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Isabella Cheyne, 1485; also MS. Reg. 16 F 2. In order to display this head-dress; in many brasses of this date, the ladies are obliged to be

shown nearly in profile. A very beautiful example of the same head-dress, but without the extended veil, is that seen in the effigy in Norbury Church of a lady of the Fitzherbert family, circa 1485. Another is given in Stothard's engraving of the effigy of Joan Lady Arundel (see also, infra, p. 224). The gentlemen also had begun to wear the long gowns and soberer

Fig. 156.

costume that distinguished the reign of Henry VII., and of which a specimen is here given, from John Rous's pictorial history of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, now preserved among the Cottonian MSS., Julius E 4. It represents the Earl in civil costume, in which there is a great deal of simple elegance; there is, however, a sufficiency of ornament to mark the station of the wearer, about the neck-band and jewels. The drawings in this manuscript are well worthy of attention. They are of quarto size, and are exceedingly good in point of composition and drawing. Strutt's copies of them in his "Horda AngelCynan" are very unworthy of the originals. Rous was a chantry priest, at Guy's Cliff, near Warwick, to which he came about the beginning of Edward IV.'s reign, and resided there till that of Henry VII.; he died 1491, but the MS. referred to was executed about 1485. He is remarkable as one of our earliest English antiquaries; and his drawings, which are generally done in delicately executed

Fig. 157.

brown tints, are of considerable merit and much simple beauty.'

The most curious representations of Richard III. we possess are those now in the possession of the Society of Antiquaries; one of which, evidently by the same hand as that of Edward IV., already described, is exceedingly interesting for the strong and characteristic portraiture it exhibits. It has also been engraved in the "Paston Letters," and appears fully to carry out the accounts left us of Richard by the old historians, who describe him as a restless spirit, always sheathing and unsheathing his dagger while in conversation, as if his mind would not allow quietude to his fingers; a habit that would seem to be displayed in the picture to which allusion is made, which represents him drawing a ring on and off the finger.2

The figures of Richard and his Queen-the "Lady Anne" of Shakespeare-are engraved on next page from another work by John Rous, "The Warwick Roll," preserved in the College of Arms.3 Richard is represented fully armed in plate, over which he wears a tabard emblazoned with the royal arms. The arched crown is a novelty, as our previous monarchs generally wore them open at top. Rous, who knew Richard personally, has given him the high-shouldered inequality which he attributes to him in his History of England. He says, "he was of low stature, small compressed features, with his left shoulder higher than his right." The Countess of Desmond, who had danced with him when young, described him as the handsomest man in

The

1 In "Lancashire and Cheshire Wills," published by the Chetham Society, 1884, the prices of various cloths, &c., in 1477 occur. following are a few of them: Brabant cloth at 5d. and 6d. the ell, Flemysh at 5d. to 12d., Holland at 6d. to 18d.; white Osborner fustian at 5d., white Holmes fustian 6d., coloured fustian 7d., Cane tuke 5d., black buckram 3d. to 6d., fustian tuke 1s., blue chamlet 28. 4d.; plaite lawne at 7d. to 21d. the plaite. Black velvet 8s. and 10s. the yard; damask 6s. 8d. the yard. Blankets 2s. each, and sheets 2s. each.

2 Lord Stafford possesses another portrait closely resembling this one, which has been engraved as a frontispiece to Miss Halsted's "Life of Richard III." The same strongly marked and characteristic features appear in all of them.

A similar roll has been reproduced in facsimile by Mr. Pickering, and Mr. Shaw gives some of the figures from it.

the room except his brother the king.' In this, as in many other characteristics of Richard, truth lies probably between the opposite extremes of the good or bad report given; it would, however, certainly appear, from all representations of him that have reached us, and may be considered authentic, that he was a man of hard feature and repulsive look in his latter years. It may surprise some of our readers to be told that Richard was remarkable for his

Fig. 158.

love of splendid dresses, and that his favourite Buckingham was no whit behind him. We cannot here print the inventory of the king's dresses that exists in the Harleian MS., No. 433,2 and must content ourselves with a mere reference to a list, which, as Mr. Sharon Turner justly remarks, we should rather look for from the fop that annoyed Hotspur, than from the stern and warlike Richard III.

1 Philip de Comines says that Edward IV. before he grew fat was the most beautiful man of his time, and his thoughts were wholly employed upon the ladies, hunting, and dressing.

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See also the wardrobe account for the year 1483, printed in vol. i. Antiquarian Miscellany," and containing the emptions for Richard's coronation.

The Queen Anne wears a gold caul and regal circlet, from whence hangs a large gauze veil, held out by wires, like that of Lady Say, on p. 193; and her mantle is crimson, with white lining, probably ermine or fur, the same garnishing the upper part of her gown, which is open on the sides; and her sleeves have white cuffs, the colour of the gown being purple.

The ecclesiastical costume during the whole of this period does not appear to have undergone any change to warrant the necessity of giving cuts or descriptions, which may be better devoted to more important matters. A glance at the works of Stothard, Hollis, Cotman, Waller, and others who have given plates of effigies and brasses, or a look through the volumes of Gough's" Sepulchral Monuments," will give the best information. The satirists of the day chiefly attack the clergy on the subject of their luxuriousness, and occasional fondness for the fashions and the fopperies of the laity. The magnificence of the vestments used in the church service rivalled in splendour and costliness that of nobility or royalty; but the higher clergy aped the nobles in the cut of their dress in private life, and their fondness for hawks and hounds. They wore daggers at their jewelled girdles, and cut their dresses at the edges into the leaves and "jags" so much condemned by the graver moralists. In Staunton's "Visions of Purgatory," already quoted, he sees the bishops who had been proud and overbearing tormented with serpents, snakes, and other reptiles, to which the "jagges and dagges" of their vainglorious clothing had been transformed for their punishment; and the moths that bred in their superfluous clothing now became worms to torment them. The last stanzas of the "Balad against excess in Apparel, especially in the Clergy," particularly speak of their pride and voluptuousness. The author accuses them of wearing wide furred hoods, and advises them to make their gowns shorter, and the tonsure wider upon their crowns. Their gowns he also condemns because they were plaited, and censures them for wearing short stuffed doublets, in imitation of the laity :

"Ye poope holy prestis full of presomcion,

With your wyde fueryd hodes, voyde of discrecion;

Un to your owyn prechyng of contrary condition,
Whech causeth the people to have lesse devocion.
"Avauncid by symony in cetees and townys,

Make shorter your taylis, and broder your crownys,
Leve your short stuffede doublettes and your pleyted gownys,
And kepe your owyn howsyng, and passe not your boundis."

The monumental effigy of William of Colchester, in Westminster Abbey, may be cited as a fine example of abbatial costume: he died in 1420. In Stothard's often quoted work will be found a coloured engraving of this figure. Hollis has engraved that of John Borew, Dean of Hereford, in Hereford Cathedral, who died in 1462; and it shows how very simply the dignitaries of the church were sometimes attired, despite the constant censures of the laity.

The full-length figure of Abbot Wethamstede, of St. Albans, is given on p. 198 from the Register-book of that Abbey, and may have been the work of Alan Strayler already named on p. 170. He is simply attired in a long black gown with wide sleeves; the cape, secured by a jewelled brooch at the neck, reposes on the shoulders, and was drawn over the head when required. He wears the mitre, a peculiar dignity awarded to some few abbeys, and bears a richly decorated crozier in his right hand; in his left is the royal charter he was instrumental in obtaining from Henry VI. There is a remarkably fine brass of this great man in the Abbey of St. Albans, which exhibits him in a more ornamental costume. We place beside him an engraving from the brass of Isabel Hervey, Abbess of Elstow, Bedfordshire, remarkable as a rare example of an abbess in her religious habit. This brass, which in the woodcut is, unfortunately, reversed, may be seen correctly engraved in Waller's "Monumental Brasses." She wears the barbe, or pleated neck-covering, which reaches above the chin, and was peculiar to the religious women, though occasionally adopted by elderly ladies in private life. The Countess of Richmond, mother of Henry VII., is generally represented in one. The long gown with loose sleeves of the abbess is precisely like that worn by the Abbot Wethamstede; over this is thrown the capacious mantle, the head being covered by a cloth coverchief or hood. The

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