leather or coloured laces to the breeches, leaving a gap between
which showed the shirt; the universal pouch on the breeches often
highly decorated and jewelled. From the line drawings you will see
that the sleeves and the breeches took every form, were of any odd
assortment of colours, were cut, puffed, and splashed all over, so
that the shirt might be pushed through the holes, looking indeed
'blistered.'

[Illustration: {A man of the time of Henry VIII.}]

The shoes were of many shapes, as I have shown, agreeing in one point
only--that the toes should be cut very broad, often, indeed, quite
square.

Short or hanging hair, both were the fashion, and little flat caps
with the rim cut at intervals, or the large flat hats of the previous
reign, covered with feathers and curiously slashed, were worn with
these costumes.

Cloaks, as you may see, were worn over the dress, and also those
overcoats shaped much like the modern dressing-gown.

It is from these 'blistered,' padded breeches that we derive the
trunks of the next reign, the slashings grown into long ribbon-like
slits, the hose puffed at the knee.

Separate pairs of sleeves were worn with the waistcoats, or with the
petti-cotes, a favourite sleeve trimming being broad velvet bands.

The invention sprang, as usual, from necessity, by vanity to custom.
In 1477 the Swiss beat and routed the Duke of Burgundy at Nantes, and
the soldiers, whose clothes were in rags, cut and tore up his silk
tents, his banners, all material they could find, and made themselves
clothes of these odd pieces--clothes still so torn and ragged that
their shirts puffed out of every hole and rent. The arrival of the
victorious army caused all the non-fighters to copy this curious freak
in clothes, and the courtiers perpetuated the event by proclaiming
blistering as the fashion.

The other and more usual fashion springs from the habit of clothes in
bygone reigns.

Let us first take the shirt A. It will be seen how, in this reign, the
tendency of the shirt was to come close about the neck. The previous
reign showed us, as a rule, a shirt cut very low in the neck, with
the hem drawn together with laces; these laces pulled more tightly
together, thus rucking the material into closer gathers, caused the
cut of the shirt to be altered and made so that the hem frilled out
round the neck--a collar, in fact. That this collar took all forms
under certain limitations will be noticed, also that