In medieval society nothing indicates your status as much as what you wear, so you’ll need to get this right. T-shirt, jeans and trainers will have to be left behind in the twenty-first century, I’m afraid, and if you are female, so will trousers, pants, culottes or shorts of any kind. For you, skirts are now compulsory. And so are hats or head-coverings of some sort for men and women, even in bed, and if you are a tradesman or a housewife you’ll need to wear an apron too. Women often have a Sunday best apron, traditionally dyed blue with a plant called woad, to wear to church. Your apron is your badge of respectability, so wear it always and with pride. In 1463-64, Edward IV passed a law forbidding prostitutes from wearing aprons so they couldn’t pretend to be respectable wives.
DID YOU KNOW?
‘An apron’ was originally ‘a napron’, a table napkin worn so you didn’t spill soup down your front. This transferred ‘n’ also happened to ‘noak’ trees and ‘noranges’.
Put simply, Sumptuary Laws are legal acts, first introduced in the fourteenth century, with the sole purpose of averting the chaos caused by people of lower rank dressing above their status. This may sound like nonsense to us in an age when you can go ahead and wear a designer label if you can afford it. We also take for granted the barging and the elbows in the ribs; characteristics of rush hour commuting. But back in medieval times, when few commuted farther than a couple of streets away to their place of work, what we accept as normal rush hour behaviour would probably have resulted in the militia being called out to quell the riot.
In medieval England it just isn’t done to put your head down and plough your way along, regardless of your fellows on the street. There are rules of etiquette to be observed by everyone. And that’s why sumptuary laws are needed.
The way people conduct themselves when out and about is determined by their status. Everybody makes way for the king. If you are on horseback, you must take your beast aside, off the road, to allow the king to pass unhindered, removing your headwear and bowing. If on foot, you also get out of the way, take off your cap and bend the knee to your sovereign. In fact, you are required to make way for everyone who is your social superior and those below your status will step aside for you and doff their hats. But how can you tell who is where on the social ladder in relation to you? If every Tom, Dick and Prince Hal wears silks, velvets and ermine, dyed deep blue (what we would call ‘royal blue’), crimson or imperial purple, the entire system collapses. That is why it matters so much what you wear, how you dress and the reason sumptuary laws exist.1
In the fourteenth century the first raft of sumptuary legislation was passed at the request of various nobles who – to their great disgust – saw merchants on the streets of London who were more richly dressed than they were. Humble folk, in confusion, were stepping aside for these merchants and doing them greater courtesy than the less finely clothed lords. This was insupportable. Breeding outweighed wealth, the lords complained, and it wasn’t their fault that the more successful merchants could afford a better wardrobe than theirs. The later fourteenth century being hard times for nobles, what with their rent-paying tenants and waged labourers dying of plague and the survivors demanding lower rents and better pay, the lords were not so impressively attired as before.
When King Richard II married Anne of Bohemia in 1382 she brought an entourage with her from her homeland along with new fashions and ideas. Anne is thought to have introduced the side-saddle as a more elegant way for ladies to ride. Her Bohemian gentlemen wore shoes with long, pointed or ‘piked’ toes. The English also called them ‘cracows’ because they had been invented in Krakow, then in Bohemia (the French called them ‘poulaines’). A century later piked shoes were still in fashion but the style had reached laughable lengths and the ends had to be attached to gilt chains fastened below the knee to prevent the wearer from tripping on them and breaking his foolish neck. King Edward IV was determined to curb this extreme footwear but the long-toed fashion was established and it was difficult to persuade young men, in particular, not to wear these pointed shoes. Edward passed several laws, the first enacted in 1463-1464, attempting to regulate the length of long-toed shoes. According to the new act, no one below the rank of a lord should wear shoes or boots with pikes more than two inches long.
Piked-shoe wearers.
Shoemakers were forbidden to make shoes or boots with points longer than the prescribed length. The responsibility for punishment of offences was given to Justices of the Peace or local magistrates, and all fines were to go towards the expenses of the king’s household. The act related to the lesser and poorer nobility and to the classes below them, but regulation shoe length was hard to enforce, judging from the number of times the rules were re-issued with regard to the matter within the space of two or three years. In 1463 it was ordained: ‘that no person, cordwainer [shoemaker] or cobbler [shoe repairer] within the city of London or within three miles of any part of the same city, be he within franchise or without [a member of the Leatherworkers’ Guild or not], do to be made after the feast of Easter [1464] … and shoes, galoches, or huseas [thigh-high boots] with any pike or poleyn that shall pass the length of two inches, which shall be judged by the wardens or governors of the same mystery [guild].2
There are problems, however, in trying to enforce these laws and not only those concerning footwear. For one thing, fashions are ever changing, and rather as today’s legislation struggles to keep up with technological innovations, sumptuary laws can’t keep abreast of novel fashions and the introduction of new foreign textiles. This means that the laws have to be constantly revised through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Secondly, if prominent citizens can afford to buy satins and furs, equally, the fines imposed for breaking the dress code aren’t going to put them off. In fact, the laws are ignored more often than they are observed. And thirdly, whose job was it to act as the fashion police?
The answer to this question is likely to lead to some amusing situations because the laws are supposed to be enforced, quite literally, by the neighbourhood watch. Let’s hear about Jane, whose husband wants to impress his fellow citizens of London by having her attend church on Sunday clad in a fine new gown.
Jane’s gown is made of camlet, an expensive imported textile, a mix of silk and linen, and it’s trimmed with black sable fur from Russia. What is more, such fine fabric deserves a high quality dye, in this case crimson from the costly kermes insect of Eastern Europe. Since her husband is a wealthy member of the Fishmongers’ Guild he can afford it, but by no means do he and Jane qualify to wear such clothes under the sumptuary laws. No matter. Jane wears her new gown to church and everyone admires it, except her neighbour, Alice, who is green with envy. After church, Alice goes to the sheriff and reports that her fellow parishioner is dressing far above her status. That afternoon, the sheriff visits Jane, demands that she hands the offending gown over to him and her husband must pay a fine of sixpence. The money goes into the city coffers but what about the gown? That is given to Alice as her reward for having reported Jane, even though Alice’s husband is only a cutler and, therefore, she is no more entitled to wear it than Jane. Yet the following Sunday, Alice wears the gown of crimson camlet to church. Jane reports her to the sheriff; the sheriff gets another sixpence in the coffers and Jane gets her gown back to wear next week. And so on …
Anyone who isn’t a lord’s son, a government servant or a gentleman with an income from land of at least £100 per annum is forbidden to wear velvet, satin or damask. If their land is worth £20 or more then satin, damask or camlet can be used to line or trim their clothing, but not for the main body of the garment. The problem is that into the fifteenth century more and more successful merchants are becoming richer than the aristocracy. Inter-marriage makes matters even more complex. The nobility want to share in the mercantile wealth, and merchants yearn for titles and high status. The solution is for a lord’s penniless second and untitled son to wed the daughter of a rich merchant, but where do their offspring stand on the social ladder? The children aren’t the sons and daughters of a lord and yet they can now afford to live in more opulence than their paternal relatives who still have titles. An additional oddity concerns the way in which wealth is judged. Annual income from land is always regarded as having greater status than the same monetary income gained from trade. The sumptuary laws passed in the reign of King Edward III, in 1363, equate a landowner worth £200 a year to a merchant worth £1,000. No wonder the laws are flouted.
Attempts to mark out prostitutes from respectable women, included in Edward III’s and Edward IV’s sumptuary laws of 1363 and 1462-63, insist that women in the sex trade should wear unlined striped hoods (and no aprons). It is also the custom that a married woman must cover her hair: a ‘loose’ woman, i.e. one wearing her hair loose and uncovered, is of easy virtue and up to no good. The frequency of acts and the huge number of laws passed proves that the authorities are losing the fight to preserve social distinctions, as well as attempting to maintain morals and ethics, preserving the English economy against foreign imports, or restraining the excesses of fashion. However, a good many of the various sumptuary laws dating back to as early as the fourteenth century were still on the English statute books as recently as the 1800s, and some may even remain. Am I a loose woman because I didn’t wear a head-covering to the supermarket this morning, for example? Or were we allowed to eat meat dishes on five days last week? The sumptuary laws covered what you could eat, as well as what you could wear, and those of lower status were not allowed to have meat very often.
What kind of clothes would I wear?
Your clothes would be made of natural fibres, such as wool and linen, silk, if you’re of high status, or textiles that are a mixture of these. No ‘easy-care’, ‘non-iron’, ‘permanent-press’ or ‘drip-dry’, I’m afraid, although everything is non-iron because irons haven’t been invented yet. Any woollen clothes are hardly ever washed in any case, though this isn’t such a bad thing, as we’ll see. Linen garments, sheets, tablecloths and napkins and such like are pulled straight while wet from laundering, dried and then folded neatly and put into a press, and left until needed. If done properly, the items will come out smooth, wrinkle-free and ‘pressed’. From my own experience as a historical re-enactor, I can confirm that natural fibres are wonderful to wear, if you do so correctly. They are comfortable, warm in winter and cool in summer.
Because woollens are difficult to wash, becoming sodden and heavy if immersed, and, therefore, get pulled out of shape and may shrink, it’s important to prevent them becoming soiled to begin with. For this reason it is virtually unknown to wear wool next to the skin where it would become sweaty and smelly. Linen underwear is a must and most people change it every day, except for the poorest folk who can’t afford spare clothes. Rich people with extensive wardrobes may change their undies two or three times a day: because they can afford to and don’t have to do their own laundry. For women, and children of both sexes until they are toilet trained, underwear consists of a kind of long linen smock, sometimes called a shift or a chemise. Lengths may vary but around knee-length for children and mid-calf or longer for women, usually with long sleeves. The shift protects the skin from chafing by any woollen outer garments and freely absorbs sweat, protecting the clothes worn on top.
An experiment carried out by Ruth Goodman during work on a recent TV production entailed her living, dressing and working as a Tudor farmer’s wife for three months. Clothes were much the same as pre-sixteenth-century ones. Ruth washed her hands and face frequently, but bathing, showering, perfumed toilet soap and deodorants weren’t allowed. She changed her linen undergarment and headwear once a week, her woollen hose once a month, yet remained perfectly acceptable to the twenty-first-century film crew. Unlike one of her fellow re-enactors who showered daily, and used shampoo and deodorant but wore the same Tudor-style underwear throughout filming. Apparently he became more and more unpopular as the production went on as he smelled bad despite his personal hygiene procedure. Ruth smelled of wood smoke from the open fire but was otherwise quite socially acceptable.3 So don’t forget: change your underwear as often as you can.
It used to be thought that, for medieval women, there were no such things as bras and knickers, despite a couple of medieval manuscripts referring to ‘breast-bags’, possibly as being worn, well-padded, by prostitutes to enhance their assets. But in Lengberg Castle in Austria, in 2008, discoveries were made that required new thinking. Beneath the floorboards, put in place in the fifteenth century, the space had been packed with rags to reduce draughts and noise. Amongst the rags were found bras and tie-at-the-hips briefs.4
Medieval men wear undershirts and something like baggy boxers, held up with a draw-string, all of linen. Remember, there is no elastic, so everything has tapes, ties, pins or lacings. Over the undershirt a man may choose to wear a second shirt, perhaps with embroidery or trimmings that are meant to show. This won’t be worn next to the skin, otherwise it will need frequent washing, which will spoil the decorative features.
In medieval England everyone wears hose or stockings. For men, these are long enough to be able to tie them to the bottom hem of the undershirt. Split-hose can be virtually a pair of trousers (pants) in two halves, tied to the shirt at the sides and with a cod-piece to cover any embarrassment. This is just a modest flap, tied in place, until Henry VIII turned the cod-piece into a ‘huge’ fashion statement in the sixteenth century. If he hadn’t been king, he would probably have been a laughing stock.
Women’s hose tend to be shorter, just over the knee and held up by garters, which are either tied in place or, for the better off, come with buckle-fastenings.
Fifteenth-century bra and briefs found at Lengberg Castle, Austria.
Order of the Garter
The Most Noble Order of the Garter, the most prestigious order of chivalry, was founded by King Edward III in 1348. He had in mind an idea of refounding King Arthur’s Round Table. The emblem worn by the twenty-four knights of the order is a lady’s garter. The story goes that the king was dancing with a lady when her garter slipped down to the floor. Courtiers sniggered, thinking the king must have been playing with her garter but he picked it up and fastened it around his own leg, saying ‘Honi soit qui mal y pense’(‘Shame on him who thinks evil of this’). This phrase became the order’s motto, but who was the embarrassed lady? No one knows for certain.
What you wear on top of your underclothes will depend on the fashions of the day and your wealth. In winter, they may well be made of wool or wool mixed with other fibres such as silk, if you’re rich. In summer, linen and silk are cooler to wear. For women, a long tunic or kirtle is usual, with an over-gown or surcoat on top. Fashions change: gowns are girdled (belted) at hip-level for much of the medieval period but high-waisted styles are in vogue in the fifteenth century. Sleeves may be tightly fitted or long and flowing and are sometimes removable, simply being tied to the gown at the shoulder. A most acceptable gift from your lover is a pair of detachable sleeves that can be worn with any of your gowns.
For men, a short top such as a rough jerkin is worn by common folk, or, for the fashionable beau, a stylish doublet goes over your shirt. Above that, you may wear an over gown. Lengths vary greatly, according to your age and what’s in fashion. Generally, young men wear short gowns – sometimes indecently so – while older men like to keep their knees warm in longer gowns. Floor-length robes are also a way to show your wealth because far more cloth is used.
If money is no object, your outer gown, which everyone will see, should be of the most expensive textiles: exotic imports such as silk, velvet, satin, taffeta, brocade, damask and, of course, cloth-of-gold. This last comes in a variety of colours, with gold thread being woven through silk on the loom. The most expensive dyes are crimson, a vivid blue (like royal blue though that doesn’t exist yet) and purple. Towards the end of the fifteenth century black becomes a big fashion statement. Not only is black dye very costly, it fades quickly so anyone wearing a truly black gown must be clad in a new ensemble and have servants to keep it free of dust flecks, lint and dandruff.
For cold weather, furs are essential as linings and trimmings. The sumptuary laws tell you which ones you may wear. Cat fur is so humble that anyone can wear it, but many furs are imported from the Baltic lands. Black sable, white fox, ermine (from a stoat in winter coat) and miniver are some of the most prestigious furs. Miniver, or ‘ver’, is the white belly fur of a red squirrel.
DID YOU KNOW?
In the French fairytale ‘Cinderella’, the heroine wore glass slippers to the ball. In fact, they were ‘ver’ slippers; an English misprint translating them as ‘verre’, which is French for glass. How could you dance in glass shoes?
For women, how you fasten your gown tells everyone a great deal about you. Gowns could be laced down the front, down the back or at the sides. In an age when the Church teaches that it’s God’s will that families should have as many children as possible and contraception is not only wicked but unreliable anyway, married women are frequently pregnant. Side lacing is ideal maternity wear, adjusting it more loosely to suit an expanding waistline. Back lacing takes a bit of ingenuity, threading the laces through the eyelets before wriggling into the gown, but it is possible to do it yourself. More often, back lacing is a sign of a lady with maids to assist her in dressing. Front lacing is the most popular means of fastening, and buttons tend to be for decoration.
Just as with lacing up shoes, there are two ways of front lacing. The quickest way is to begin with two ends of equal length in the bottom two eyelets, then work your way up, crossing the laces between threading them through each pair of eyelets. To get the gown on and off, the laces can simply be loosened without unthreading. The second method is slower. With one short end passed through a top eyelet, the long end goes to the bottom and is spiral laced through each pair of eyelets to the top where it is tied to the opposite short end. This produces horizontal lines of lacing, not crosses. Respectable women use this more time-consuming method, and are ‘straight-laced’, as opposed to prostitutes, who use cross-lacing because they need to dress and undress often and quickly.
When you first arrive in medieval England, hopefully you will have thought to wear something appropriate so that you can look the part. However, if you find your clothes are way out of fashion, I suggest you find a fripperer. Fripperers sell second-hand clothing, but don’t worry, there is no shame in wearing other people’s cast-offs. Clothes are often bequeathed in wills, handed down to children and servants, given to the Church, or otherwise worn until they are rags. A good fripperer will have given the clothes a proper brushing, sponged out any stains and carried out minor repairs, if necessary. Choosing from what he or she has on offer is the only way to buy ‘off the peg’ if you’re in a hurry for a new outfit.
In the early fourteenth century clothes are at their most expensive because England doesn’t yet produce her own textiles. Famous English wool is all exported, much of it to Flanders and the Netherlands, where it is processed and woven into cloth and imported back to England. For this reason even royalty had to economise. In her exchequer accounts, Queen Isabella, wife to Edward II, shows that when the hems of her long gowns became frayed from dragging along the floor, she had new hems put onto the old gowns. In fact, replaceable hems could just be pinned in place. Later in the century, Queen Philippa of Hainault, wife to Edward III, persuaded some of her countrymen to bring their weaving skills to England from Flanders and teach the English how to make their own woollen cloth. After that, clothes began to get cheaper; woollen ones, at least.
Buying new clothes is a slow business. First, you must visit a mercer. Mercers deal in cloth, from home-grown woollen textiles of various qualities to those exotic imports mentioned earlier. Having chosen the material, bearing in mind the sumptuary laws and with some idea of the garment you want, the mercer will advise you how much cloth you need. Be aware that he will likely suggest you buy rather more than required to boost his sales, so you may wish to set a limit on price before you start.
Once you have your cloth you take it to a tailor. He will know what necklines, waistlines and sleeve designs are being worn at the king’s court and can produce more practical, day-to-day versions for ordinary folk. He may have small replicas ready-made to show you. Whatever style you decide on, the tailor will need to measure you for height, width of chest and waist, arm-length and, for men particularly, leg-length. There are no tape measures. Each customer has their own measure, a length of cord with their name on it and knotted to mark the size of each measurement. With this information, the tailor is ready to mark out your cloth, cut it and stitch it. Keeping any off-cuts of unused cloth is often a perk of the tailor’s craft, so if you hope to make a matching purse from what is left, you need to make sure this in included in the deal, though it will increase the price. Or the price could be reduced a little if you allow the tailor to use other off-cuts for cuffs or trimmings. Once the garment is tacked together you may need to go for a fitting before it’s finally sewn together, all by hand, of course.
A tailoress cutting cloth and stitching garments for a customer.
If you want woven braids, ribbons or other decoration you must supply them to the tailor. Such things can be purchased from a haberdasher or a silk-woman could make them to order for you. You can understand why new clothes take time.
How would I look after my clothes?
Having waited so patiently and gone to such trouble to have a new gown, it will be worthwhile taking great care of it. As we saw in the introduction, it is thought that hanging your fine clothes in the garderobe keeps the moths away. Wearing a good-sized apron to protect it is wise if you’re a housewife or a craftsman.
Top tip
The Goodman of Paris, c.1395, advised his wife to treat grease marks and stains on his clothes with white wine or white vinegar.
John Russell, in his fifteenth-century Boke of Nurture, written between 1460 and 1470, has these instructions for keeping your clothes in good shape: ‘In the warderobe ye must muche entende besily the robes to kepe well and also to brusche them clenly with the ende of a soft brusche … and yet ouer moche bruschynge werethe cloth lyghtly. Lett neuer wollyn cloth ne furre passe a seuennyght [a week] to be unbrosshen and shakyn, tend therto aright, for moughtes [moths] be redy euer in them to gender [breed] and alight; therfore to drapery [cloth] and skynnery [furs and leathers] euer haue ye a sight.’
As you’ll realise, keeping your clothes in good order takes some effort, but they will last a long time; long enough that they are often bequeathed in people’s wills.
How would I look after my skin and hair?
Although in the twenty-first-century it seems to be thought that medieval people were dirty and never bothered to wash, you will find this isn’t the case. Every morning you will be expected to wash your face, hands and neck, at the very least, and often your feet as well. Mealtimes require elaborate hand-washing before, during – if necessary, making use of finger bowls – and at the end of the meal.
Top tip
If you cannot bear to be without a deodorant, the apothecary sells pieces of alum stone, which, if wetted, can be applied underarm and left to dry.
Bathing happens less frequently, mainly because of all the trouble required to heat so much water, bucketful by bucketful, and the same to empty the tub afterwards. But, of course, if you’re royal you have servants to do that for you. King Henry III even had a purpose-built tiled bathroom installed at his palace at Clarendon in Wiltshire. King John bathed once a fortnight – even in winter – paying his bath-man 13d on bath-night, instead of the usual 5d per day, because of the extra work involved.
For lesser folk, a half barrel lined with linen sheets to avoid splinters, and a stool to sit on, served the purpose. Here are John Russell’s instructions for preparing and giving your husband, lord or anyone else a bath:
If your lord wishes to bathe and wash his body clean, hang sheets round the roof, every one full of flowers and sweet green herbs, and have five or six sponges to sit upon, and a sheet over so that he may bathe there for a while, and have a sponge also for under his feet, if there be any to spare, and always be careful that the door is shut. Have a basin full of hot fresh herbs and wash his body with a soft sponge, rinse him with fair rose water, and throw it over him; then let him go to bed; but see that the bed be sweet and nice; and first put on his socks and slippers that he may go near the fire and stand on his foot-sheet, wipe him dry with a clean cloth, and take him to bed to cure his troubles.
John Russell doesn’t suggest that a wife should share her husband’s bath, but this was an enjoyable, popular and economic alternative in the great wooden tubs of the time. The sponges were necessary as cushions to guard against splinters.
As you can see above, herbal rinses are used to keep skin and hair in good condition, but if you find you have to do a lot of dish-washing, laundry, scouring and scrubbing, you may require a moisturiser for your hands. Salves are the remedy for sore or dry skin. The name comes from the Latin Salvia officinalis, the sage plant, because a basic salve is made with sage and goose-grease. A common addition to the salve is marigold petals, reckoned to be especially good as hand cream.
If you work outdoors, I’m afraid there is no lotion with sun-protection factor 30. But sunburn shouldn’t be a problem. Legs and arms are usually covered by one layer of clothing at least, and sunhats, made of woven reeds or straw, are a must and readily available. When I spend time outside as a re-enactor, I find it’s my neck that is most exposed because my hair is tucked inside my cap and the neckline of my gown is quite low at the back. However, a rectangle of linen, two corners tied in front and the rest of the cloth tucked into the back of my gown serves perfectly to prevent sunburn and is quite authentic as a medieval kerchief.
A medieval bath (reconstruction).