Searge petticoat. Greene Searge Wascote & my hood & muffe. My Green
Linsey Woolsey petticoate. My Whittle that is fringed & my Jump &
my blew Short Coate. A handkerchief. A blew Apron. My best Quife
with a Lace. A black Stuffe Neck Cloath. A White Holland apron with
two breadths in it. Six yards of Redd Cloth. A greene Vnder Coate.
Staning Kersey Coate. My murry Wascote. My Cloake & my blew
Wascote. My best White Apron, my best Shifts. One of my best
Neck-Cloaths, & one of my plain Quieus. One Callico Vnder Neck
Cloath. My fine thine Neck Cloath. My next best Neck Cloath. A
square Cloath with a little lace on it. My greene Apron."

It is pleasing to note in this list that not only the garments and
stuffs, but the very colors named, have an antique sound; and we read in
other inventories of such tints as philomot (feuillemort), gridolin
(gris-de-lin or flax blossom), puce color, grain color (which was
scarlet), foulding color, Kendal green, Lincoln green, watchet blue,
barry, milly, tuly, stammel red, Bristol red, sad color--and a score of
other and more fanciful names whose signification and identification
were lost with the death of the century. In later days Congress brown,
Federal blue, and Independence green show our new nation.

This wardrobe of Jane Humphrey's was certainly a very pretty and a very
liberal outfit for a woman of no other fortune. But to have all one's
possessions in the shape of raiment did not in her day bear quite the
same aspect as it would at the present day. Many persons, men and women,
preferred to keep their property in the form of what they quaintly
called "duds." The fashion did not, in New England, wear out more
apparel than the man, for clothing, no matter what its cut, was worn as
long as it lasted, doing service frequently through three generations.
For instance, we find Mrs. Epes, of Ipswich, when she was over fifty
years old, receiving this bequest by will: "If she desire to have the
suit of damask which was the Lady Cheynies her grandmother, let her have
it upon appraisement." Hence we cannot wonder at clothing forming so
large a proportion of the articles bequeathed by will and named in
inventories; for all the colonists

"... studied after nyce array,
And made greet cost in clothing."

Nor can we help feeling that any woman should have been permitted to
have plenty of gowns in those days without being thought extravagant,
s