There’s a lot there to photograph. My goal? To obtain photographic copies of all records relating to Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe that I don’t already have copies of, and to eventually transcribe them all and add them to Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Uploaded database.

The National Archives has changed dramatically in the 12 years since I’ve been there. Their document ordering system has evolved from slips of paper to the swipe of a card and a few clicks on a keyboard. And they now have photography stands available, which allowed me to tear through 1,563 photographs in seven hours! (My back doesn’t thank me, but I’m sure that posterity will.)

There are a lot of documents out there–a huge amount–and a lot of them are pretty obscure. So this is a post about that information: the inventories, warrants, day books and other surviving pieces of documentary evidence left by the blessedly bureaucratic clerks of Elizabethan England. What they are, what they contain, and how you can find them.

Wardrobe Inventories

Anyone who’s reached a certain point in their research of 16th century dress has acquired a copy of Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlock’d, by Janet Arnold. As well as being a masterpiece of scholarship, It contains the combined transcription of three inventories of Queen Elizabeth’s wardrobe taken at (or a few years after) the time of her death.

The Stowe Inventory at the British Library (and the copy of it held at the National Archives, LR 2/121) and the smaller companion inventory kept at the Folger are one of the best known sources of information to modern costumers; largely because Arnold’s book is centered around it, drawing material for much of what she tells us about Queen Elizabeth’s Dress. And it is a staggering tribute to sartorial genius: 99 mantles, 67 french and round gowns, a hundred loose gowns, and kirtles, petticoats, farthingales, safeguards and cloaks by the gross. All of it described in loving detail that fires the imagination:

Item one rounde gowne of cloth of siluer wrought with purple and yellowe silke laide aboute and downerighte with a brode passamaine lace of venice golde and siluer with buttons and loupes of like golde siluer pipes and small seede pearle.

Although these inventories are wonderful for providing a look under the skirts of the Queen’s wardrobe at a particular point in time and have provided an invaluable amount of documentary evidence,their snapshot nature prevents them from illuminating other aspects of the Queen’s wardrobe. Such as: how did it change? How did her color and style preferences shift over the years? How was everything made? How much of what materials were used? What percentage of her wardrobe was made new, vs. altered from older garments? To answer these questions, we turn to:

Wardrobe Warrants

The warrants are the workhorse of Elizabeth’s wardrobe records. They are full of information about countless aspects of Elizabethan court life and dress. To understand them, though, we first need to know a bit about how the whole paper trail of Elizabeth’s Royal Household worked.

Because the materials and fabrics used by the wardrobe were so expensive–a velvet gown, in the 16th century, was the equivalent of a wearable ferrari–everything had to be kept track of.  Whenever a garment was made or altered for the queen, the wardrobe clerk added a record to the ongoing record book describing the garment, what was done to it, and how much fabric of what kind was used, at what cost. When supplies were bought from drapers, clothiers and haberdashers, this too was noted: exactly how much of what kind of trim was purchased, and how much it cost. Even the linen used to make laundry bags made it into this comprehensive list. Any carpentry work or ironwork done on the coffers and chests that held the wardrobe’s clothing, the work needed to carry clothes back and forth from the wardrobe to the castle–all of this was carefully noted in the records of the Wardrobe of Robes. The clothing and shoes dispersed to poor women on Maundy was also listed.

And that’s not all. There was also the Wardrobe of Beds, which kept track of cloth and supplies used to make furniture, curtains, beddings, and other household textile goods. Stable warrants recorded every bit of leather, fabric and metal used to make caparisons and tack for the hundreds of royal horses: both working horses, like those used to carry supplies on progress, as well as the coursers and steeds for ladies and gentlewomen.

Any clothing made for the queen’s servants were also described and the amount and type of cloth used carefully noted: livery for yeomen, coachmen, littermen, footmen, gentlemen of the privy chamber, gentlewomen of the bedchamber–all received payment in part with cloth or clothing, and all of them ended up in the records. Many of these boilerplate warrants were called “warrant dormants”, which were written up and filled in with names and particulars when they were put to use. Give to _______ ___ yards of black satin for livery.”

The queen’s heralds and pursuivants were also dispensed clothing and cloth from the royal wardrobe store. And any time a lord was made a member of the order of the Garter, a set of garter robes was made up for him–all recorded in dutifully loving detail in the wardrobe clerk’s notes. Linen for the chapel alter and the choirboy’s robes? Hangings for the parliament chamber? These too were written up. Even clothing made for prisoners in the Tower of London, and clothing and furnishings made for visits by foreign royalty, make an appearance in the warrants.

And then there’s the one-offs. If a courtier or some other people was given a gift of a gown, or cloth for a gown, by the queen, a warrant would be written up and signed by her or one of her functionaries, to be delivered to the wardrobe staff. These warrants were also frequently transcribed into the clerk’s book; though sometimes they weren’t.

Let’s not forget the Revels Warrants for the plays and theatrical performances put on by the court. Although Elizabeth perferred plays, there were still tailors and artificers tasked with building the sets and costumes for various productions put on during the holidays, and their expenses, like those of the Wardrobe of Robes and Beds and the Stable, were catalogued in detail.
Needless to say, the 500+ large pages of paper ordered by the wardrobe every six months (with their purchase noted in the records) did not go to waste.

So: Wardrobe of Robes warrants. Maundy warrants. Livery warrants. Warrants Dormant. Stable Warrants. Revels Warrants. Warrants for the Order of the Garter. Warrants for Heralds dress. Warderobe of Beds warrants. Warrants for the chapel and parliament chamber. Still with me?

If you are, and if you want a look at some of these toothsome documents, you’re in luck. Every year, the working copies kept by the various wardrobe clerks for all of these departments were carefully transcribed into a bound book, in full detail; all of the information described above was included. (Aside from the Revels warrants.) The copies were signed by the clerk or assigns, and these books, due to a wonderful stroke of fortune, are available to us today at the National Archives. They are LC 9/53, the warrant for 1558-1559, through LC 9/95, for the last year of Elizabeth’s reign.

The catch? They’re in Latin. All of them. So if you do want to find out exactly how much material was used for a petticoat in 1570, or who the ladies of the bedchamber were and how much fabric they received, you’re going to have to reach for that Latin Dictionary.

But don’t lose hope! these yearly compilations were themselves condensed and transcribed into english, and these documents, too, are at the National Archives.  LC 5/32 holds the qcollected warrants for Queen Elizabeth’s reign up to 1560; LC 5/33 has 1560-1567, LC 5/34 1567-1575, LC 5/35 is 1575-1585, LC 5/36 is 1585-1593, and LC 5/37 is 1593 through the end of the reign.
Although the sense remains, the detail of the english warrants doesn’t match that of the Latin warrants. The English transcription also discards some of the livery information, such as the fabric given to the gentlemen of the privy chamber and the gentlewomen of the bedchamber.
For example, a Latin Warrant of 1568, in LC 9/60, has the following:

To Walter Fish for making a gown of the french fashion of murrey tissue welted with murrey velvet…the edges edged with fringe lace of gold and silver of our store, lined with crimson sarcenet with bayes in the pleats, with vents of fustian and frieze in the ruffs of our great warderobe. 40 shillings. For 8 yards of crimson sarcenet for lining the same at 6 shillings the yard. For 2 yards of baies for lining the pleats at 4 shillings the yard For a yard of fustian for the vents 16 pence  for  7 yards of frieze for lining the ruffs 12 pence

While the English transcription from LC 5/34 reads:

To Walter Fyshe our Tayler for makinge of a Frenche gowne of murrey Tissue welted with murrey veluet of our store…laied on the edges with Frindge lace of gold and siluer lyned with Crimsen Sarcenet and baies in the plaites with ventes of Fustian and frize in the ruffs of our great warderobe.

And these English transcriptions of the Latin transcription? The 1568-1585 warrants from the LC series were themselves transcribed into a larger volume, now called MS Egerton 2806. This book, combined with the Stowe Inventory, forms the backbone of Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlock’d, and together are the source for the great majority of the primary evidence contained in the book. This is browseable online as well.

New Years Gifts

Not everything the queen wore was made by her artificers. The traditional New Years’ Gift Exchange was also an avenue into the wardrobe. Usually courtiers gave the Queen gold coins in a decorated pouch, but some gave her items of clothing: smocks, partlets, sleeves, handkerchiefs, scarves, petticoats, foreparts. Most of the gifts were smaller items of clothing, suited to being highly decorated but not requiring a real fit. Some of these garments were accepted and worn; others were accepted and kept for years without seeing any use, until they were listed in the posthumous inventory of Elizabeth’s wardrobe as

“Item one foreparte of white Satten embrodered allover with venice gold syluer and Carnacion silke in squares and flowers Chevernewise unmade.”

We don’t have a full record of all the New Year’s gifts received by the queen. The records, one roll per year, are now scattered about the globe; A couple at the National Archives, one at the Folger Library, and one even turned up in the Dallas Public Library. Some of them have been made available online. And thanks to the Herculean research and saintly persistence of Jane Lawson, the information from all known Gift Rolls–26 of them–are gathered together in her recently published book,The Elizabethan New Year’s Gift Exchanges, 1559-1603

The Day Book

Another record exists of what went on in the wardrobe: specifically, how items left the wardrobe. a single existing Day Book remains from the wardrobe of robes, containing detailed records of all gowns and cloth given out of the wardrobe (usually to one of Elizabeth’s Gentlewomen of the Privy Chamber or Maids of Honor) as well as a listing of each and every item found missing from one of her garments. Given the number of pearls, spangles and jewels loaded on gowns like her “frenche gowne of riche golde tissue with a border of purple satten allouer enbrodered with…pearle lined with purple Taphata”, these entries were frequent: buttons, pearls, jewels, hairpins, aglets, all of them accidental largesse distributed by the queen during her daily round. This document is also in the National Archives, listed as C 115/91, and published by Janet Arnold as Lost from her Majestie’s Back.

Miscellaneous Warrants

These are found everywhere, in a variety of manuscripts. A good number are collected at the British Library in MS Add 5751a: Individual, one-page warrants directing the queen’s tailor to make gowns for her Maids of Honor, or a night gown for her favorite, the Earl of Leicester, or to make six petticoats of various rich crimson fabrics. The content of some of these individual warrants may show up in abbreviated form in one of the Latin or English compiled wardrobe accounts; or they may not.

Letters

And finally, there is correspondence. Nuggets of information on Elizabeth’s wardrobe can be found here, though truly interesting information is rare. The well known letter from the young Elizabeth’s nurse to the King begs him to give her charge money for apparal,

for she hath neither gown, not kirtle nor sleeves, nor railes, nor body stitchets, nor handkerchiefs, nor mufflers nor biggins.

In 1577, Sir Amias Paulet sent Walsingham a letter mentioning that he

Sends a farthingale such as now used by the French Queen and the Queen of Navarre

…most likely a french farthingale, which first makes its appearance in the Queen’s wardrobe accounts three years later.

There are always more bits of information showing up here and there…but the above sources are the main ones available for serious students of dress. My goal to provide complete coverage of Elizabeth’s wardrobe throughout her reign is progressing; some of the inventories from the end of her reign are available, as are copies of the warrants from 1568-1593. I’m currently working on finishing a transcription of the 1593-1603 warrants, and will then turn to the beginning of her reign and transcribe the warrants from 1558-1568.

And then? Get a copy of the full Stowe Inventory and the Day book transcribed, as well as all of the wardrobe records relating to the Queen’s coronation; and then, perhaps, I’ll start on some of the Latin accounts.

All of which will be in my camera by the time I leave England…

A far cry from Historic Dress, one might be tempted to think. But I’ve found ways to merge my two interests: the Elizabethan Corset Pattern Generator was one of the earlier ones, and my forays into Synonym and Sounds-like searching of historic texts is another.

My most recent all-consuming synthesis of costume and computing is my Wardrobe Concordance. This is a cunning master plan which, at its current rate, should see completion somewhere around 2030.

Cunning Plan Step the first: Here, take this shovel.

Find, Transcribe (or get transcriptions by others) of all the original manuscripts describing Elizabeth I’s wardrobe, and load them into Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Uploaded. Enter in new synonyms for words (like “verdingall” for farthingale, “crammoisy” for crimson, etc) into the glossary as I come across them, so that odd or unusual words are highlighted with their definition available if one hovers over the word.

This step is coming along; I’ve gotten, I would say, about half of Elizabeth’s wardrobe accounts entered so far. As well as a couple of her inventories and a handful of Gift Rolls. There’s about 6,000 individual entries so far. I’m  halfway through the corpus; I still have to transcribe, upload and glossarize the 1593-1600 wardrobe warrants, a good copy of the Stowe Inventory, and the wardrobe warrants from 1558-1568 (which are in Latin. That’s going to be fun to learn).

It’s difficult, though; I come across so many other interesting texts and ideas for research that I’m continually distracted from my goal. I have, however, acquired a minion who also enjoys transcribing wardrobe warrants. Little did she know how addictive it would be! Which helps bring my goal a bit closer.

Cunning Plan Step the Second: Open the Wardrobe Doors, Hal.

Find a way to extract information from each entry so that they can be usefully analyzed.earched, analyzed, linked and visualized. What this means is taking an entry like:

Item to the said William Jones for makinge of a highe bodied gowne of greene veluet (for Thomasine our woman dwarf) laied with Siluer Lace the sleuis cut in panes the bodies styffened with canvas and buckeram and laied aboute with buckeram bordered with fustian and pocketts of fustian the bodies faced with Satten cut and lyned with sarcenet the playtes Lyned and a role of cotton with a paire of sleuis of Satten, cut and Lyned with Sarcenet

And turning it into the following:

Action: making. Garment: High bodied gown. Material: velvet. Color: green. Made by: William Jones. Made for: Thomasine de Paris. Date:1588. Lining: sarcenet. Facing: satin. Stiffening: canvas, buckram. Decoration: Silver lace. Garment sections: Sleeves, material satin, lining sarcenet, cut in panes. Bodice: stiffened with canvas,buckram. Roll, made of cotton.

This process is going to require several steps. First: standardizing spellings and terms across the corpus. This is fairly easy, using the glossary I’ve put together already. In fact, I’ve already done this.

The next step: parsing the text. Identifying words as garments, materials, colors, etc.; and, once that’s done, finding a way to figure out what is related to what. (lining material sarcenet, facing satin, sleeves are made of satin, etc.)

If I was rich, I would do what the EEBO did and farm the 10,000 entries like the above out to an offshore transcription company to crunch through.  But I’m not rich. I am something even better: a programmer.

A programmer who was graced by extraordinary serendipity in the past few weeks. At work, I was tasked with learning about Natural Language Processing, and figure out how to integrate it into our supercomputer platform so that we could run it against thousands of free texts simultaneously. This increased my knowledge base about how the heck one would parse this wardrobe data by a factor of ten in the first week alone, and brought me a lot closer to figuring out how it would have to be done.

And at the Folger Library last week, when I popped in to their 4 pm tea and chatted about this project with some of the people there, I was tipped off about two software programs: Morphadorner and Vard. Both of them were built to parse, standardize spelling, and extract meaning and entities from early english texts. I smacked myself on the head for forgetting the cardinal rule of problem-solving: the answer you seek is always available somewhere on the internet.

Cunning Plan Step the Third:  That’s not a moon, that’s a space station

I want to be able to link together all the records for a given gown.  This will  answer so many questions. How many gowns and garments did Elizabeth truly have, and in what proportions by type?  What sorts of alterations were most frequently done? How often were gowns altered? Were certain garments altered more frequently or mentioned more often, and could this be used to identify her preferences in clothing: favorite colors, styles, etc? Were there certain spans of time where a particular type of alteration was far more frequently seen than other times–like c. 1590, where “lengthening and widening” of skirts starts showing up with remarkable frequency, echoing the change in fashionable silhouette?

I could do this by hand, by starting at the beginning of the corpus, searching the database for all garments with similar descriptions, and eyeballing them to see if they really are the same gown, or different. Here’s an example of one such pattern found:

1572: Item for making of a french Gowne of russett and white damaske garded with carnacion taphata layed with bone lase of golde and silver the bodies and slevis garded very thicke lyned with carnacion and white taphata the Gowne borderid with carnacion taphata with a rolle of white cotten & rolls in the slevis coverid with white fustian all of our greate Guarderobe.

1574: Item for alteringe the bodies of a Gowne of russett and white damaske with a garde of carnacion taphata with a bone lase of venice golde and silver upon it of our greate Guarderobe.

1579: for lyninge of a gowne of russett and white damaske lyned with blak unshorne vellat in the forequarters with a newe steye of sarceonett

But this approach has problems, and not only the cripplingly huge amount of sorting and comparison that would need to be done. the 1572 and 1574 records are clearly the same…but is the 1579 record? It mentions black unshorn velvet. Is there another record for, say, a french gown of orange and white damask lined with black unshorn velvet, that would be a closer match?

Fortunately, performing automated fuzzy linking like this is exactly what I do at work. My employer takes 360 billion public records and links them together using some extremely iterative, arcane and impressive fuzzy matching and statistical algorithms. Once I have all the data parsed out into separate fields for material, color, gown type, etc., I’ll be able to run it through some matching algorithms that will link it all up as nice as you please, providing confidence scores about the certainty of the match into the bargain.

The other thing I want to do is to be able to take the parsed data and build a visualization front end for ad-hoc quering and charting of data.

In English, that means creating a webpage where someone can say, “give me a line chart of the number of spanish farthingales made and altered between 1558 and 1602, grouped by year.” And then they can add another line to the chart for the number of half farthingales made and altered, and another line for the number of rolls made and altered, and voila: the transition from Spanish to French farthingales over the course of Elizabeth’s reign is laid out as neat as you please.  What would have taken hours and days of poking through records is shown in 5 minutes.

Once I have this, I can answer idle questions like “I wonder how Elizabeth’s color preferences changed over her lifetime” or “were her garment linings switched out between fur and lighter fabrics based on time of year?” with a few clicks of a button. Spotting trends in different types of garments, different sorts of decoration, and different materials become trivial.

And then I can turn my attention to all of the other topics of research that have been queuing up…

The book itself costs an arm, leg and kidney. If I’d had to buy it for myself before Christmas, I’d have refrained. But now, having read through it, I have to say that it’s worth every penny I didn’t have to pay for it; and if I hadn’t got it for Christmas, I’d be saving up for a copy even now.

So, in the spirit of enablement, I’m passing on the details of just what’s in this book to all y’all, so you have an idea of whether or not you need to buy it.  I initially intended to make it a facebook post to my historic costume list. two typed pages later, I had to reconsider; each one of the articles in the book deserves its own review.

The book is a series of essays, each one based upon the information on a particular topic to be found in the various inventories of Henry VIII, each written by a person at the top of their game in that particular field. The first is on King Henry’s Tapestry collection, written by Thomas Campbell. Then comes the section on the clothing of King Henry, and his hunting equipment, by Maria Hayward.  She also writes the following section, on the textiles, tents, flags and costumes that were in the care of the Office of Tents and Revels.

This is followed by an article on table carpets and coverings for tables, seats and floors by the esteemed late Donald King, “The Art of the Broiderers” by Santina Levey, and a section on table and bed linens by David Mitchell. Then comes an article focusing on the textiles in Henry’s Store, by Lisa Monnas, another essay by her on the ecclesiastical textiles and costume in the inventory, and finally, an article on Furs in Henry’s wardrobe by Elspeth Veale.

A solid block of knowledge, indeed! 365 pages of brand new research on Tudor textiles and costume and I was determined to go through every page, even the sections I didn’t really expect to enjoy, like the articles on tapestries, carpets, table linens and ecclesiastical textiles. Even if they were dry, or ancillary to my interests, they were bound to be extremely informative and I was duty-bound to read them.

I had forgotten something, however. When a person is truly and whole-heartedly obsessed with a particular subject, and when they can write well, their love of it becomes infectious. They pass on the contagion of their passion via the written word, captivating the unsuspecting reader and carrying them along into unexpected areas of research.

Such was the case with these essays, even the ones on subjects that I hadn’t thought would captivate me at all. Like:

The Art and Splendour of Henry VIII’s Tapestry Collection

by David Campbell

Campbell answered questions about King Henry’s household textiles that I’d never thought to ask: what was his tapestry collection like? Why was tapestry so popular? How expensive was it relative to other decorations? What did particular tapestries mean to their viewers: their presence, the detail of their construction, and their content?  Where did King Henry get his tapestries? What subjects did he prefer, and why? How did his tastes differ from his son/s How did the changing economic climate in Europe affect tapestry production? And the final question: Henry had over 2,400 tapestries when he died. Where on earth did they all go, and why are virtually none around today?

These discussions are accompanied by page after page of brilliant, full color images of tapestries.

Dressed to Impress: Henry VIII’s wardrobe and his equipment for horse, hawk and hound;

by Maria Hayward

This section covered the clothing of King Henry and was, to my surprise, less absorbing than the section on Tapestries. Less because the subject material wasn’t interesting—it was, most definitely—but because I already knew the majority of what was discussed: King Henry’s clothing, how it was made, who made it, what it looked like, the materials used, etc.  A substantial amount of the material reflected the content of Hayward’s comprehensive book Dress in the Court of Henry VIII, though with added detail focusing on the inventory contents themselves.

His coronation and garter robes are discussed, as are his hats, shoes, walking staves, and equipment for horse, hound and hawk. A section on the clothing of Arthur, Jane Seymour and Catherine Parr was particularly interesting.

The things that I enjoyed most in this article were some of the tables of distilled and concentrated wardrobe information: Lists of the Perquisites given to the officers of the wardrobe of robes, for one. This was an excellent window into what the servants of the King wore, or at least, the clothing they received, between 1516-20.

A few pages after this comes a table summarizing the different types of garments, alterations, and accessories found in King Henry’s wardrobe across the span of three inventories taken. Additional tables lay out what materials were used to make how many of each type of garment, and what colors were found in which types of garments.

A final table categorized the decorative and construction techniques used on particular types of garments; for example, of King Henry’s hose, one was bordered, nine were cut, three were edged, 15 were embroidered, one was fringed; 13 were decorated with Venice gold, and four with Venice silver.

My favorite part of this article was…yes, I admit it…the endnotes.  When it comes to historic costume, I am an endote junkie. You never know what you’re going to find there: references to previously unknown manuscripts, unknown books, even references to books in your own collection that you had no idea contained the information referenced. And Hayward can always be depended upon to reference all sorts of mouthwatering manuscripts and accounts. She has them in spades. I collect the most tantalizing ones, saving them up for my next trip across the pond, so I can order them up at the British Library or Public Records office and roll around naked on them transcribe them for my own nefarious purposes.

In fact, one of the footnotes in this book started me on an entertaining ramble through my own collection. A reference to a farthingale owned by Princess Elizabeth in 1545, made of Satin of Bruges, sent me down to the footnotes to find out more about it. The footnote took me to Dress in the Court of Henry VIII. When I found the quote there, it too was footnoted…back to Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlock’d. And when I opened up QEWU to the cited page? You guessed it—it was footnoted too, referencing Costume in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries.

By now, a bit exasperated, I opened up CoDS, fearing that I was about to find  Planché or Norris. But! Finally, I found a reference to the actual wardrobe account mentioning the entry.

A wardrobe account with a catalog entry that looked naggingly familiar. I fired up my computer and poked around the manuscript warrants I’d photographed 10 years ago at the Public Records Office in England. Sure enough, there it was: one of the many I hadn’t gotten around to transcribing yet. Talk about coming full circle!

Temporary Magnificence: the offices of the tents and revels in the 1547 inventory;

by Maria Hayward

This section was another happy surprise. My exposure to Tudor tents and revels has been heavily revels-centric, to date. I’d read many works on revels, the costume and sets and social meaning assigned to them, the evolution into the Jacobean masque, etc., etc.  I had Feuillerat’s transcription of the wardrobe warrants for the revels, and had focused upon the costume-related aspects of them. But tents? Not so much.

This article  remedied that lack. Tudor tents: what they were made of, how they were decorated, what they looked like, practical construction details like windows made of translucent Holland cloth, wooden buttons for hanging the walls, Crow foot ropes, eyelet holes reinforced with calfskin leather, and more. Dimensions for the individual pieces of roofs and tent sides are given, as were descriptions of the various types of tents needed for campaign–including kitchen tents–and what was needed to furnish them.

My imagination was further fired by the glorious pictures of tents and encampments, and by the vivid descriptions of the king’s tents. One, a huge sixteen-sided tent, had a map of  the world painted on the interior of the roof and had a center support made of a ship’s mast.

Another description of a “royal tent” resembled a minor village: One 10 x 15 foot “porch”, a pavilon 18 feet wide, and a 10 x 30 foot hallway leading from this to the first great chamber (16 x 40 feet). This chamber was connected to the first hall (10 x 34 feet), and a 15 x 50 foot “great chamber”. Additional 10 x 30 foot hallways led across into two more pavilions and a timber-framed “house” covered with gloriously painted canvas.

Talk about camping in style! The description of his timber house made me want to rush out and build one myself for next Pennsic: “…a timber house all of Firre painted and gilted with a square tower at every ende and corner, all covered with white plate scallape wise and sealed within with paste work painted, the windows of horne with all beastes vanes and vices belonging to it. ”

This section was followed by an excellent overview of Tudor revels and disguisings. It wasn’t terribly in-depth, but covered the important aspects of revels, what was worn, their place in the social fabric of the court, and the structure and function of the office of revels. It is accompanied by lovely descriptions of a variety of the costumes themselves, bringing the revels to life.

From the Exotic to the Mundane: carpets and coverings for tables, cupboards, window seats and floors

Donald King

The section on carpets was the shortest in the book: 12 pages. It did a good job of discussing what kinds of carpets were used in Tudor houses, and how they were used, and where they came from.

The Broderers’ Work;

Santina Levey

Ah! Tudor embroidery! This section impressed me, not only with its illuminating and clear descriptions and definitions of all of the varieties of embroidery and embellishment used at the Tudor court (each variety accompanied by inspirational photographs of items thus decorated), but by the information on how it was used: embroidery for beds, heraldry, cloths of estate, cushions, carpets, books and more are discussed, all with quotes and references to original items to lend color and life to the information.

Levey has a good section on quilts and quilted decoration, for those people interested in that particular topic. Among other useful factoids I learned that Tudor cutwork was not at all the same thing as the later Elizabethan cutwork: the former was a type of appliqué of fabric upon fabric, rather than the decoratively stitched and snipped linen that “cutwork” came to mean during Elizabeth’s reign. Cutwork was apparently a preferred method for embellishing revels costumes, as it looked impressive and could be accomplished much more swiftly than other forms of decoration.

Levey also takes the time to discuss the embroiderers themselves: the guild structure, female embroiders and their role in the industry, and a captivating portrait of William Ibgrave, broiderer to the king. She discusses the sorts of embroidery that was performed by them—embroidery of garter robes, livery, etc—as well as the sorts of needlework performed by the various women at Henry VIII’s court.

All in all, this was one of my favorite sections. It had richness, depth, was written in a very interesting and engaging manner, and was spectacularly illustrated with color photographs of various types of embroidery. A chapter guaranteed to make you want to rush off and try your own hand at couching gold bullion.

‘One Coverpane of Fine Diaper of the Saluatcion of our Ladie’: napery for tables and linens for beds;

David Mitchell

I admit it: this was one of the sections that I had girded my mental loins to plough through, regardless. I mean, let’s face it—after pages and pages of silk, velvet, gold and brocade, tablecloths are a bit mundane.

Once again I was pleasantly surprised. Linen, as it turns out, contains as much variety within the one fiber as any Great Wardrobe store. David Mitchell describes the different kinds of linen used: plain, diaper of damask work, diaper of birds eye, or diaper of crosse diamonds—and follows this up with a lovely technical discussion on the technology of linen damask and diaper weaving.

If you are interested in exactly how the King ate with linen—sizes of the napkins used by servants and how they were placed, widths of tablecloths, etc–Mitchell has that too. He has many close-up photographs of a variety of extant linen damask fabrics, and a table listing different damask patterns used in the Tudor court.

His description of all of the layers of a Tudor bed caught my fancy. There were many: bedstead first, then canvas, then a feather bed and a bolster/pillow, and then a layer of fustian—presumably to help soften the prick of straw and feather quills that worked their way through the feather bed—and then, finally, the bottom sheet. The fustian and bottom sheet were tucked under the featherbed all round, and the top sheet came after that. Some of the sheets were very ostentatious, bearing gold fringe, tassels and buttons.

After the top sheet came another fustian, and then, finally, the counterpanes, quilts, coverlets and other coverings. Two pillows of down with fustian ticks were typically provided.

The article is followed by a listing of all the inventories used in the article, with their full name, status, document reference number, date and location where they’re held: 50 inventories in all. Bless you, David Mitchell!

‘Plentie and Abundaunce’: Henry VIII’s valuable stores of textiles

Lisa Monnas

This next section, like the one before it, was more than I expected. After all that had come before, what more was there to say about the king’s store of textiles? I think of textile stores and envision the pages upon pages of monotonous listings of velvet, satin, silk and sarcenet I’d seen in the wardrobe accounts and inventories. Hardly a inspirational source of raw material.

But it reveals a lot, as it turns out, and all of it fascinating. Lisa Monnas really hit it out of the park with this essay.

This section contains such gems as a table of “Prices paid for the textiles listed in the great wardrobe”, grouped by textile type and color. Another table lists how much of what type of red fabric was given to every member of the royal household for Edward’s coronation, clearly illuminating the vast ranks of people needed to run the machinery of the Tudor court, as well as their relative rank. It amused me that the yeomen of the Jewel house, Laundry, Ewery, Chandry, Spicery, Waffery, Buttery, Cellar, Poultry (Yes, there is a yeoman of the poultry), yeomen ushers, yeomen porters, and all of the other several dozen flavers of yeomen were given red cloth…but the yeomen of the wardrobe somehow ended up wearing crimson damask and crimson velvet.

There is good detail on just what fabrics were given for livery, and how much; what fabrics were worn by the King over the course of his reign, and how those fabrics changed; and a brief exploration of the mysterious lack of Venetian silks.

We also get a look at the caretakers of the fabric and the suppliers that provided it. Lady Somerset was spotted skulking out of the wardrobe store after Henry’s death with a fortune in fabric wrapped up in a sheet. Mercers and other purveyors of rich fabrics regularly went on progress with King Henry, having the latest velvets and cloths of gold sent to them on the way so that they could continually present the king with something novel. The 33,000 yards of black fabric required for King Henry’s death were provided by over 72 london cloth sellers. I can just imagine the frantic searches performed by the king’s household, looking for every scrap of black fabric they could find…and the cursing and grumbling of the London tailors attempting to fulfill their commissions, when black cloth couldn’t be had for love or money.

The exhaustive documentation of the wardrobe is also entertaining. Each package of silk had a label stating its contents, whether it was old or new, and from whom it was obtained, and when, as well as the price of the silk. Clerks kept track of every delivery: to whom it was made, what use it would be put to, and what piece was used. The “charmed inner circle” of courtiers that received these textiles is described by Monnas.

And all of this isn’t even the heart of the chapter: a complete descriptive listing and definition of all of the fabrics found in the wardrobe. Taffeta, Sarcenet, Satin, Velvet, etc.  What it looked like, how it was woven, the different varieties found, what they were used for, where they were obtained from, and technical details (and diagrams) showing the weaves of the fabrics.

Her section on cloth of gold shows an impressively technical knowledge of the subject, and her section on  cloth of tissue is positively outstanding—for the first time I have a firm and solid grasp on exactly what each of the various varieties of cloth of tissue looked like and how they were made.

Plus, a full compliment of color photographs of extant fabrics and of portraits showing the same, and nine full pages of excellent end notes.  Yes, I can definitely say that this section really was my favorite of all of the essays in the book.

The Splendour of Royal Worship

Lisa Monnas

This article covered the ecclesiastical textiles in the inventory: textiles for the chapel and vestments for the ecclesiastical functionaries that tended them. I really wish I’d had this article back when I was researching the cutting and cleaning of ecclesiastical clothing in the Nurnberger Kunstbuch manuscript; it describes who wore what kind of garments, where, and when.  Copes and dalmatics and albs, oh my. What colors were worn; how the garments moved from place to place over time; what happened to them over the years; a very thorough look at ecclesiastical garments in general.

From Sable to Mink

Elspeth Veale

This last section was one of the shorter ones in the book.  It gave an overview of the various furs used in the wardrobe of the king and his court; the animals they came from and how they were used. The information was solid, and definitely useful to someone wanting to know more about furs in Tudor dress; but it was fairly superficial when placed next to the depth of knowledge displayed in some of the other sections. I’d have been interested in the technical details of how the furs were prepared and sewn; a bit more about the economics of the fur trade; perhaps even biographical details on the furriers and artisans involved with the gowns, if such existed.

The fur pampilion has been a mystery to me for some time. The Dictionary of Fashion states that it was a form of fine budge from Pamplona, and also a felt, but with no citation; Hollyband, in 1598, describes it as a coarse rug; and in 1598, the Duke  of Richmond’s inventory mentions “another [whole fur] of pampilion and budge.”

So when I caught a mention to pampilion in the article I was eager for more information…but none was forthcoming. Not even a footnote, alas.

Another fur that had stumped me in Elizabth’s wardrobe accounts, lybard wombs, was also mentioned in the article. Was it leopard? Something else? But again, no description of what it was.

And lastly, we have the bibliography. You know a bibliography’s going to be good when the first page consists entirely of unpublished primary sources–so considerate of them to group them together like that. Then comes “Published Primary Sources”, “Unpublished papers and dissertations”, and only then the eight pages of secondary sources. I think I spent more time on the bibliography, noting down sources to follow up on, than I did on any single article in the collection.

Conclusion

Usually, in cases where a book is published as a series of articles on a topic written by different authors, there’s a lot of dross to wade through the come to the gems that cover your particular area of interest. This book is an exception to that rule. It is chock full not only of superior information on all aspects of Tudor dress and costume, but also several jumping off points into other sources to help further your research. It’s rare that a dense reference book is such a good read.

The Folger Library is beautiful and absolutely uplifting to walk through. It smells divinely of dust and old paper and leather. The Folger’s reading room is full of Tudor woodwork and Tudor manuscripts and their basement holds  an enticing array of microfilms from the British Library.

The Folger is also rather exclusive–unlike the plebeian British Library, British Museum and National Archives of England, which require a mere driver’s license and a couple of forms signed before allowing any Tom, Dick or Harry to handle as many 12th-century charters as they wish, the Folger insists upon a letter of intent describing precisely what the person wants to view, plus two references from professional academics (sent from an institutional address) before allowing non-academic-affiliated researchers to view items in their collection.

This exclusivity bemused me the first time I encountered it. But I suppose it’s understandable; one can’t be too careful when it comes to those independent researchers. Turn your back on them for two minutes, and they start folding Queen Elizabeth’s letters into paper airplanes and running naked with them through the stacks.

But! I can definitely tell you that their collection is worth the hoops that one must jump through to get access to it.

I initially went to follow up on a lead of possible tailor’s bills in the Stiffkey Estate Papers collection. A dead end, alas. However, I did get to see and photograph my own copy of the 1600 Inventory of Elizabeth’s wardrobe of robes. The ink was a faded brown, hard to read in many cases, but oh, the mouthwatering descriptions of petticoats, kirtles and cloaks! I can’t wait to transcribe them all and start linking them to entries in the wardrobe accounts in DressDB

I also got a look at Freyle’s 1588 tailor’s book.  Unlike Alcega, Freyle includes several patterns for breeches laid out alongside doublets, jerkins, sayas and ropillas. I’m looking forward to making a pair up to see how they look in wool and silk.

He also had a layout for a farthingale that was slightly different than Alcega’s, though the pieces looked to be about the same when laid out, and some patterns for women’s sayas that had high necked doublet bodices with a distinct fish in the front seam under the bust. All in all, a fascinating find!

After these two highlights, the rest of the day passed fairly quickly in inventory-fishing. I’d requested a large number of inventories and household accounts in the hopes that some of them would include apparel in the inventories. I struck out with most of them; they included napery, drapery, bedding and household textiles, but no apparell. One item of interest was the prevalence of red-and-green fringe in the decoration of furniture and bedding; it brought to mind the remarkable amount of red and green fringe sold by the haberdasher William Wray. Red and green, much more than red fringe, green fringe or black fringe, was a popular item in his inventory.

There were only two docs that repaid my investigation. The first  were the Inventories of Elizabeth Berkeley, a set of three wardrobe inventories of her wardrobe taken in 1605, 1611 and 1617. I’d transcribed them in haste the last time I’d been here, and hadn’t had the wherewithall to photograph them. The three inventories themselves are intriguing; not only do they illustrate the evolution and change in a woman’s wardrobe over time (more waistcoats and jackets as the years went on, no farthingales bought but the three she had retained for 20 years, night gowns referred to as loose gowns in some inventories, and other interesting linguistic wardrobe hints, but the garments themselves reveal much about a woman’s wardrobe of the early 17th century. Striped canvas bodies, for one.

The second were the household inventories of the Townshend Family. Almost all of the inventories focused on household furnishings, but there was an inventory of my “Lord’s Apparel” and my “Ladies Apparel” which will be interesting to transcribe.

Other than that, it was merely the odd mention of a shirt, or ‘His wearing apparell, 4 pounds.’

Except for one curious entry in the Inventory of the goods of George Cope taken at the time of his death (1572). It was a long inventory, with only a few lines devoted to his clothing. But take a look at the last line:

Item in the same chest, ii gownes of cloth thone garded with velvet thother with black silke buttons     vis viiid
Item ii Clookes vis viiid
Item a rede taffitye dublet xs
Item a doublet of rewed canvas iiis iiiid
Item iiii letherne Jerkins xiiis iiiid
Item iiii payre of hose xxs
Item ix shertes wherof iiii whyte sherts ii blacke a blewe one edged with golde & one with silver xis

If I’m reading that right, George had two black shirts and a blue one as well. Something I’d never see before in inventory entries.

After finishing with the various inventories, I went downstairs to try my luck in the microfilm room. I had two references to Harleian manuscripts from the British Library that I hoped to get a look at: One was the Probate Inventory of Leicester, and one was a wardrobe account. Unfortunately, all I had were the manuscript numbers and folios, and the 126 rolls of microfilmed Harleian manuscripts were organized by manuscript volume. I didn’t have the means to find out what manuscripts were in which volume just then, so instead I picked a roll of Lansdowne manuscripts at random, sat down and started scrolling through.

Talk about luck! I happened upon the 1559 household inventory of Thomas Cawarden, King Henry VIII’s Master of Revels. It was fairly disorganized, hats and crossbows and furniture and kitchen supplies following eachother higgledy-piggledy, but a couple of entries caught my eye while I was photographing: A reference to a farthingale of satin de bruges, for one. I look forward to transcribing this one, definitely.

I’m going  back tomorrow to try my luck in their card catalog and see what I can find amongst the catalog that hasn’t yet made it into their online catalog, Hamnet. I’m told there’s a considerable number of interesting items from the continent hiding in there.

And here, to make you all terribly jealous, is a Short panorama of the glory which is the Folger Library Reading room.

Tailor from the Nürnberger Zwölfbrüderstiftung manuscript, c. 1601

If I was a tailor in 16th century London, how many days’ or weeks’ worth of pay would three yards of kersey cost me?

It’s a difficult question to answer. For one thing, professional tailors usually received payment on a per-item basis, rather than receiving a “salary” or “wage” as we know it. For another, the sources I’ve found are usually specific to a particular time and place, and wages varied widely over the 16th and early 17th century.

I will be throwing shillings and pence about with abandon as I continue, so a quick refresher on English money in the 16th century: 12 pence equaled 1 shilling, and 20 shillings equaled £1.

One place where tailors were employed by the day, rather than by the piece, and employed for a number of years, was in the Royal Office of the Revels. A legion of tailors, painters, carpenters, leatherworkers and other artificers were needed to create the dazzling costumes and sets of revels and masques put on by Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth. Although the number of revels staged decreased during Elizabeth’s reign, due to her preference for theatrical performance over the elaborate allegorical revels and masques preferred by her predecessors, tailors’ wages continued to be recorded through the end of the 1580s.

Feuillerat’s Documents Relating to the Office of the Revels in the time of Edward and Mary and Documents Relating to the Office of the Revels in the Time of Elizabeth, aka “The Loseley Mansuscripts”, describe a great deal about the revels and the clothing made for their participants. They also describe the tailor’s wages paid for the work. (1)

A fairy costume for a masque. Designed by Inigo Jones, 1611. Although this costume dates to several decades later than the revels of the 1560s and 70s, it was similar in style to those of earlier decades.

In 1548, 32 tailors were hired to work on costumes and stage properties for King Edward’s Shrovetide revels. The foreman was John Holt, yeoman; he received 9 pence a day for his pay. The other tailors all received 8 pence a day. They worked anywhere from 3 days and 2 nights to eight days and two nights, receiving an additional 8 pence for each night worked, as well as 8 pence for each day. One can imagine the frenetic activity of all of these men working late into the night, struggling to thread needles by candlelight, all to make the Shrovetide deadline.

In addition, as an officer, foreman John Holt was allowed “dieting charges” of two shillings a day. The other officers–master of the revels Sir Thomas Vaverden, the Clark comptroller John Bernard and the clerk, Thomas Phillips–were the only others who received this extra pay.

John Holt was also recompensed for charges out of his own pocket during the work. He hired a wagon and a barge on Shrovetide from Blakfriers to Greenwich to carry all of the masks and clothing to the location of the revels, and hired the same on Ash Wednesday to carry them back to Blackfriars. He also paid for 48 candles and candlesticks for them, needed for working by night, as well as for pack needles and thread. In all he laid out 28 shillings of his own money–a significant amount.

For the following Christmas revels of 1548, however, John Holt received only 8 pence a day–the same as the rest of the tailors. He still received his additional 2 shillings a day, and, as before, presented a bill for money he had laid out red and white wool, carriage of revels stuff to the site where the performance was held and back again, and for a considerable amount of thread.

He received 10 pence a day for the 1549 revels, while the other tailors received 7 pence; and, by 1550, he was listed as “John Holt, yeoman, Cutter at 2 shillings the day and 2 shillings the night”, with his dieting charges no longer mentioned. He continued to pay for all manner of things out of his own pocket during preparation of a revel: He paid to hire an Irish Bagpiper for one, and for making a dragon with seven heads for another.

The other tailors listed for 1550 made 8 pence a day and 8 pence a night, save for Thomas Clatterbook—such a fantastically Dickensian name!–who, as the Holt’s next in command, made 10 pence a day and 10 pence a night.

In records for 1557, in the time of Queen Mary, Holt was still making 2 shillings a day, while the other tailors received 12 pence a day. This held true through the end of her reign.

Further examination of the revels documents reveal that Holt, in addition to payment by the item, received “six pence sterling by the daye for the ouerseing and saufe keeping of the apparel and trappers of all and singular our maskes Revelles and disguysings.” Add to this the house granted him as yeoman, that he apparently leased out for additional income–”For the rente of his howse hired within the late blacke fryers from Thanunciatcion of our Lady 1557 untyll Thanunciacion of ur Lady nexte ensuinge 1558 by the space of one Hole yeare for 100 shillings.”—and he was quite well off.

John Holt’s right hand man, Thomas Clatterbook, worked his way up from the standard 12 pence a day to 20 pence a day by 1570. By this time Holt’s name wasn’t listed with tailors working by the day; Clatterbook was in charge of them. And that same rate, 20 pence for foreman Clatterbook and 12 pence a day for the remaining revels tailors, remained the same until the last warrant in Feuillerat, dated 1588.

Interior Of Tailor Shop, c. 1500. Artist Unknown; fresco at Issogne, Valle d’Aosta, Italy

The question remains: how representative of ordinary tailoring rates were these? It is a safe bet that the men hired by the royal court were at the top of their game; was a 12 pence a day wage usual for tailors lower down the tailoring ladder?

A statute of 1593 stated that “A master tailor that shall make gentlemen or gentlewomen their apparel, shall not take by the day above iiiid, and other common tailors, not above iid with meat and drink.” (2)

Another table of laborers’ and artificers’ wages from 1610 reflects the same amount: Tailors were to make 4 pence a day with meat and drink, and 8 pence a day without meat and drink. (3)

Clearly, working for the Queen had its advantages; the Revels tailors were making one and a half times the maximum amount specified for “master tailors” not recieving meat & drink as part of their wages.

What about young journeymen tailors, just starting out? On June 30, 1556, Bristol journeyman tailor Robert Malbe agreed to work for master tailor Nicholas Burchwood for 8 pence a week–the same amount that a revels tailor would make in a day!–though, in Robert’s case, he would be given food and drink for the week as well as a wage. (4)

Other 1556 Bristol contracts show a wide range of wages for young journeymen. Thomas a Pere received 10 pence a week with food and drink from master tailor Philip Braune. John Sharp contracted to work for 12 pence a week, and Anthony Sympson at 16 pence a week–the highest wage paid to a journeyman in Bristol in that year, the average being around 10 pence a week. Richard Prefleck agreed to work for William Rodgers for a whole year for 30 shillings. Fellow journeyman John Hall would receive 36 shillings 6 pence for a year’s service.

Newly freed apprentices, after serving the term of their apprenticeship, were frequently required to spend an additional (paid) year in service to their prior master at what, in comparison to the other wages we’ve seen, are quite minimal rates–even including the food and drink they were provided with.

In 1558, John Edwards was apprenticed to tailor Randolf Gomys for 8 years. Upon completion of this apprenticeship he was to receive “all tools of every kind for the said craft.” In addition he was to serve one year with Gomys after his apprenticeship ended, for which he would be paid 26s 8d in addition to meat and drink. (5)

Griffin Jones was apprenticed to Bristol tailor Thomas Davis in 1553 for 7 years, at the end to recieve 6s 8d. He was also to serve a year with Davis after he obtained his freedom, receiving 34s 4d as well as meat and drink.

These are young journeymen, just starting out; but some master tailors, those who were disabled or had difficulty finding work, also made very little. A census of the poor, made in Ipswich in 1598, sheds some light on the life of the “poor tailor” of Elizabethan times. (6)

One such was a man named Richard Mimpres. He was 35 and listed as “able”–that is, not injured or mentally “impotent”–but still made a weekly wage of only 21 pence. His wife picked wool for a living, and they had four children, ages 10, 7, 5 and 2; in the census, their needs were listed as “clothing” and “work.”

Another tailor, Henry Haule, was an older man of 60. His wife, also 60, was unable to work; he made a wage of 2 shillings a week, and received relief, in addition to this, of six pence per week from the Tooley charitable foundation in Ipswich.

Francis Goodking, 37, was another able tailor whose wife “helpeth him”. Together he made 3 shillings a week and she16 pence. They had two children, ages 7 and 5, and were listed as in need of firewood and of work, although they received no weekly relief.

There are later examples, from the early 17th century, showing how rates for tailor’s work increased over the 15 year span.

Interior of a Tailor’s Shop, by Quiringh van Brekelenkam, c. 1653

In 1628, in cambridge, a tailor worked for four days for 1 shilling a day. In 1630, there are records for a tailor working 12 days at 1 shilling 3 pence the day, and for 3 days at 1 shilling six pence the day. All three of these received meat and drink in addition to payment. (7)

It could be hard, making a living as a tailor. In Hull, the regulations of the Merchant Taylor’s guild were not kind to those struggling to make a living. A tailor was not allowed to set up a “board and trestles”, but must work out of an actual shop. Likewise, tailors in late 16th century Hull were not allowed to work at a customer’s home when making new garments, but only when repairing or mending them. (8)

Because of this, many tailors new to the guild who did not have the funds to set themselves up in a shop had no recourse but to become “botchers”, tailors that did repairs and alterations to garments. Without connections or the ability to obtain a loan, some of these people might never legally become full-fledged master tailors; and even those that were could be constrained in the work they were allowed to do. Records of the Bristol Merchant Taylor’s guild record how

“Matthew Dulle hath byn proved a fore the master and all his bretherene, and by favor of the master and hys bretherene they have allowyd hym suche garments makyng as here after forthwyth: in primis, a cote, a doblet, a woman’s gowne, a kyrtyll, a Spanyshe eloke, a jackett.” (9)

As an alternative to daily or weekly wages was the more common payment-by-the-item income that master tailors, and tailors owning their own shops, depended upon. Managing payment could be a bit complex; there are several cases of tailors’ bills being presented to clients quarterly, or even twice a year, which must have made managing cash flow a bit tedious in-between payments. Even once a bill was presented, they were frequently paid piecemeal. Some bills waited years for payment; The following note on a bill for clothing made for Amy Dudley, the wife of the Earl of Leicester, is one such example. The clothing was made in 1560; the bill itself wasn’t paid until 1566. The somewhat exasperated tone of the addendum accompanying payment is revealing as well as entertaining:

“In consideration of his long forbearing of his money, there is nothing abated of his Byll. Which said some of thirteen poundes ten shillings and sevenpence remayne due to the said William Edney by the right honerable Th’ Erle of Lecester, for all manner of mourninge and other demands, From the beginning of the world till this xxvth of Februarie, Anno Octavo Elizabeth Regine.” (10)

Some tailors, in addition to fees charged for making garments, obtained extra money on the side in a number of underhanded ways. The Defence of Conny-Catching, written in 1592, describes how a particular tailor did just this:

In Yorkshire there dwelt a woman’s tailor famous for his art but noted for his filching, which although he was light-fingered, yet for the excellency of his workmanship he was much sought to, and kept more journeymen than any five in that city did, and albeit he would have his share of velvet, satin, or cloth of gold, yet they must find no fault with him lest he half spoiled their garment in the making…all the gentlewomen of the country cried out upon him, yet could they not part from him because he so quaintly fitted their humours; at last it so fell out that a gentlewoman not far from Ferrybridge(?) had a taffeta gown to make, and he would have no less at those days than eleven ells of ell-broad taffeta, so she bought so much, and ready to send it, she said to her husband in hearing of all her serving-men: What a spite is this, seeing that I must send always to yonder knave tailor two yards more than is necessary, but how can we amend us? All the rest are but botchers in respect of him.

The author of the Conny-Catcher also berated tailors for introducing new fashions so frequently that gentlemen and ladies had no idea how much these novel garments cost, and were willing to hand over as much fabric as the tailor demanded, never realizing that a quarter of the fabric had gone into his pockets.

what poet hath so many fictions, what painter so many fancies, as a tailor hath fashions to show the variety of his art, changing every week the shape of his apparel into new forms, or else he is counted a mere botcher? The Venetian and the galligaskin is stale, and trunk-slop out of use; the round hose bombasted close to the breech, and ruffed about the neck with a curl is now common to every cullion in the country, & doublets, be they never so quaintly quilted, yet forsooth the swain at plough must have his belly as side as the courtier, that he may piss out at a button-hole at the least.

And all these strange devices doth the tailor invent to make poor gentlemen conies, for if they were tied to one fashion, then still might they know how much velvet to send to the tailor, and then would his filching abate. But to prevent them, if he have a French belly, he will have a Spanish skirt, and an Italian wing seamed and quartered at the elbows… Thus will the fantastic tailor…ever ask more velvet by a yard and a half than the doublet in conscience requires.

To give some idea of how fees for garments made compare to fees-by-the-day, I have collected references to costs for making garments in the cases where they were separated from materials costs, from tailor’s bills throughout the 16th to early 17th centuries. The sources for the below excerpts are found at DressDB: Tailor’s Bills and Receipts and DressDB: Books of Account.

In a perfect world, if a petticoat cost 8 pence to make, and tailors wages for that same year averaged 4 pence a day, we could tentatively state that a petticoat took around 2 days to make. Unfortunately, the variation in charges for making the same type of garment–even made by the same person, in the same year–is such that this is impossible. Some petticoats might be interlined, some hose might have welts or guards applied, some gowns might require more pad-stitching and construction than others. A poor woman’s petticoat of russet could cost 8 pence; a velvet guarded petticoat, interlined, lined, bordered and guarded and stitched with lace trim, could cost 106 pence in making costs alone for the same year. This variation is strikingly evident in the charges listed below.

The original accounts listed charges in shillings and pence. To aid in comparison across garments, I have converted all prices to pence only.

1530
making a kirtle of red saye 24 pence
making a kirtle 10 pence
making a gown 12 pence
making a gown 12 pence
making a partlet of velvet 6 pence

1558
making a worsted gown 80 pence
making a damask gown 80 pence

1559
making a pair of shoes 24 pence
making a kirtle of white satin 24 pence
making a bodice & sleeves for a gown of satin 24 pence
making a gown of worsted 96 pence
making a waistcoat 12 pence
making white satin sleeves cut & stiched 30 pence

1566
making a round kirtle: 48 pence
making a round kirtle cut all over fringed: 24 pence
making a round kirtle with fringe: 36 pence
making a peticoat with a velvet guard stitched with 8 stitches 48 pence
making a peticoat with bodice 120 pence
making a mantle of cloth: 80 pence
making a pair of white satin sleeves: 30 pence
making a spanish gown of velvet, with a fringe 106 pence

1581
making 2 gowns and a petticoat 14 pence

1588
making hose 12 pence
making a striped canvas doublet 36 pence
making a pair of hose 40 pence

1589
making a pair of fustian hose 36 pence

1590
lining and making a kirtle 24 pence
making a kirtle and bodies 60 pence
making a black velvet gown 120 pence
making a gown gathered in the bodies 106 pence
making a gown of serge 72 pence
making a black cloth gown 96 pence
making a grograin gown & stomacher 106 pence
making a gown of violet broadcloth 75 pence
making a strait bodied gown 24 pence
making a pair of bodies 36 pence
making bodies and sleeves 40 pence
making an overbody/mending a petticoat, 4 pence
making a taffeta doublet 106 pence
making a doublet: 48 pence
making hose and doublet: 54 pence
making a pair of round hose 40 pence
making a pair of hose, a jerkin & two doublets 32 pence

1591
making a kirtle 24 pence
making a kirtle 18 pence
making a pair of french bodies 24 pence
making a pair of french bodies 20 pence
making a ruff 18 pence
making a petticoat 42 pence
making a petticoat & bodies 36 pence
making a petticoat 10 pence
making a guarded petticoat 40 pence
making a gown 84 pence
making a gown 81 pence
making a gown 72 pence
making a gown 108 pence
making a gown 54 pence
making a gown 84 pence
making a gown 48 pence

1592
making a petticoat and waistcoat 16 pence
making a petticoat 48 pence
making a waistcoat 71 pence
making a cloak 30 pence
making a cloak 32 pence
making a frieze jerkin 16 pence
making a velvet jerkin 30 pence
making a frieze jerkin 12 pence
making a mornyng gown and hood 40 pence
making a cloak 40 pence

1593
making a jerkin and hose of green kersey laced with black & gold 79 pence
making a waistcoat of white bays 12 pence
making a frieze jerkin 24 pence
making velvet venetians 24 pence
making hose 40 pence

1594
making a gown of parti-color cloth 40 pence
making a gown of london russet laced and lined 8 pence
makinga a gon with whalebone sleeves: 72 pence
making a pair of bodies to a petticoat: 4 pence
making a doublet of white satin 48 pence

1595
making a cloak of silk grograin laced with 2 laces, lined with taffeta 80 pence
making a doublet of black satin 48 pence
making a doublet of russet saten 48 pence
making a jerkin of velvet laced and striped 80 pence
making velvet hose 48 pence

1597
making a coif 1 pence
making a poor woman’s petticoat 6 pence
making a poor woman’s petticoat, lined: 8 pence
making a frock for a poor woman, upper bodies lined, 8 pence
making poor man’s breeches and jerken 12 pence
making a poor man’s long coat 8 pence
making a poor woman’s waistcoat 4 pence
making 5 pair of poor men’s hose 49 pence

1601
making three kersey gowns: 20s (6.6s each)
making two peticoats of striped silk mockado with a binding lace 72 pence
making a straight-bodied satin gown 96 pence

1604
making a doublet 72 pence
making hose 60 pence
making a petticoat 10 pence
making a petticoat 60 pence
making bodies 3 pence
making a gown 84 pence
making a gown 156 pence
making a gown, bodies & kirtle 120 pence

Footnotes

1. Feuillerat, A. Documents relating to the Revels at Court in the time of King Edward VI. and Queen Mary-the Loseley Manuscripts. . 1914. also, Feuillerat, A. Documents relating to the Revels at Court in the time of Queen Elizabeth . (Back)

2. James, Edwin. A History of Agriculture and Prices in England: 1583-1702 pg 214 (Back)

3. The rates of wages of servants, labourers and artificers, set down and assessed at Oakham, within the county of Rutland, by the justices of peace there, the 28 day of April, AD 1610″. in  Archaeologia vol. 11, p. 200. Other rates reflected a similar proportion of with/without meat and drink: Carpenters got 5d a day with meat and 10 without. (Back)

4. Fox, Francis Frederick. Some account of the Ancient fraternity of merchant taylors of Bristol (Back)

5. Ralph, Elizabeth. Calendar of the Bristol Apprentice Book 1532-1565. Part III 1552-1565 (Back)

6. Webb, J. Poor Relief in Elizabethan Ipswitch (Back)

7. James, Edwin. A History of Agriculture and Prices in England: 1583-1702 pg 637 (Back)

8. Lambert, Joseph. Two Thousand Years of Gild Life, pg 238-244. (Back)

In transcribing Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Accounts (I’m currently up to 1592…10 years to go!), I come across obscure terms that went out of common usage centuries ago. Some of these mystery words are fairly easy to discover. I have my go-to books for identifying Pewke, Pampilion, Peropus, Philoselle, or Paragon: Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlock’d is first, given that it covers the same types of documents that I’m working on, and I usually have some success with it, or with the books referenced by it in footnotes.

If I have no luck, my next stop is usually the section on Fabrics in Costume in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries and Stuart Press’s Textiles of the Common Man and Woman.

If I still come up empty, my next stop to roll up my sleeves and do a general Google Books search of the term. Progresses and Processions of Queen Elizabeth is now online and searchable there, as are Documents Pertaining to the Revels in the Time of Queen Elizabeth and several other obscure books on 16th century documents.

Using the odd spellings in the original manuscripts, combined with restricting Google Books search results to the 19th century, can turn up some real gems; Google Books has made once-obscure Victorian Journals like Archaeologia Cambrensis, Journal of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society and The Gentleman’s Magazine not only available, but searchable. The Victorians loved their historical documents, and loved to transcribe bits of old manuscripts and make them available to “modern” readers, sandwiched between interminable geneaological expositions and careful drawings of rural priory ruins.

Google Books is also good at introducing me to obscure books I’d never have thought to look at for sources; The Walloons and their Church, for example, is hands-down the best source on varieties and names of late 16th and early 17th New Draperies made in Norwich available.

If even Google comes up dry, I then search post-period sources for fabric names and try to trace them back from there.Textiles in America 1650-1870 is a good source, as are 1700 Tals-Textil and A Lady of Fashion: Barbara Johnson’s Album of Styles and Fabrics, two facimiles of 18th century manuscripts containing swatches of fabric and descriptions of them.

Sometimes, however, I come across a term which is obstinately, obdurately opaque. Like…

Tronoy Needles. 

In the 16th century, a needlemaking revolution occurred. The discovery of how to make steel needles, long known in the orient, finally made it to the other end of the Silk Road and took root in Spain in the mid-1500s. Toledo, known for its blades, was also a center of steel needlemaking.

The first steel needles in England were imported from Spain. Eventually, spanish needlemakers brought the art to England, and a modestly-sized domestic steel needle industry was born.

One can assume that the Queen’s Wardrobe, with its deliriously large budget and consistent demand for the highest quality materials, would use steel needles. And there are a couple of references to “spanish needles” and “milan needles” (Milan needles being another high-quality type of steel needle);

The great majority of needles in the wardrobe, however, are described as “Tronoy” needles. Alternately, given the whimsical attitude towards spelling found in 16th century texts, they were known as “trony”, “troney” or “tronoye” needles.

I’d seen a lot of needles described in 16th century sources: “coarse needles”, “fine semster needles”, “great needles”,”sail needles”,”squre needles”,”holland needles”,”tailor’s needles”,”spanish needles”,”Jesus needles”,”Milan needles”,”country needles” and “steel needles”, but not “tronoy needles”.

A check of my usual books came up empty. More surprisingly, Google came up empty as well. I’d expected to find at least a breadcrumb on Google to lead me elsewhere, some 18th century quotation or probate inventory that mentioned it; but there was nothing.

I checked the other books in my library, and came up with an equally big chunk of zilch. I checked Minsheu, Cotgrave and some other early 17th century French-english and Spanish-english dictionaries, hoping to come up with some reasonably close word. But the Spanish word “trone” and French word “troigne” could not, even by the most creative leaps of the imagination, be said to have anything to do with steel or needles.

At this point, any reasonable person would give up, decide that Tronoy probably meant “spanish”, and move on to more interesting things. But I’d spent too long on this one obscure, trivial term to give up. It bugged me. Surely someone, somewhere had come across this word and written it down?

So I sat back and thought. “Cullen ribbon” came from Cologne; “Jeanes Fustian” from Genoa, and “Towers Ribbon” from tours. Tronoy could very likely be some place name, probably spanish, that had been similarly mangled by the Elizabethan English tongue.

The hours spent poring over 16th century maps of Spain, looking for any town name starting with a T that could possibly be converted into “Tronoy”, bore little fruit. “Terra Nuevo”, the only possible match, had no reference to a needlemaking industry in any of them. I checked some 16th century maps of France and Italy as well, with similar results found for Troyes and the two other possible matching cities.

There had to be something, I thought. Some clue, somewhere, as to just what the heck these stinkin’ Tronoy needles were.

So I went back to the beginning: the wardrobe accounts. I listed how many needles of what kind were bought in each 6-month warrant, and looked at the results:

I noticed that in the April warrant of 1584 both Milan and Tronoy needles were bought, and in the November warrant of 1577, both Spanish and Tronoy needles were purchased; there went the theory that “tronoy” was a synonym for one or the other.

At this point I contacted the two experts I knew of on needlemaking; one, unfortunately, had died since he published his book on the English needlemaking industry, and the other’s email was no longer in service.

So then I tackled period needlemaking itself. Perhaps, somewhere in some document about the origins of the needlemaking industry, I would find the clue I needed. I learned a great deal about how steel needles were made, about how they were bundled into canvas bags along with oil, soap and chalk powder and rolled between two heavy boards to sharpen them. I learned how the eyes were punched, and the names of some obscure tools specific to the trade, and then….I came across a mention of “train oil.”

“Train oil”, as it turns out, is the anglicization of the dutch “Trann olie”. It is a synonym for sperm whale oil..which was considered one of the best possible lubricants for polishing metal…as well as one of the best possible materials for quenching annealed steel in. After being heated for annealing, plunging needles into oil rather than water allowed them to cool more slowly, making them stronger and eliminating some of the “crooking” or bending of needles that occurred as they cooled.

Traan olie…”tronoy”? Is it possible that this term meant steel needles quenched in whale oil? Had it become a commonplace term in England? Did the local steel needle maker brand his needles that way?

Or was there some dude with the last name of Tronoy selling high-class steel needles in London?

And you know the worst thing about this stumper? It’s my conviction that somewhere out there is a person who would say, “Oh, tronoy needles? They’re ____. It says so in this source…” without blinking an eye. So if you’re out there and reading this, o hypothetical research saviour, drop me a line!

I have uploaded two more accounts:

Account Extracts for the Farmor Children

which contain clothing purchases made for Children Mary and Richard by their father’s Executor after his death; and

Clothing Extracts from the Sandwich Book of Orphans

Recording expenditures made by wardens for the orphans under their care.

The children in the Farmor account were fairly well off; they had clothing of taffeta as well as wool. Mary Farmor, for instance, received the following clothing in 1581:

a pair of shoes
a pair of knit hose
a petticoat of mockado, decorated with parchment lace, murrey sarcenet and fastened with hooks and eyes
a gown with yellow taffeta sleeves
another workaday gown of mockado
smocks
sleeves, partlets and coifs of holland
three cauls, two of silver and gilt, as well as a shadow

The other years are sparser in clothing references, but a couple of items caught my eye: Young Richard, at age 8, was given “a string to his myttens”, which immediately brought to mind images of my youth, with my mittens run on a string up one sleeve and down the other so that they wouldn’t get lost. He was also given wooden-soled pattens. I can just see an eight-year-old boy clattering down the halls of his house in them, making an unholy racket, scolded by the cook for wearing them inside.

Richard also had a doublet and venetians of popinjay green taffeta and yellow sarcenet made for him in 1586, when he was 11 years old. How adorable is that? He also received a shooting glove that year–for archery? This entry made me envision Richard’s first day at the archery butt, proudly and self-consciously wearing his new glove as he worked to pull a bow back and land an arrow in the target.

The most interesting orphan in the Sandwich Book of Orphans is Thomasine Walters, an heiress in a small way with an income of 10 £ a year in rentals. She lodged with a couple of people as well as going to a boarding school in Canterbury, and the account sheds some light on her wardrobe and other textile-related activities.

In 1591 she had a gown of 2 yards of violet broadcloth made for her, interlined and lined with 2 yards of bays and a yard of cotton, for her to wear at boarding school in Canturbury.

In 1592 she had a waistcoat made for her out of 7/8 of a yard of Devonshire Kersey, and a petticoate of one and a half yards of stamell cloth made for her as well. The next year she had another waistcoat of Devonshire Kersey made, this one of 1 1/4 yards; one can imagine she had grown quite a bit that year.

in 1593 she had another gown, more elaborate, made for her out of 10 yards of “lyle grosgrain”. The gown was stiffened with buckram and bent, lined with bays and had a pair of whalebone-stiffened sleeves. It was decorated with tawny bobbin lace. A petticoat of peach-colored broadcloth was made for her as well, bound with 3 yards of lace, decorated with 6 1/4 yards of black and red billiment lace (two rows of trim around the bottom?) and with statute fringe. Her smocks this year were, interestingly, made of buckram; a coarser cloth than one would expect with a gown and petticoat of this quality. However, in the same year that the gown was made, there’s a mention that she married a man named Harker; perhaps the gown and petticoat were for the wedding.

The account also illuminates Thomasine’s experience with needlework. Yarn is purchased for her on several occasions so that she might knit stockings. A sampler is also bought for her, as well as several purchases of “sylke”–presumably embroidery floss, given the cheap price. She is given two shillings to buy some silk to work a coif, and a “seame of French worke for a koyf” is bought at near the same time. in 1593, she also purchases “a cushen to make lace uppon” AND “36 stickes to make lace”. Possibly the ” fine Wight thrid to woork withall” that she purchased was intended for the same purpose.

There’s another tidbit of information in Thomasine’s accounts that interested me: one of her renters was a tailor of modest means, a dutchman named John Martin. The book records income for her renters, and I was able to discovered that Martin paid 20 shillings a year for rental of his house. Useful information in my ongoing quest to find out just how much an average tailor made in profit a year.

A beggar woman, symbolizing poverty. Trevilian Miscellaney, 1602

Fortunately, there are some sources available. I’ve just put one of them online:

Excerpts from the account books of the Tooley Foundation: Poor Relief in Ipswitch, 1580s-1590s

Ipswitch was lucky to have a generous and civic minded merchant, Henry Tooley, donate his substantial estate to helping the poor of the town when he died. The Tooley foundation maintained hospitals and poorhouses, worked to employ the poor, housed, fed and clothed those with nowhere else to go, and–most admirably of all–kept precisely detailed accounts of what they spent all of their money on.

The records date from the 1580s and 1590s. A variety of clothing items were bought and made for men, women and children at the various houses and hospitals.

Peasants harvesting grain. Trevilian Miscellaney, 1602

Women received the following items, paid for by the Tooley foundation: petticoats, waistcoats, frocks (aka gowns), smocks, shoes, knit hose, aprons, coifs, kerchiefs,leather shoes and neckerchiefs. Men received shirts, doublets and hose, jerkins, ruff bands, knit hose, long coats and leather shoes.

A woman would receive either a “peticote and a wastcote” or “one frocke”, but not both; and for the men, they almost always received “one jerkine and i payre of bryches”, or “one cote”, with doublets mentioned only once. Which raises the interesting possibility that, in this case, a jerkin was either a) a synonym for doublet, or b) worn directly over the shirt.

The fabrics used for these items were cheap and practical. The doublets, hose, coats, petticoats, waistcoats and frocks were made of wool in the entries where a fabric was specified: either russet (the cheap woolen “greaye russett” fabric in this case, a homespun fabric in natural grey or red-brown, rather than the color russet), frieze ( a heavy coat-weight wool),
kersey, plunket or unspecified woolen cloth. Cotton (cheap napped wool) was used for lining hose and jerkins in one entry; linen cloth was specified for lining the “pore chilldrens cottes” in another entry. The bodies of frocks, petticoats and waistcoats were frequently described as stiffened or lined with canvas.

Detail of a servant bringing wood for the fire. Trevilian Miscellaney, 1602

The amounts of fabric used for these garments are also illuminating. 3/4 yard of frieze was used for a pair of hose. 3 1/2 yards of russett were enough to make a coat for Clement Slokam. 3 yards of kersey made a pair of breeches and a jerkin. A smock for Alice Punder took 2 yards of canvas, and smocks for “the grettest wenches” also used only 2 yards of Rhone canvas. Shirts of the same canvas required only 1.45 yards to make, and one ell of coarse oxenbridge linen was enough to line two bodices.

Depiction of the virtue “Mercy”–a man helping a leper. Trevilian Miscellany, 1602

The entries for coifs reference lining coifs with “hamborow” (a cheap linen fabric). A coif took, on average, 1/6 of a yard to make. Coifs were made of lockram and of some sort of checked fabric (“coifs of chekes”), and–somewhat puzzlingly–there’s an entry for inkle (linen tape) for coifs that allocates three yards of inkle per coif…an indication that it was used for more than gathering the coif at the base of the neck.

As for fastenings, a couple of interesting items emerge from the accounts: points and laces were used for the boys clothing, and hooks and eyes mentioned for fastening both petticoat bodies and waistcoats. However, tin buttons were used on the boys coats, and they were attached with leather laces: “for lether lacis to sett on the buttones of the boys’ cotes”.

Also, I find it interesting that knit hose are so prevalent. I’d always assumed that the poorest of the poor wore cloth hose through the end of the 16th century; but, though cloth hose does show up in the accounts, there are more references to knit hose, for both women and men, then for cloth hose.

It’s possible, however, that the women supported by the Tooley Foundation–several of whom were listed as knitters–may have been hired to produce the knit stockings by the foundation as an additional method of poor relief.

A shepherd shearing sheep. Trevilian Miscellaney, 1602

Given this, is it possible to determine how long an item took to make? The daily wages of the head tailor in Queen Elizabeth’s wardrobe made a shilling per day in the 1590s; the other tailors made twelve pence a day. Interestingly, poor tailors in the Account books of Ipswitch were also described as making 12 pence a day; but account books from Cambridge during the late 16th and early 17th centuries state that tailors could make sixpence, eightpence or twelvepence a day, without specifying what caused the difference in rates.

A peasant woman hectoring her husband. Trevilian Miscellaney, 1602

A lord and a poor man, from the Trevilian Miscellaney, 1602

To make it more interesting, I framed my outline like a test. Or series of tests, really.

The first section: What would I know if I was an actual tailor’s apprentice of the 16th century. The second section: What would a journeyman know? And finally, what would a master tailor know?

It’s really helped me learn a lot. It’s also caused me to branch out into totally unexpected areas, like economics and social history and agriculture, while hunting down answers to particular questions.

Here it is:

The Tailoring Test

Apprentice-level questions

1. Write up an apprenticeship contract. What does an apprenticeship contract look like? what must it contain?

2. What is the process of apprenticing to a guild? What are your master’s obligations to you, and yours to him? Is money exchanged at any point along the way?

3. How many fellow apprentices do you have? How old are they? What families are they from?

4. How many hours a day do you work? How many days a week? What sort of work do you do for your master? Where do you sleep?

5. What materials are in your shop? Include: types of fabrics, tools of the trade, other objects.

6. What is the size and layout of your shop? What furniture is in it?

7. What does your shop do with its cabbage?

8. What sort of ready-made garments might you have in the shop? What items does your shop not make?

9. When should you use linen thread for stitching, and when should you use silk?

10. A client comes to your master desiring a new gown. However, he does not have the fabric with him. What are your master’s options for obtaining the fabric?

11. Demonstrate all of the stitches used in making garments, and describe what each stitch is used for. Use authentic thread size & stitch length. Thimble usage is required.

12. Demonstrate three popular pinking patterns, a 1 ft square each.

Extra credit: While working late on a silk gown, you accidentally get candlewax on the skirts. To avoid a sound thrashing, how do you get rid of the wax? Demonstrate.

Journeyman-level questions

1. As a newly-minted yeoman tailor, what sort of work do you do? How long will you be a journeyman? What is your life like?

2. How do you go about setting up shop? Do you stay with your master or strike out on your own? What influenced your decision?

3. Describe the merchant taylor’s company, that you are part of. Who is in it? What does the guild do for you? What are your responsibilities to the guild? What do you like best about the guild? What do you dislike the most?

4. Sketch the arms of the Merchant Taylor’s guild. In the yearly processions of the guilds, what place in line does the Merchant Taylor’s guild hold?

5. It is 1580. for each of the following fabrics, list the description (fiber, weave, & weight), the source (country(s) of origin), the width(s) the fabric comes in, and the cost per yard: fustian a’napes, serge, rash, velvet, frieze, holland, lockram,russet, kersey, chaungeable taffeta, say, cotton, tissue, sarcanet, cypress, buckram, broadcloth, straits & narrows.

6. Demonstrate taking a client’s measurements and drafting a doublet and hose pattern from them.

7. Demonstrate laying out this pattern on 22″ wide silk & 60″ wool broadcloth with the least amount of wastage. Use Alcega to start with; if you can improve on his layout, do so.

8. Demonstrate, step by step, the construction of a doublet & hose. Alternately, demonstrate the construction of a pair of bodies & a loose gown.

9. Say you have your own shop. How much is the rent?

Extra credit:
You are translating a garment for a patron who’s put on some weight. While altering, you notice a grease stain and are unsure whether it was there already or whether it happened after the garment came to the shop. To be on the safe side, you decide to get the stain out. The garment is made of red silk velvet. How do you go about removing the grease stain? Describe two recipes.

Master-level Questions

1. Using authentic drafting methods and pattern shapes, without reference to any written notes, draft patterns for the following:
men’s doublet, men’s paned trunkhose, woman’s doublet bodies, a kirtle bodies and kirtle skirt/woman’s Straight-bodied gown/women’s flemish gown, a cassock or dutch cloak, a doctor’s gown, and a cloak. You can, if you wish, replace two of the above with a pattern for a horse barding, a pavilion, a set of bed hangings or a set of Catholic vestments.

2. For each of the above, make a pattern of the garment up out of canvas/muslin and fit on the person whose measurements were used.

3. For each of the shop items listed above in the Apprentice section, list the cost of the item, how many you have of it, and how often each needs to be restocked.

4. When you become a master, what sort of work will you do? Will you specialize in men or women’s dress? What are your plans for the future? Will you stay a yeoman tailor, or enter the Fraternity? Will you seek service with the court or with a nobleman, or open a shop of your own? What other areas of business are you interested in getting into?

5. Describe your relationships with any other merchants or crafts necessary to your trade (haberdashers, embroiderers, skinners, furriers, etc), and describe how and where their work coincides with yours. Detail methods of payment and credit used, and conflicts that can arise between the different crafts.

6. Give a brief history of the Tailor’s guild as you know it. Include a description of the career of one famous member of the guild, that you would have known. Describe your guild livery.

7. You are elevated by your guild to membership in the Court of Assistants. What are your duties? Two years later, you are elevated to the position of Warden. What are your duties now?

8. Describe two different clients of yours. Include their station and occupation, the types of garments they request and how often they request them, and other individual habits.

9. A client brings in cloth of gold and silver, and wants a cloak made out of it. Your client is a minor nobleman who is a Knight of the garter. It is 1580. Do the sumptuary laws of the time allow him to wear this garment? If not, and you make this garment for him, are you liable for any fines or legal action? If you are, how do you handle this client’s request?

10. You discover that your fellow tailor and good friend, Hugh Humfrey, has received a large order for livery for 14 men, due in a week, and has temporarily hired a foreign journeyman from Flanders to get the work done cheaply. Is this legal? If not, what should you do in this case?

11. Describe the process of making a garment, from the time a patron walks into your shop until the garment is delivered to him. Include:
-how you both agree on what to make.
-where the materials come from: what the patron supplies, and what you supply
-How, in detail, is the garment constructed?
-who does what on making this outfit–apprentices, journeymen, you?
-How long did the garment take to make?
-Describe the final fitting, if there is one. What is checked? What sort of changes/complaints/issues might the client come up with? How should you counter them?
-Write up a bill for the work done, charging reasonable rates for your work and for any materials you bought during the making. Secretary hand a plus.
-How and by whom would the bill be payed?
-How and to whom would your garment be packaged and delivered?

Extra credit: Based upon the amount of time spent making this garment & the amount charged to the client, subtracting the cost of your own materials (sering wax, thread, pins, salary to Journeymen, etc) how much profit did you make on this? How much work would you need to do a day to turn enough of a profit to pay the rent on your shop, buy food and clothing, and pay your guild dues?

Read Mr. Orme’s Bills from Tailors, Haberdashers and Other Merchants

I found this collection of bills at the Public Records office. They were a bunch of loose-leaved single and double sheets of paper in a porfolio. Some looked like they’d been written yesterday; others were waterstained, torn, burned on the edges, or had holes eaten into the paper. Some were written in beautiful, flowing secretary; others appeared to be written by Dr, Jekyll’s alter ego.

It got me thinking about what a miracle it is that these things survive. I mean, think about what your cable and phone bills go through: If you’re like me they hit the trashcan fairly quickly. Or you may be one of those souls, beloved of historians, who files them away just in case. It might stay there for years; and one day long hence, after your funeral, when all of your papers are packed up, they just might end up in an attic instead of down at the dump.

But what, really, are the chances of your cable bill hanging around for 500 years? Pretty miraculous, isn’t it? It’s one reason I love going through ephemera like renaissance bills and receipts. It’s a bit like having won the lottery.

That, and the occasional Item of Interest(tm) that pops up. There is a lot of good stuff in Orme’s bills, including an eye-popping reference to popinjay-green stockings, but one line in particular made me pause: It was in a tailor’s bill for a french kirtle and gown, one of the most damaged bills in the collection. The last line of it reads:

“a Buske for the gowne.”

For the gown. Not for the kirtle. Not for a pair of french bodies or petticoat underbodies (which were purchased in a separate bill). No–for the gown itself.

I’ve always assumed that busks went into corsets and boned under-bodices. But was this really how it worked at the time?

I looked around DressDB, and sure enough, found something quite interesting in a Tailor’s Bill for Lady Townshend. It includes a reference to a french bodies and a busk:

For a paire of French bodis viiis
For a buske xiiid

but I noticed, for the first time, an additional reference:

For makange yor lady shipps gowne xvis
For buckram to stuffun the bodis & canvas for y iiis
For Fustion to border the gowne xiid
For tape and ii buskes to yt iiiid

Interesting! A pair of french bodies with a busk, and a gown with a pair of busks–which, for a front-opening gown in the 1590s, makes total sense. The effigy bodies from 1602 have a pair of busks sewn in, one running down either side of the front opening.

I did some more busk-hunting, and re-read the Excerpt from the French Garden where a woman is getting dressed for the day. Sure enough, near the beginning of the process she puts on her smock, petticoat and boned bodies:

bring my petty-coate bodies: I meane my damask quilt bodies with whale bones…Give me my peticoate of wrought Crimson velvet with silver fringe…showe me my Carnation silk stockins…give me my velvet pantofles;

And then, after some converation and general abuse of her serving maid for being neither psychic nor capable of moving at the speed of light, she continues:

call my Taylor to bring my gowne, not the close one, but my open gowne of white Sattin…Shall I have no vardingale? doe you not see that I want my buske?

Yes, a busk worn with a gown, with boned bodies under it. I’ve been thinking of doing a late period walking-birthday-cake 1590s elizabethan lately…I’ll have to incorporate this into my plans.