• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

- JOC 50115 c- 1 ^Jgpf** flO S , / CYCLOPAEDIA OF COSTUME. 273 reproduce it here, as it affords an example of another head-dress in fashion at the same period, which I consider, however, to be later than the time of Isabella, who died in 1435, and never could have Ladies, circa 1450, from a drawing in the portfolio of M. de Gagnieres, Paris. seen the head-dresses which the painters have given her in this and other instances, and to the representations of which may probably be attributed the origin of the preposterous story above mentioned. Turban Head-dresses. Temp. Edward IV. in A MS. the Harleian Collection, No. 2255, fol. 6, contains a ditty by Lydgate against the forked coiffures which the ladies indulged in at this period, beginning " Off God and kynd procedith al bewte," 2 N 274 CYCLOPAEDIA OF COSTUME. and in which he assures them that " Beauty will show though horns were away." Large turbans of the true Turkish form, made of the richest materials, are frequently seen in MSS. of the middle of the fifteenth century, and continued in fashion during the greater portion of the reign of Edward IV. At the same time, however, arose one of the most remarkable head-dresses ever known, examples of which exist to the present day in Normandy, where it is generally known by the name of Cauchoise, " " " from the pays de Caux in that province. This was the steeple head-dress," as it has been called " but its name in France to have been Hennin no by English antiquaries ; particular appears ;" derivation of it having been vouchsafed to us, even by M. Viollet-le-Duc. Originating in France, it was not long before it was in and it is to French adopted England ; writers we are indebted for a verbal description of it. tells that Monstrelet (' Chroniques ') us about the year 1467 the ladies wore on their heads round caps gradually diminishing to the height of half an ell or three quarters, and that some had them with loose kerchiefs atop, hang- ing down sometimes as low as the ground. " Paradin, a later author, says : The ladies orna- mented their heads with certain rolls of linen pointed like steeples, generally half and some- times three-quarters of an ell in height. These were called by some 'great butterflies,' from having two large wings on each side resembling those of that insect. The high cap was covered with a fine piece of lawn hanging down to the ground, the greater part of which was tucked under the arm. The ladies of middle rank wore caps of cloth, consisting of several breadths or bands twisted round the head, with two wings on the like ears of sides, apes' ; others, again, higher condition wore caps of velvet half a yard high, which, in these days, would appear very unseemly." The latter head-dress I consider to be the one figured at page 78, article CAP. " " The one with wings like apes' ears I am at a loss to but of the and identify ; steeple Duchess of Burgundy, born 1457, died 1482. From her Marie, portrait. butterfly head-dresses the examples and varieties are almost innumerable. ' Addison, in the Spectator,' has a pleasant letter on this subject, comparing the steeple head- " dress to the commode or tower of his and he : The day ; following Paradin, says women might possibly have carried this Gothic building much higher had not a famous monk, Thomas Connecte by name, attacked it with great zeal and resolution. This holy man travelled from place to place to down this monstrous and succeeded so well in it, as the sacrificed preach commode, that, magicians t their books to the flames upon the preaching of the Apostle, many of the women threw down their head-dresses in the middle of his sermon, and made a bonfire of them within sight of the pulpit. He was so renowned, as well for the sanctity of his life as his manner of preaching, that he had often a congregation of twenty thousand people, the men placing themselves on the one side of his pulpit and the women on the other, that appeared (to use the similitude of an ingenious writer) like a forest of cedars with their heads reaching to the clouds. He so warmed and animated the people against CYCLOPAEDIA OF COSTUME. 275 this monstrous ornament that it lay under a kind of persecution, and, whenever it appeared in public, was pelted down by the rabble, who flung stones at the persons who wore it. But, notwithstanding this prodigy vanished while the preacher was amongst them, it began to appear again some months ' after his departure, or, to tell it in M. Paradin's own words, The women, like snails in a fright, had Head-dresses. Temp. Henry VI. " drawn in their and shot them out as No. horns, again soon as the danger was over.' (' Spectator,' 81, ' and Argentre's Histoire de Bretagne.') In a MS. copy of Froissart, Harleian Lib. No. 4379, written during the last half of the fifteenth century, there is a drawing of a sow walking on stilts and playing the harp, having on her head one of these steeples with its appendages (see woodcut annexed, also pp. 215, 221, 222, ante). In the brief reign of Richard III. we bid farewell to steeples and horns. The hair is confined in a cylindrical cap or caul of gold or embroidered stuff pro- jecting from the back of the head, and covered by a kerchief of the most dia- phanous description, stiffened out to resemble wings. Some of these ker- chiefs are extremely large, and paned or with fine thread others Lady Elizabeth Say. From her brass. chequered gold ; are simply transparent, and scarcely exceed the size of the caul. woodcut and also of (See annexed, figure Lady steeple Head-dress. and Child, p. 2 1 5 ante.) As usual the fashion changed from one extreme to the other; and in the reign of Henry VII. head-dress makes its more of a^new appearance, partaking the hood than the cap, and suggesting the idea of the spire having been taken down from the church, leaving the gable end of the roof with its barge boards untampered with. To justify this simile the reader is referred to the engravings, which tell their own story better than any words can do. (See next page.) The group we have given exhibits the caps and cauls of gold net or embroidery, from beneath which the hair escaping hung down the shoulders half-way to the ground, a fashion continued from the earliest period to the reign of Henry VII., whose queen, Elizabeth of York, at her corona- 2 N 2 2/6 CYCLOPAEDIA OF COSTUME. " " " tion wore her fair yellow hair hanging down plain behind her back," with a calle of pipes over it while the third as if (Leland) ; figure wears over her caul the head-dress I have alluded to, looking the lower part of the steeple head-dress, the absolute covering for the head, had been preserved when 1490. Head-dresses. Temp. Henry VII. they threw away the pinnacle that surmounted it. On the sides of it is the ornament already noticed " " as the clog or clock mentioned in the ordinances of Margaret, Countess of Richmond, mother of Henry VII., for "the reformation of apparell for great estates of women in the tyme of mourning." (Compare the two head-dresses at page 242 ante. See also the figures on page 223.) It would be an almost endless task to picture or describe the variety of head-dresses which are presented to us by the effigies, paintings, and tapestries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. I have limited my selection to the most remarkable and such as are particularly characteristic of their periods, as far as I can venture to date them. Here is one which has been engraved by Hollis from the effigy of a lady of the Arden family in Aston Church, Warwickshire, unlike any I can remember to with and as the has not have met ; personage been identified, I hesitate to assign it posi- tively to any particular portion of the fifteenth in century, but am inclined to consider it, ac- cordance with Mr. Fairholt, who has copied it, as an early type of that head-dress which portraits of the reign of Henry VIII. have made so familiar to us, and which has obtained " the name of diamond-shaped." The ex- from Aston Church is of a ample singularly Side view of the same. Effigy in Aston Church, Warwickshire. cumbrous character the inner folds of white ; and other. linen, the outer of purple cloth or silk, edged with yellow (gold ?), overlapping each Even composed of the lightest materials, it must have been as oppressive as it was unbecoming. The aforesaid diamond-shaped head-dress appears in the portraits of Elizabeth of York, queen of Henry VII., and of Jane Seymour, third wife of Henry VIII., by Holbein, which have been copied for this work, and given by us at pages 223 and 224 ante. That of Katharine of Arragon, Henry VIII. 's first wife, by the same great painter, engraved by Harding from the original miniature in the possession of his Grace the Duke of Buccleuch, will suffice to illustrate it here. Whether this head-dress is the French hood so often mentioned at this date, or the three-cornered miniver of Stubbs and others I am unable to determine but I shall return cap spoken by (see p.

Load more

  314

Copy Link