite during the Elizabethan period until the end of the century.
From large items of clothing to small, sumptuary laws even dictated what feathers could and could not adorn one’s hat, something everyone over the age of 13 was required to wear in public. Lower classes were allowed to wear plain feathers, such as goose, duck, chicken or grouse, while the middle classes and above could use expensive feathers, such as peacock, ostrich, egret and swan. As pheasants were considered a delicacy and were protected as game for the local nobility their feathers were restricted to the upper classes. Any commoner caught wearing a pheasant feather was labelled a ‘poacher’ and could be put to death. On festival days it was common for young unmarried girls to wear flower garlands in their hair.
Just like the codpiece, the doublet, a mainstay of male clothing in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was also given to exaggeration. Beginning as a simple stitched and quilted double-layered lining which came to be known as ‘doubling’, it was worn to protect the skin under the chain mail or metal breastplate of medieval armour. From the late fifteenth century onward it emerged as a garment in its own right, and for the wealthy was something to be shaped and decorated to the extremes of Tudor fashion.
Basically unchanged for over 300 years, the doublet is easily recognised as a snug-fitting item which supported a man’s hose, kept him warm and gave him shape, with the only difference down the years being its style and cut. Buttons down the front were the only fastenings, sleeves were generally attached (unlike women’s), they had collars and depending on the era decorative tabs at the waist and/or shoulder. Materials available to make a doublet were varied but then, as now, were possibly budget driven with varieties of leathers, velvets and silks for the rich and linen, hemp, canvas, fustian, cotton and wool blends or broadcloths for the rest. For working people the doublet would rarely be stiffened, or over padded, as it would hinder free movement but for those whose clothing was ‘state of the art’ they were highly decorated, with fine needlework and embroidery and adorned with jewels, spangles and pearls.
The ‘slashed’ or ‘pinked’ doublet became a favourite. Rich linings worn beneath were pulled through the slash or diamond-shaped cuts then puffed out to emphasise colour and fabric. Ideas abound as to just what triggered this flamboyant ornamentation, the most popular being that Swiss and Bavarian mercenaries, more popularly known as Landsknecht or Lansquenet, in 1477 mended their tattered uniforms with strips of fabric from the banners and pennants from the tents of a vanquished enemy. Another suggestion is that after a battle the soldiers could only be paid with the spoils of a city, which happened to be sumptuous cloth with which they plugged the holes of their tattered clothing thus creating the multi-coloured attire. Whatever the reason for the custom, by 1520 the fashion had spread across Europe, with tunics, gowns, hats, bodices and doublets for both men and women receiving this treatment, the luxurious fabrics on display via the decorative slashes known as ‘pullings’ or ‘drawings out’.
Doublets were styled to demonstrate masculinity with emphasis on broad shoulders and slim hips, sometimes with ‘girdles’, the equivalent of the later female corset, worn to achieve the ultimate triangular silhouette. A deviation from this, and no doubt a godsend to the male corset wearers, was the peascod, or goose-bellied doublet, which came to England from Holland in the 1570s and was stuffed in such a way as to give a man the impression of having a small, pointed paunch. Just as such dress seems strange to modern eyes it appeared no less ridiculous to Philip Stubbes, a stout Puritan in thought, deed and dress, whose book The Anatomie of Abuses was to social comment in the sixteenth century what newspapers and magazines are today. Unimpressed with the pigeon-chested fashion, he criticised the offending doublet as being so ‘harde-quilted, and stuffed, bombasted and sewed, as they can neither woorke, nor yet well plaie in them’. He also pointed out that these garments could be nothing if not excessively hot and it was almost impossible to ‘eyther stoupe downe, or bowe themselves to the grounde, soe styffe and sturdy they stand about them’. Needless to say, he failed to see any ‘handsomnes to be found in such dublettes’, supposing those who depicted themselves with such great bellies to be men inclined only gluttony.
Lanzichenecchi at the Battle of Pavia, 1525. (Author’s collection)
The German Landsknecht or Lansquenet were colourful mercenary soldiers with a formidable reputation. Their elaborate dress, which was deliberately slashed at the front, back and sleeves, singled them out and was, it is thought, the inspiration for the slashed doublets and hose of the Tudor and Elizabethan periods. (Author’s collection)
To ‘turn a fine leg’ was also the intention of every sixteenth- and seventeenth-century gentleman, the opportunity to do just that presenting itself once knee-length Tudor hose began to rise sharply from the bottom up stopping eventually at thigh level. Whereas at the start of the century all emphasis was on the chest, by its close this had changed radically. Men wore sleek upper body garments with puffed lower body garments designed to emphasise the leg in hose. Unlike the Middle Ages when hose were purely a leg covering, now they had separated into two garments: upper hose or breeches and nether hose or stockings.
Stubbes also had plenty to say in his usual long-winded way about what he considered excesses in clothing, this time turning his attention to men’s hose and their numerous names. To be fair, there were many hose from which to choose. Trunk hose were very short and padded over a full inner layer or lining. ‘Slops’ were loose, very full breeches that reached just below the knee, with highly decorative bands of material called guardes. Galligaskin or gally-hose breeches from Gascony again reaching below the knee. There were French hose, semi-fitted breeches coming to below the knee and decorated with costly ornaments, worn by nobility and the upper classes, and common French hose, largely unadorned, round, long, broad and wide and worn by the lower classes. Lastly but not least there were plunderhosen, a form of ‘slops’ with a very full inner layer pulled out between the panes and hanging below the knee which originated in Germany.
Stubbes also pointed out that things had definitely got out of hand where men’s clothing was concerned. He cited that in past times even kings were happy to wear a pair of hose that cost no more than ‘tenne Shillinges, or a Marke’, but now even gentry thought nothing of ‘bestowin twentie nobles, ten pound, twentie pound, fortie pound, yea, a hundred pound on one paire of Breeches!’. Such were the liberties taken with men’s hose and other apparel that it was feared the lack of respect for one’s station would bring about civil unrest. On 6 May 1562, by advice of her Council and ‘upon the Queen’s Majesty’s commandment’, Elizabeth I revised several of her sumptuary laws.
It was decreed that as the ‘monstrous and outrageous greatness of hose’ had crept ‘of late into the realm’ it was, from the day of the order, illegal for any tailor or hosier to use any more than 1¾yd of material to make any one pair of hose and that the lining should only be of one kind. Such linings were not to be loose or bolstered, ‘but to lie just unto their legs’, in other words a man was not to be so vain as to use his hose to ostentatiously display his wealth or to attract the ladies. This was obviously ignored by one young man who having shied away from using the usual wadding or ‘bombast’ (from which derives the word bombastic – meaning overblown) had stuffed the lining of his short trunk hose with bran to increase their size. Exchanging pleasantries with several ladies who by their smiles and giggles he presumed were enjoying his company, he continued his engaging conversation no doubt planning the seduction of one of the ladies at a later hour. Unfortunately, all was not as it seemed as unbeknown to him he had at an earlier point snagged his trunk hose on a wayward nail and the ladies were coquettishly laughing, alas not at his witty banter but at a small heap of bran steadily growing in size on the floor beside him. Eventually realising his predicament, he made a hurried escape with both his ego and his hose deflating at an alarming rate. To ensure hose were properly ‘policed’ the Mayor of London ordered that civil officers of Westminster and outlaying towns and villages were appointed to interview all hosiers or tailors and explain the new rules applying to the size of gentlemen’s hose. It was suggested in no uncertain terms that should an individual not comply with the new ruling he would be heavily fined and ‘suffered no more to continue his occupation’. These new officers would also be responsible for the apprehension, examination and committing to prison of the offenders.
Sir Walter Raleigh and his son display a ‘fine leg’ in trunk hose. (Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery)
The codpiece already mentioned in the previous chapter changed dramatically in the Tudor period. From a mere means of preserving a man’s modesty it became a prominent feature of a man’s wardrobe. The fashion spanned all age groups and lasted from the 1540s to the 1590s, and though a common accompaniment to male costume of the time, to the modern mind it is an object both strange yet compelling. So what made the Tudor codpiece so different from its predecessor? Was it a sex promotion object, a statement of virility and competition or just a natural progression of a fashion item?
In Italy, the codpiece was called a sacco and in France a braguette. As time passed the object became shaped and padded, designed to emphasise rather than to conceal, reaching its peak in terms of size and decoration in the 1540s. Highly decorative they were often be-decked with ribbons and bows, while some were even used to hold money and other small valuable items. Its eventual rigid structure was achieved by stuffing a soft fabric with straw or horsehair or it was moulded into harder shapes by using buckram or leather. Speculation has it that the roomy space inside offered protection from all the things hanging from a man’s belt, including swords, daggers and hard purses.
It was also thought that men whose virility was in question sported the biggest and most decorative codpieces to emphasise their masculinity. Holbein, for example, painted Henry VIII as a broad-shouldered, lusty male, his majestic presence conveyed through his aggressive posture and the fact he was wearing a codpiece. The portrait was actually painted during his brief marriage to Jane Seymour, c. 1536/7, and when he had just fathered his only living son at the age of 45. Was the portrait and Henry’s codpiece a psychological reaffirmation of his virility? Was he, even as king, a man who needed to substantiate the fact that he could father children and dare others to question his fertility? Large decorative codpieces, of course, also hid the devastating effects of syphilis. Scholars agree it is unlikely Henry VIII died of the disease as none of his living children – Mary Tudor, Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond, Elizabeth I and Edward VI – exhibited any form of congenital syphilis. Also, no records have been found showing that his doctors prescribed medication for it. But others who suffered the effects of the scourge of the times possibly utilised the codpiece as a perfect disguise.
Known as the Great Pox, syphilis had always had its place in the ancient world but reached epidemic proportions in the sixteenth century in Europe. It was something nobody wished to lay claim to. Italians called it the Mal Françoise, the English referred to it as the French Pox and the French the Mal de Naples. Not wishing the finger of blame to be pointed at them, the Flemish ultimately blamed Spain. Whoever’s fault it was the disease as described in 1546 by poet/physician Fracastor made those affected ‘sad, weary, and cast-down’. This is not surprising given that sores, small at first, but persistent, covered the genital organs ‘constantly discharging an incredible quantity of stinking matter’. The treatment was a mixture of medical observation, animal grease and mercury that was applied as a paste to the affected area, which was afterwards wrapped in bulky bandages resulting in difficulty walking and urinating as well as a tell-tale frontal bulge. The codpiece would have been able to work on two levels, both as a container for greasy ointments which would stain outer clothing and disguise the bandages and it allowed the afflicted to be camouflaged among his friends at a time when wearing codpieces was universal. Most men were eventually worn out by the toxic effects of mercury and died. For centuries after the old adage of ‘One night with Venus, six months with Mercury’ was a warning to those about to embark upon numerous sexual encounters.
Family of Henry VIII, c. 1545. (Courtesy of T.P. Campbell, Henry VIII and the Art of Majesty, New Haven and London, 2007)
The codpiece was incorporated into armour as much as a sign of masculinity as for protection. (Author’s collection)
Codpieces also found their way into armour of the sixteenth century and so for a time were an addition to the best full harnesses. Whether they were actually worn was another matter as sitting astride a horse wearing one would have been nothing if not uncomfortable. To all intents and purposes the area in question could have just as well been protected by chain mail which was flexible.
Writing in 1532, François Rabelais, a writer, doctor, humanist, monk and scholar, venerates the codpiece in his book the Histories of Gargantua and Pantagruel, a humorous and bawdy tale, by greatly inflating its importance. He exalts the codpiece as ‘the chief piece of a military harness’, equating it with how nature has equipped all manner of things with their own protective ‘codpieces’ by ‘strengthening, covering, guarding, and fortifying them with husks, cases, scurfs and swads, hulls, cods, stones, films, cartels, shells, ears, rinds, barks, skins, ridges, and prickles, which serve them instead of strong, fair, and natural codpieces …’. He then goes on to explain that nature has been unfair to man creating him ‘naked, tender, and frail, without either offensive or defensive arms’. An obvious disadvantage, this necessitates him to then ‘put on arms, and make provision of harness against wars and violence’. He concludes, ‘if the ballocks be marred, the whole race of human kind would forthwith perish, and be lost for ever’.
As if to underline this sentiment, Rabelais continues with the example of the importance of manly protection by citing Lord Humphrey de Merville, who when summoned to follow his King to war tried on a new suit of armour. At the same time his wife was contemplating the fact that he was covering all of his body against attack, except for what she considered a most precious ingredient to their marriage. She then scolded him for having ‘but small care of the staff of love and packet of marriage’ by not covering them with ‘links of mail’, and offered to give him an old tilting helmet she had lying in her closet with which to ‘shield, fence, and gabionate’ his genitalia. Rabelais then adds a verse which ultimately marks her concern:
When Yoland saw her spouse equipp’d for fight,
And, save the codpiece, all in armour dight,
My dear, she cried, why, pray, of all the rest
Is that exposed, you know I love the best?
Was she to blame for an ill-managed fear,—
Or rather pious, conscionable care?
Wise lady, she! In hurly-burly fight,
Can any tell where random blows may light?
The codpiece became part of the male costume out of necessity but also became a visual suggestion of masculinity and virility for over half a century. Some protruded at preposterous angles and were stuffed upright, some were padded and used as secret hiding places for items of value, giving rise to the age-old double entendre of keeping safe the ‘family jewels’. With some of the most powerful men of the age, Francis I, Emperor Charles V and Henry VIII, appearing in portraits which included codpieces it can be can be assumed the fashion had become an intrinsic part of the late-medieval male psyche and symbolic of male conquest, prowess and dominance over his new and expanding world. By the time Queens Mary and Elizabeth of England came to the throne the fashion had disappeared into the ever more voluminous folds of colourful trunk hose.
Elizabethan and late Tudor colours were a varied affair and as dyes became more accessible there was always a pressure to invent accurate names. Some colours were self-explanatory, such as ‘ash’ used for commoners’ gowns and kirtles along with a grey called ‘rats’. ‘Puke’ was a dirty brown colour and ‘goose-turd green’ not difficult to imagine. Russet was the same then as it is now, but plum was called ‘murrey’ and golden-brown was ‘tawney’. Other yellow shades were named after what they resembled such as ‘primrose’ or ‘straw’, with tan shades named as ‘maiden hair’ for a bright shade and ‘Isabella’ for a light buff. A very light yellow was known as ‘cane’.
Red was associated with power and importance and this colour clothing was described as being for all valiant men, including such shades as ‘Bristol red’, a light red called ‘lustie-gallant’, a blood red called ‘sangyn’ and ‘strammel’, a name first coined in 1575. In 1552 King Edward VI decreed that only the following colours were to be made that year: ‘scarlet’, ‘crimson’, ‘murrey’, ‘sheep’s colour’ (a natural shade), ‘puke’, ‘orange-tawney’, ‘watchet’ (blue) and ‘lion’s colour’ (a yellowish tan), ‘marble’, ‘sad new colour’, ‘motley’ and ‘iron grey’. What these colours looked like has as yet not been fully researched. Edward also had favourite colours, which were ‘incarnate’ (red), ‘carnation’ (resembled the colour of raw flesh), ‘blod’ (possibly a blood red), ‘turkey’ and ‘sea-water’. In 1554 Mary Tudor’s preferred shades were ‘ruby’, ‘crane’ (greyish white) and ‘old medley’, of which little is presently known.
Blue became an interesting phenomenon at this time with indigo widely available, inexpensive and easy to transport in the form of dye-cakes. Also, it was relatively permanent compared to many other dyestuffs of the time. As a result, it became a popular dye for the clothing of servants and others of a lower station and began the tradition for blue to be associated with the state of servitude. ‘Plunket’, ‘watchet’, ‘whey’ and ‘milk and water’ were light blue, a blue/green, a pale greenish-blue and whitish-blue respectively. Long fine blue also existed.
Despite the fanciful names littering the dye books of this era, scholars today have still to research them fully. ‘Dead Spaniard’, ‘The Devil in the Head’, ‘Ape’s Laugh’, ‘Mortal Sin’ and ‘pease-Porrige Tawnie’ conjure up a myriad of suggestions with ‘Love Longing’, ‘Kiss Me Darling’ and ‘dawn’ promising to be colours of a more pleasing hue. As for others of this period, namely, ‘scratch face’, ‘smoked Ox’, ‘merry widow’, ‘resurrection’, ‘brown bread’ and ‘dying Monkey’, one can only imagine!
