170 Dress According to Statute. 



took notice of excess in apparel, and joined with the professors 

 of religion in condemning those who enlarged the hem of their 

 garments, and carried the price of a county in the clothing 

 that was on their backs. 



In the fifteenth year of Edward III., there was, as we 

 learn from the ' ( Brute Chronicle " (attributed to Douglas of 

 Glastonbury), a great rage for dress, and the fashions of the 

 same : — " And in this tyme englisshe men so myche haunted 

 and cleved to ye woodness and foly of y e straungers, y* yey 

 ordeyned and chaunged hem every yeer diverse shappes and 

 desgisynges of clothyng." This is only the record, simple and 

 terse, of what had been taught and preached against for many 

 years previously, and is the straw showing which way the wind 

 blew when the statute, passed towards the end of Edward's 

 reign was framed. By the thirty- seventh year of Edward III. 

 the Parliament, or grand council, that governed the land, was 

 ready to consider a project which should have the effect of 

 checking the extravagance of the people in the matter of dress, 

 and in that year accordingly, they agreed to a law which they 

 fondly hoped would have that effect. They saw the money 

 which fops spent — the money which might possibly be their 

 own, to do as they liked with, or which it might be, was 

 wrung u from the hard hands of peasants by indirection," 

 going steadily out of the country, and they saw the youth and 

 promise of the land " rot inwardly, and foul contagion 

 spread ;" they saw no prospect of manufactories, worked by 

 native industry, rising in the land, nor did the habit and 

 custom of the age suggest a policy which would give birth to 

 such manufactures. Perhaps, too, in an assembly composed of 

 those who, for the most part, were fine birds without needing 

 fine feathers to make them so, the fact of extravagance in 

 plumage was so senseless, and withal so serious, observable as 

 it was, not only in the upper, but in the inferior classes also, 

 that ipso facto, they were resolved to put a legislative curb 

 upon it. Accordingly we find an Act passed in 1363 — the 

 Act 37 Edward III., c. 8, to restrain "the outrageous and 

 excessive apparel of divers people, against their estate and 

 degree," which is the first of the series of sumptuary laws, if 

 we except a law made in the eleventh year of Edward III., 

 by which the use of fur was prohibited to all persons, except 

 the King, the lioyal family, and those who possessed £100 a 

 year derived from land. 



The passage already quoted from the " Eulogium His- 

 toriarum " throws some light on the circumstances under which 

 the Act was passed. The following are the principal provi- 

 sions of the statute, with its brief preamble : — 



(C 1 . For the outrageous and excessive apparel of divers 



