ing the ruffs of all the fine ladies of London and ac- 

 cumulating a fortune by it. She starched ruffs white 

 or yellow at discretion, yellow being a very popular 

 color until a certain Mrs. Turner, who had poisoned 

 Sir Thomas Overbury, thoughtlessly wore a yellow 

 ruff on her way to execution. This decided the fate of 

 yellow ruffs, as wearing them thereafter was thought 

 too suggestive. 



The custom of ruff- wearing came in for as full a meas- 

 ure of condemnation by "censors of public morals" 

 as any one fashion ever adopted. Yet such condem- 

 nation met the same fate that arguing or preaching 

 against any fashion usually meets. The great ruff 

 went out of use when capricious fashion, for some 

 unknown reason, dictated that it should. "No fash- 

 ion has ever been preached down in England by mor- 

 alists," says a writer, "and the ruff held itself erect 

 through all condemnation, never unbending its stiff- 

 ness or yielding an inch of its width for any censure. 

 Indeed, the law, unless upheld by physical force, was 

 powerless against the ruff." 



In Spain, the fate of the ruff, which in the days of 

 Philip III had become enormous and costly, "per- 

 haps the most extravagant article of dress ever gen- 

 erally and diurnally worn in any country" was one 

 of those matters for royal interference to which we 

 referred a moment ago. Philip IV, in 1623, issued 

 pragmatics suppressing it, and decreed as alternatives 

 either the plain linen band or the flat Walloon collar 

 falling over the shoulders. Both of these articles were 

 utterly rejected by the splendor-loving Spaniards, and 



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