Dress According to Statute. 179 



check unthrifty declared that any one who sold foreign apparel 

 to persons having less than £3000 a year in land or fees, 

 except for ready money, should lose the price of the same, no 

 matter how it might have been secured. 



By the 13 Eliz., c. 19, the last of the sumptuary laws, it 

 would seem that though caps had been at one time a general 

 article of attire, they had gone greatly out of fashion, causing 

 thereby a grievous falling off in the cap-making business. 

 This business seems to have been powerful enough to procure, 

 as did the button-makers at a later date, special legislation in 

 its favour. The above-named Act recites the evils that have 

 arisen from the decay of the cap-making trade by the disuse of 

 caps, and requires that everyone above six years of age, except 

 ladies, peers, and those who have twenty marks a year out of 

 land, or who have ' ' borne any office of worship in any city, 

 borough, town, hamlet, or shire," shall wear "upon the Sabothe 

 and Holy Daye . . . one cappe of woll knytt, thicked, and 

 dressed in England/'' or be fined three shillings and four pence 

 a day. This act was, however, repealed in the thirty-ninth 

 year of the queen. 



These various laws regulating the kind and quality of the 

 apparel which men of all sorts and their belongings might 

 wear, continued to be in existence, if not in operation, till the 

 advent of James the First to the throne. By the 1 James I., c. 

 25, they were repealed, and folks were left to follow the bent 

 of their own fancy, being bounded only by the same restraints 

 as kept them from entering into any other extravagance. Not 

 any attempt has since been made to revive sumptuary laws, 

 though so late as the seventh year of Greorge I. an Act was 

 passed " to preserve and encourage the woollen and silk manu- 

 factures of this kingdom, and for more effectually employing 

 the poor by prohibiting the use and wear of all printed, 

 painted, stained, or dyed callicoes in apparel or household 

 stuff, furniture or otherwise," excepting only " such callicoes 

 as shall be dyed all blue." In the same session was passed 

 the famous Act which prohibited the use of any buttons made 

 of cloth, serge, or other stuffs, the object being to keep up the 

 monopoly which workers in silk and mohair had established. 



