Page:Costume, fanciful, historical, and theatrical (1906).djvu/89

VI feminine enthusiasm in the width of their ruffles. Their hose, of different detail, was either of cloth or silk, and blazed with colour, being ornamented with gold or threads of Venetian silver, though the King himself preferred cloth hose, which also had the honour of decorating Queen Elizabeth, until she chanced to meet with the silk stocking, to which she thereafter clung with tenacity.

Jane Seymour's coronation dress was of her faithless spouse's favourite material, cloth of gold; all his wives seem to have been obliging enough to yield to his fancy for this extravagance, and this poor lady's choice was decorated with a raised design of embroidery and pearls, and the stomacher beneath was thickly encrusted with jewels, while her surcoat was of purple velvet bordered with ermine and embroidered with gold, and a jewelled velvet caul was on her head. Anne of Cleves endeavoured to popularise the Dutch fashion of a gown without a train, and she was as much a failure in this as in her other ambitions. Catharine Parr, the last of the noble six, had a gown of cloth of gold made with a sleeve quite tight at the shoulder, bordered at the elbow with fur, and showing beneath a slashed and puffed under-sleeve, finished by a small ruffle at the wrist.

Mary inherited her father's love of splendour and costly apparel, and her favourite head-dress was of cloth of gold, and her gowns were generally of velvet trimmed with fur and jewelled. Elizabeth devoted herself to fashion in a frank, whole-hearted way that brooked no half-measures, and amongst her terrors of death must have been parting with her gowns, for she died possessed of no fewer than three thousand dresses. What a harvest for the