Chapter V: Costume

We have, in a former chapter, given some pictures from illuminated MSS., in illustration of the costume and personal appearance of the merchants of the Middle Ages; but they are on such a scale as not to give much characteristic portraiture--except in the example of the bourgeoise of Paris, in the illumination from Froissart, on page 492--and they inadequately represent the minute details of costume. We shall endeavour in this chapter to bring our men more vividly before the eye of the reader in dress and feature.

The "Catalogus Benefactorum" of St. Alban's Abbey, to which we have been so often indebted, will again help us with some pictures of unusual character. They are of the fourteenth century, and illustrate people of the burgess class who were donors to the abbey; the peculiarity of the representation is, that they are half-length portraits on an unusually large scale for MS. illuminations. When we call them portraits, we do not mean absolutely to assert that the originals sat for their pictures, and that the artist tried to make as accurate a portrait as he could; but it is probable that the donations were recorded and the pictures executed soon after the gifts were made, therefore, presumedly, in the lifetime of the donors. It is, moreover, probable that the artist was resident in the monastery or in the dependent town, and was, consequently, acquainted with the personal appearance of his originals; and in that case, even if the artist had not his subjects actually before his eyes at the time he painted these memorials, it is likely that he would, at least from recollection, give a general _vraisemblance_ to his portrait. The faces are very dissimilar, and all have a characteristic expression, which confirms us in the idea that they are not mere conventional portraits.

They seem to be chiefly tradespeople rather than merchants of the higher class, and of the latter half of the fourteenth century. Here, for example, are William Cheupaign and his wife Johanna, who gave to the Abbey-church two tenements in the Halliwelle Street. One of the tenements is represented in the picture, a single-storied house of timber, thatched, with a carved stag's head as a finial to its gable. This William also gave, for the adornment of the church, several frontals, with gold, roses embroidered on a black ground; also he gave a belt to make a _morse_ (fastening or brooch) for the principal copes, with a figure of a swan in the _morse_, beautifully made of goldsmith's work; also he gave to the refectory a wooden drinking-bowl or cup, handsomely ornamented with silver, with a cover of the same wood. He wears a green hood lined with red; his wife is habited in a white hood.

The next picture represents Johanna de Warn, who also gave what is described as a well-built house, with a louvre, in St. Alban's town. This house, again, is of timber, with traceried windows, an arched doorway with ornamental hinges to the door, and an unusually large and handsome louvre. This louvre was doubtless in the roof of the hall, and probably over a fire-hearth in the middle of the hall, such as that which still exists in the fourteenth-century hall at Pevensey, Kent. The lady's face is strong corroboration of the theory that these are portraits.

Next is the portrait of a man in a robe, fastened in front with great buttons, and a hood drawn round a strongly marked face, reminding us altogether of the portraits of Dante.

The last which we take from this curious series is the picture of William de Langley, who gave to the monastery a well-built house in Dagnale Street, in the town of St. Alban's, for which the monastery received sixty shillings per annum, which Geoffrey Stukeley held at the time of writing. William de Langley is a man of regular features, partly bald, with pointed beard and moustache, the kind of face that might so easily have been merely conventional, but which has really much individuality of expression. The house--his benefaction--represented beside him, is a two-storied house; three of the square compartments just under the eaves are seen, by the colouring of the illumination, to be windows; it is timber-built and tiled, and the upper story overhangs the lower. The gable is finished with a weather-vane, which, in the original, is carried beyond the limits of the picture. The dots in the empty spaces of all these pictures are the diapering of the coloured background.

But curious as these early portraits are, and interesting for their character and for their costume, as far as they go, they still fail to give us complete illustrations of the dresses of the people. For these we shall have to resort to a class of illustrations which we have hitherto, for the most part, avoided--that of monumental brasses. Now we recur to them because they give us what we want--the _minutiæ_ of costume--in far higher perfection than we can find it elsewhere. Again, instead of selecting one from one part of the country and another from another, we have thought that it would add interest to the series of illustrations to take as many as possible from one church, whose grave-stones happen to furnish us with a continuous series at short intervals of the effigies of the men who once inhabited the old houses of the town of Northleach, in Gloucestershire. This series, however, does not go back so far as the earliest extant monumental brass of a merchant; we therefore take a first example from another source. We have already mentioned the three grand effigies of Robert Braunche and Adam Walsokne of Lynne, and Alan Fleming of Newark; we select from them the effigy of Robert Braunche, merchant of Lynn, of date 1367 A.D. We have taken his single figure out of the grand composition which forms, perhaps, the finest monumental brass in existence. The costume is elegantly simple. A tunic reaches to the ankle, with a narrow line of embroidery at the edges; the sleeves do not reach to the elbow, but fall in two hanging lappets, while the arm is seen to be covered by the tight sleeves of an under garment, ornamented rather than fastened by a close row of buttons from the elbow to the wrist. Over the tunic is a hood, which covers the upper part of the person, while the head part falls behind. The hood in this example fits so tightly to the figure that the reader might, perhaps, think it doubtful whether it is really a second garment over the tunic; but in the contemporary and very similar effigy of Adam de Walsokne, it is quite clear that it is a hood. The plain leather shoes laced across the instep will also be noticed. If the reader should happen to compare this woodcut with the engraving of the same figure in Boutell's "Monumental Brasses," he will, perhaps, be perplexed by finding that the head here given is different from that which he will find there. We beg to assure him that our woodcut is correct. Mr. Boutell's artist, by some curious error, has given to his drawing of Braunche the head of Alan Fleming of Newark; and to Fleming he has given Braunche's head.

We feel quite sure that every one of artistic feeling will be thankful for being made acquainted with the accompanying effigy of a merchant of Northleach, whose inscription is lost, and his name, therefore, unknown. The brass is of the highest merit as a work of art, and has been very carefully and accurately engraved, and is worthy of minute examination. The costume, which is of about the year 1400 A.D., it will be seen, consists of a long robe buttoned down the front, girded with a highly-ornamented belt; the enlarged plate at the end of the strap is ornamented with a T, probably the initial of the wearer's Christian name. By his side hangs the _anlace_, or dagger, which was worn by all men of the middle class who did not wear a sword, even by the secular clergy. Over all is a cloak, which opens at the right side, so as to give as much freedom as possible to the right arm, and to this cloak is attached a hood, which falls over the shoulders. The hands are covered with half gloves. The wool-pack at his feet shows his trade of wool-merchant. Over the effigy is an elegant canopy, which it is not necessary for our purpose to give, but it adds very much to the beauty and sumptuousness of the monument.

Next in the series is John Fortey, A.D. 1458, whose costume is not so elegant as that of the last figure, but it is as distinctly represented. The tunic is essentially the same, but shorter, reaching only to the mid-leg; with sleeves of a peculiar shape which, we know from other contemporary monuments, was fashionable at that date. It is fastened with a girdle, though a less ornamental one than that of the preceding figure, and is lined and trimmed at the wrists with fur. Very similar figures of Hugo Bostock and his wife, in Wheathamstead Church, Herts, are of date 1435; these latter effigies are specially interesting as the parents of John de Wheathamstede, the thirty-third abbot of St. Alban's.

The next is an interesting figure, though far inferior in artistic merit and beauty to those which have gone before. The name here again is lost, but a fragment remaining of the inscription gives the date MCCCC., with a blank for the completion of the date; the same is the case with the date of his wife's death, so that both effigies may have been executed in the lifetime of the persons. The date is probably a little later than 1400. The face is so different from the previous ones that it may not be unnecessary to say that great pains have been taken to make it an accurate copy of the original, and it has been drawn and engraved by the same hand as the others. The manifest endeavour to indicate that the deceased was an elderly man, induces us to suspect that some of its peculiarity may arise from its being not a mere conventional brass, such as the monumental brass artists doubtless "kept to order," but one specially executed with a desire to make it more nearly resemble the features of the deceased. If, as we have conjectured, it was executed in his lifetime, this, perhaps, may account for its differing from the conventional type. His dress is the gown worn by civilians at the period, with a _gypcire_, or purse, hung at one side of his girdle, and his rosary at the other.

Lastly, we give the effigy of another nameless wool-merchant of Northleach, who is habited in a gown of rather stiffer material than the robes of his predecessors, trimmed with fur at the neck and feet and wrists. The inscription recording his name and date of death is lost, but a curious epitaph, also engraved on the brass, remains, as follows:--

"Farewell my frends, the tyde abideth no man,
I am departed from hence, and so shall ye;
But in this passage the best songe that I can
Is requiem eternam. Now then graunte it me,
When I have ended all myn adversitie,
Graunte me in Puradise to have a mansion,
That shed thy blode for my redemption."

The mention of fur in these effigies suggests the restrictions in this matter imposed by the sumptuary laws by which the king and his advisers sought from time to time to restrain the extravagance of the lieges. By the most important of these acts, passed in 1362, the Lord Mayor of London and his wife were respectively allowed to wear the array of knights bachelors and their wives; the aldermen and recorder of London, and the mayors of other cities and towns, that of esquires and gentlemen having property to the yearly value of £40. No man having less than this, or his wife or daughter, shall wear any fur of martrons (martin's?) letuse, pure grey, or pure miniver. Merchants, citizens, and burgesses, artificers and people of handicraft, as well within the City of London as elsewhere, having goods and chattels of the clear value of £500, are allowed to dress like esquires and gentlemen of £100 a year; and those possessing property to the amount of £1,000, like landed proprietors of £200 a year.

There are some further features in these monumental brasses worth notice. Knightly effigies often have represented at their feet lions, the symbols of their martial courage. Some of our wool-merchants have a sheep at their feet, as the symbol of their calling: one is given in the woodcut accompanying. In another, in the same church, the merchant has one foot on a sheep and the other on a wool-pack; here the two significant symbols are combined--the sheep stands on the wool-pack. In both examples the wool-pack has a mark upon it; in the former case it is something like the usual "merchant's mark," in the latter it is two shepherds' crooks, which seem to be his badge, for another crook is laid beside the wool-pack. At the feet of the effigy of John Fortey, p. 523, is also his merchant's mark enclosed in an elegant wreath, here represented. The initials I and F are the initials of his name; the remainder of the device is his trade-mark. We give two other merchants' marks of the two last of our series of effigies. If the reader cares to see other examples of these marks, and to learn all the little that is known about them, he may refer to a paper by Mr. Ewing, in vol. iii. of "Norfolk Archæology."

We have in a former chapter (p. 498) given from his monumental brass a figure of Alderman Field, of the date 1574, habited in a tunic edged with fur, girded at the waist, with a _gypcire_ and rosary at the girdle, and over all an alderman's gown. In St. Paul's Church, Bedford, is another brass of Sir William Harper, Knight, Alderman, and Lord Mayor of London,[417] who died in A.D. 1573; he wears a suit of armour of that date, with an alderman's robe forming a drapery about the figure, but thrown back so as to conceal as little of the figure as possible. In the Abbey Church at Shrewsbury is an effigy of a mayor of that town in armour, with a mayor's gown of still more modern shape. The brasses of Sir M. Rowe, Lord Mayor of London, 1567, and Sir H. Rowe, Lord Mayor 1607, both kneeling figures, formerly in Hackney Church, are engraved in Robinson's history of that parish. And in many of the churches in and about London, and other of the great commercial towns of the Middle Ages, monumental effigies exist, with which, were it necessary, we might extend these notes of illustrations of civic costume.

In further explanation of civil costume from MSS. illuminations we refer the artist to the Harleian "Romance of the Rose" (Harl. 4,425, f. 47), where he will find a beautiful drawing, in which appears a man in a long blue gown, open a little at the breast and showing a pink under-robe, a black hat, and a liripipe of the kind already given in the citizens of Paris p. 54; he wears his purse by his side, and is presenting money to a beggar. At f. 98 is another in similar costume, with a "penner" at his belt in addition to his purse. There is nothing to prove that these men are merchants, except that they are represented in the streets of a town, and that their costume is such as was worn by merchants of the time.

With these costumes of civilians before our eyes we wish to use them in illustration of a subject which was touched upon in a former section of this work, viz., the Secular Clergy of the Middle Ages. We there devoted some pages to a discussion of the ordinary every-day costume of the clergy, and stated that there was no professional peculiarity about it, but that it was in shape like that worn by contemporary civilians of the better class, and in colour blue and red and other colours, but seldom black. If the reader will turn back to pp. 244, 245, and 246, he will find some woodcuts of the clergy in ordinary costume; let him compare them now with these costumes of merchants. For example, take the woodcut of Roger the Chaplain, on p. 245, and compare it with the brass from Northleach, p. 522. The style of art is very different, but in spite of this the resemblance in costume will be readily seen; the gown reaching to the ankle, and over it the cloak fastened with three buttons at the right shoulder, with the hood falling back over the shoulders; the half-gloves are the same in both, and the shoes with their latchet over the instep. Then turn to the priest on p. 246, and it will be seen that he wears the gown girded at the waist, with a purse hung at the girdle, and the flat cap with long liripipe, which we have described in the costumes of these merchants. Lastly, let the reader look at these brasses of wool-staplers, and compare the gown they wore with the cassock now adopted by the clergy, and it will be seen that they are identical--_i.e._ the clergy continue to wear the gown which all civilians wore three or four hundred years ago; and in the same manner the academic gown which the clergy wear, in common with all university men, is only the gown which all respectable citizens wore in the time of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth.