Many were the varieties of girdle and belt, from plain silk sashes
with tasselled ends to rich jewelled chain girdles ending in heavy
ornaments.

For detail one can do no better than go to Holbein, the master of
detail, and to-day, when photographs of pictures are so cheap, and
lives of painters, copiously illustrated, are so easily attainable at
low prices, it is the finest education, not only in painting, but in
Tudor atmosphere and in matters of dress, to go straightway and study
the master--that master who touched, without intention, on the moral
of his age when he painted a miniature of the Blessed Thomas More on
the back of a playing card.

EDWARD THE SIXTH

Reigned six years: 1547-1553.

Born, 1537.

THE MEN AND WOMEN

[Illustration: {A man of the time of Edward VI.; a type of hat}]

Here we have a reign which, from its very shortness, can hardly be
expected to yield us much in the way of change, yet it shows, by very
slight movements, that form of growth which preludes the great changes
to come.

I think I may call a halt here, and proceed to tell you why this
volume is commenced with Henry VII., called the Tudor and Stuart
volume, and ends with the Cromwells. It is because, between these
reigns, the tunic achieves maturity, becomes a doublet, and dies,
practically just in the middle of the reign of Charles II. of pungent
memory. The peculiar garment, or rather, this garment peculiar to a
certain time, runs through its various degrees of cut. It is, at
first, a loose body garment with skirts; the skirts become arranged in
precise folds, the folds on the skirt are shortened, the shorter they
become the tighter becomes the coat; then we run through with this
coat in its periods of puffings, slashings, this, that, and the other
sleeve, all coats retaining the small piece of skirt or basque, and so
to the straight, severe Cromwellian jerkin with the piece of skirt cut
into tabs, until the volume ends, and hey presto! there marches into
history a Persian business--a frock coat, straight, trim, quite a near
cousin to our own garment of afternoon ceremony.

For a sign of the times it may be mentioned that a boy threw his cap
at the Host just at the time of the Elevation.

To Queen Elizabeth has been given the palm for the wearing of the
first silk stockings in England, but it is known that Sir Thomas
Gresham gave a pair of silk stockings to Edward VI.

We now see a more general appearan