Dress According to Statute. Ill 



forbidden to use u any bolsters or stuffing of wool, cotton, or 

 cadas, or any stuffing in liis doublet, but only lining according 

 to the sanie." Servants also were not to wear cloth, which 

 cost more than " two shillings the broad yard." 



6. "And because that coverchiefs daily brought into the 

 realm do induce great charge and cost in the same, and in 

 effect in waste," it is forbidden to sell within the kingdom 

 " any laun, niefl.es, umple, or any other manner of coverchiefs 

 whereof the plite shall exceed ten shillings." 



In order to promote the use of a dress which should be in 

 the popular opinion more decent, and which should not involve 

 the objections pointed out by the critics in cc The Persone's 

 Tale," and in the various political poems that have been quoted, 

 at the same time that perfect liberty to do as they liked was 

 reserved to the persons most likely to offend, it was ordered 

 by this statute that no person under the degree of a lord should 

 wear any goun, jacket, or cloak, " unless it be of such length 

 that the same may cover his privy members and buttocks," 

 nor wear " any shoes or boots having pikes passing the length 

 of two inches." 



In the year 1482 the previous sumptuary laws were 

 repealed, and the 3 Edward IV., c. 5 was re-enacted with greater 

 stringency, the reason given in the preamble being that, 

 through excess and wastefulness of apparel, the " said realm 

 was fallen into great misery and poverty, and like to fall into 

 more greater, unless the remedy therefor be sooner." 



It is needless to adduce the evidence of writers and chro- 

 niclers of the time to show that male and female vanity managed 

 to evade the law, though it were never so stringent. There 

 was a difficulty about bringing the delinquents coram judice, 

 none but the ill-natured, or the pedantic, or the crotchety, 

 would inform against them, and magistrates, unless they were 

 of the same kidney with the prosecutors, would be slow to 

 punish what was, after all, but the harmless expression of a 

 vanity that was shared by judge and prisoner alike. As a 

 matter of fact, the law was continuously disregarded, as in the 

 nature of things it must have been ; and though Empson and 

 Dudley doubtless drew some of the fines, with which they 

 enriched their master's treasury, out of the pockets of the dan- 

 dified, and those who got themselves up regardless of cost — 

 following the example set them by their master in the case of 

 the Earl of Oxford and his liveries — the administrators of the 

 law generally winked at the struttings of the jays who decked 

 themselves in peacock's feathers. 



Henry the Eighth, however, in the first year of his reign, 

 tried his hand at a statute which was meant to carry out the 

 objects attempted in vain by the acts of his predecessors, and 



VOL. XII. — NO. III. N 



