His stockings are also gray kersey, tied with different
coloured laces; his bonnet is green, and has a copper brooch with the
picture of St. Dennis. 'And to want nothing that might make him
amorous in his old days, he had a fair shirt-band of white lockeram,
whipt over with Coventry blue of no small cost.'

[Illustration: {Three men of the time of Elizabeth; a sleeve}]

The hats worn vary in shape from steeple-crowned, narrow-brimmed
hats, to flat, broad-crowned hats; others show the coming tendency
towards the broad-brimmed Jacobean hat. Round these hats were hatbands
of every sort, gold chains, ruffled lace, silk or wool.

[Illustration: {Five types of hat for men}]

I think we may let these gallants rest now to walk among the shades--a
walking geography of clothes they are, with French doublets, German
hose, Spanish hats and cloaks, Italian ruffs, Flemish shoes; and these
with chalked faces, fuzzed periwigs of false hair, partlet strips,
wood busks to keep straight slim waists, will make the shades laugh
perhaps, or perhaps only sigh, for there are many in that dim wardrobe
of fashions who are still more foolish, still more false, than these
Elizabethans.

THE WOMEN

Now this is the reign of the ruff and the monstrous hoop and the wired
hair. As a companion to her lord, who came from the hands of his
barber with his hair after the Italian manner, short and round and
curled in front and frizzed, or like a Spaniard, long hair at his ears
curled at the two ends, or with a French love-lock dangling down his
shoulders, she--his lady--sits under the hands of her maid, and tries
various attires of false _hair_, principally of a yellow colour. Every
now and again she consults the looking-glass hanging on her girdle;
sometimes she dresses her hair with chains of gold, from which jewels
or gold-work tassels hang; sometimes she, too, allows a love-lock to
rest upon her shoulder, or fall negligently on her ruff.

Even the country girl eagerly waits for news of the town fashions, and
follows them as best she may.

In the early part of the reign the simple costume of the previous
reign was still worn, and even the court ladies were quietly, though
richly, dressed.

In the first two years the ruff remained a fairly small size, and was
made of holland, which remained stiff, and held the folds well; but
later, there entered several Dutch ladies, headed by Mistress Dingham
Vander Plasse, of Flanders, in 1564, who taug