keep the rain off; most men
of account maintain one, two or three roundeliers, whose office
is only to attend their master's motion; they are very light but
of exceeding stiffness, being for the most part made of rhinoceros
hide, very decently painted and guilded with what flowers they best
admire. Exactly in the midst thereof is fixed a smooth handle made
of wood, by which the Roundelier doth carry it, holding it a foot or
more above his master's head, directing the centre thereof as opposite
to the sun as possibly he may. Any man whatever that will go to the
charge of it, which is no great matter, may have one or more Katysols
to attend him but not a Roundel; unless he be a Governor or one of
the Council. The same custom the English hold good amongst their own
people, whereby they may be distinguished by the natives." [500] The
Katysol was a Chinese paper and bamboo sunshade, and the use of them
was not prohibited. It was derived from the Portuguese _quito-sol_,
or that which keeps off the sun. [501] An extract from the _Madras
Standing Orders_, 1677-78, prescribed: "That except by the members
of this Council, those that have formerly been in that quality,
Chiefs of Factories, Commanders of Ships out of England, and the
Chaplains, Rundells shall not be worn by any men in this town, and
by no woman below the degree of Factors' Wives and Ensigns' Wives,
except by such as the Governor shall permit." [502] Another writer
in 1754 states: "Some years before our arrival in the country, they
(the E. I. Co.) found such sumptuary laws so absolutely necessary,
that they gave the strictest orders that none of these young gentlemen
should be allowed even to hire a Roundel boy, whose business it is
to walk by his master and defend him with his Roundel or umbrella
from the heat of the sun. A young fellow of humour, upon this last
order coming over, altered the form of his Umbrella from a round to
a square, called it a Squaredel instead of a Roundel, and insisted
that no order yet in force forbade him the use of it." [503] The fact
that the Anglo-Indians called the umbrella a roundel and regarded it
as a symbol of sovereignty or nobility indicates that it was not yet
used in England; and this Mr. Skeat shows to be correct. "The first
umbrella used in England by a man in the open street for protection
against rain is usually said to have been that carried by Jonas Hanway,
a great traveller, who introduced it on his return from Paris ab