t this is the lady whose passion for dress in after life could not
be sated; to whom, or at least before whom (and the Queen was not slow
in appropriating and resenting the hint[109]), Latimer, Bishop of
London, thought it necessary to preach on the vanity of decking the
body too finely; and who finally left behind her a wardrobe containing
three thousand dresses. A modern fair one may wonder how such a
profusion of dresses could be accommodated at all, even in a royal
wardrobe, with fitting respect to the integrity of puffs and
furbelows. But clothes were not formerly kept in drawers, where but
few can be laid with due regard to the safety of each, but were hung
up on wooden pegs, in a room appropriated to the sole purpose of
receiving them; and though such cast-off things as were composed of
rich substances were occasionally _ripped_ for domestic uses (viz.,
mantles for infants, vests for children, and counterpanes for beds),
articles of inferior quality were suffered to _hang by the walls_ till
age and moths had destroyed what pride would not permit to be worn by
servants or poor relations. To this practice, also, does Shakspeare
allude: Imogen exclaims, in 'Cymbeline,'--

"Poor I am stale, a garment out of fashion;
And, for I am richer than to hang by the walls,
I must be ripp'd--"

The following regulations may be interesting; and the knowledge of
them will doubtless excite feelings of joy and gratitude in our fair
readers that they are born in an age where "will is free," and the
dustman's wife may, if it so please her, outshine the duchess, without
the terrors of Parliament before her eyes:--

"By the Queene.

"Whereas the Queene's Maiestie, for avoyding of the
great inconvenience that hath growen and dayly doeth
increase within this her Realme, by the inordinate
excesse in Apparel, hath in her Princely wisdome and
care for reformation thereof, by sundry former
Proclamations, straightly charged and commanded those in
Authoritie under her to see her Lawes provided in that
behalfe duely executed; Whereof notwithstanding, partly
through their negligence, and partly by the manifest
contempt and disobedience of the parties offending, no
reformation at all hath followed; Her Maiestie, finding
by experience that by Clemencie, whereunto she is most
inclinable, so long as there is any hope of redresse,
this increasing evill hath not beene cured