CHAPTER 1 Headgear: Hat, Cap, Hood, Mitre Introduction down over his shoulders;4 and in Troilus and Criseyde Pandarus urges his niece, a sedate young widow, to Throughout the later Middle Ages (the twelfth to early cast off her face-framing barbe, put down her book and sixteenth centuries), if we are to believe the evidence of dance.5 art, some kind of headgear was worn by both sexes in- In art of the middle medieval period (from about doors and out: at dinner, in church, even in bed. This is the eighth to the eleventh centuries), headgear is less understandable if we consider the lack of efficient heat- well attested. Men are usually depicted bareheaded. ing in medieval buildings, but headgear was much more Women’s heads and necks are wrapped in voluminous than a practical item of dress. It was an immediate mark- coverings, usually depicted as white, so possibly linen is er of role and status. In art, it is possible to distinguish being represented in most cases. There is no clue to the immediately the head of a man from that of woman, as shape of the piece of cloth that makes up this headdress, for example in a fourteenth-century glass panel with a sa- how it is fastened, or whether there is some kind of cap tirical depiction of a winged serpent which has the head beneath it to which it is secured. Occasionally a fillet is of a bishop, in a mitre, and a female head, in barbe* and worn over, and more rarely under, this veil or wimple. fillet with netted hair bunched at either side of her face.1 Earlier still, before the coming of Christianity made Headgear distinguished matron from widow from nun; representational art common in western Europe, fur- lawyer from labourer from lord. Not only were ecclesias- nished graves provide some evidence of dress, but very tics distinguishable from seculars; their rank and office little of that relates to headgear. A few scraps of textile was marked by headgear. The Pope in his triple crown attached to metalwork may derive from women’s veils, was distinguished from the cardinal in his red hat, the and fragments of gold from brocaded fillets survive in bishop in his mitre, the monk in his cowl and the pilgrim a very few rich female graves, but the form of the head- in his travelling hat. All these and more, can be found in dress remains ambiguous. Apart from very rare helmets, the fifteenth-century Bedford Hours, fol. 150v.2 For secu- male graves provide practically no trace of headgear. lars, headgear was subject to rapid changes in fashion; The evidence of surviving garments contrasts in some and extreme styles, particularly those of women, such as respects with that of art and furnished pre-Christian saffron-dyed wimples and ‘horns’, were bitterly criticised graves. There are no surviving examples of the extremes by moralists and mocked by artists and satirical poets.3 of late medieval female headgear, the despised horns Late medieval headgear was often layered: hood over and the conical steeple headdresses, nor of the simple cap for men and elaborate concoctions sometimes in- veil (see General Introduction, p. 2). The elaborately volving wire and padding, topped by a veil, for women. twisted chaperon* worn by men in art is not among sur- It was clearly restricting both physically and in terms vivals, though the basic hood with liripipe* from which of the behaviour demanded and defined by a style. it developed is represented by the Bocksten hood (1.2). More than once the fourteenth-century poet Geoffrey The artefacts here have been ordered according to type, Chaucer equates the removal of headgear with ‘lighten- progressing from hoods to cap to hat, although catego- ing up’: in the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales, ries are flexible. The Orkney (1.1) and Bocksten items are the Pardoner, evidently in a frivolous mood as he sets off both clearly hoods: they covered the whole head, fitting on pilgrimage in Spring, has packed away his hood and closely, and extended to protect the shoulders as well. wears only a cap, beneath which his flaxen hair hangs The York item (1.3) is smaller, shorter and left the neck exposed. It bears some relation to a hood, but might be 1 The panel is in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, see http://www called a cap. Made of silk, which was prestigious, it is .therosewindow.com/pilot/Oxford-Christ-Church/table.htm ac- likely to have been worn outermost. The garment associ- cessed 10 November 2015. ated with St Birgitta (1.4) fitted close to the head, did not 2 London, British Library MS Additional 18850; http://www.bl extend to the neck, and was fastened with ribbons. It is .uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=add_ms_18850_f150v accessed safely categorised as a cap, though it has in the past been 10 November 2015. 3 See Louise M. Sylvester, Mark C. Chambers and Gale R. Owen- Crocker, ed., Medieval Dress and Textiles in Britain: a multilingual 4 Larry D. Benson, ed., The Riverside Chaucer, third edition (Oxford: sourcebook (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2014), Chapter IV, Moral and University Press, 1987), 34, lines 675–683. Satirical Works. 5 Benson, Chaucer, 490, Book II, lines 110–111. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���8 | doi ��.��63/978900435��6�_003 30 CHAPTER 1 called a ‘coif’. Though decorated, it was linen, and might the neck and sides of the face, and an open tube at have been used as a night-cap or worn under another the back through which a pony-tail of long hair could head-covering. A reproduction of the Dokkum-Berg protrude; but it is not constructed like other surviving Sion headdress (1.5) can be arranged in several different hoods. When sitting on the back of the head it might shapes, though that versatility might be modern inter- be described as a cap, but it lacks the strings to fasten pretation. It was probably worn outermost. The more it under the chin or under the hair at the back, which rigid items of headgear have been grouped together as close-fitting caps usually seem to have had; when worn ‘hats’. They include the felt* item from Little Sampford forward on the head it shades the face as the brim of a (1.6) and the birette* from the grave of the Spanish hat might do, though it lacks the rigidity of other hats in prince Fernando de la Cerda (1.7), which was made on a this chapter. wooden base. The episcopal headgear known as a mitre The York headdress is made in the same way as the had evolved from its origins as a soft cap with a depres- Orkney hood, but it is very small, and originally had ties sion from front to back and low points on either side, to to fasten it under the chin, so it might be categorised a taller hat with stiffened points front and back, some- as a cap. It certainly did not cover the shoulders as the times additionally made rigid with a lining of canvas or Orkney and Bocksten hoods did. Like the Dokkum-Berg linen (1.8–1.10). Sion headdress, the York garment could be arranged to The chance find of the Orkney hood and the ar- accommodate a tail of hair through a gap at the back. chaeological finds of the Dokkum-Berg Sion hat and The York hood is no longer unique. It has been paral- the Viking cap or hood from York all evidence types leled by similar items, which like the York garment are of headgear which are not, or were not, at the time of made of silk, from Lincoln and, in child’s size, another excavation, attested from other sources; and the Little example from York. Fragments of similar garments, in Sampford headpiece, though unmistakably a hat, is not wool and silk, have been found in Viking Dublin. This, of a form exactly paralleled from art. All four are finds then, was a garment once commonly worn in Viking which were not associated with human remains or with towns; perhaps the Dokkum-Berg-Sion headdress was other garments, artefacts which, in the first three cases, also once a common garment for its time and region. owe their survival to particular wet soil conditions con- Two of the featured items of headgear were worn by ducive to the preservation of organic remains, specifi- dressed corpses, and thus have the advantage of being cally fibres of animal origin (wool and silk). The Orkney contextualised as part of a complete costume (apart hood was found in a peat bog; the Dokkum-Berg-Sion from linen underwear which appears to have perished hat in a terp, an artificial mound created for habitation in each case). There the resemblance between the corps- in an area which was both marshy and prone to coastal es ends, since Fernando de la Cerda was a well-known flooding; the York hood in the course of excavations at Spanish prince, whose death was well-documented Coppergate, where 9 metres of archaeological strata of and who was buried in the family mausoleum, and the moist, peaty soil revealed the structures and possessions Bocksten man was an unknown Swedish murder victim of the Viking inhabitants of a prosperous town. The Little whose corpse was disposed of in a bog at an unknown Sampford hat, hidden in a wall cavity, has been freak- time. However in both cases the costumes can be par- ishly preserved in its dry and vermin-free environment.