enacted that all the proceedings of the ecclesiastical courts should "be made in the name and the style of the King," and that no other seal of jurisdiction should be used but with the Royal arms engraven, under penalty of imprisonment. Mary repealed this Act, nor did Elizabeth replace it. But a clause in a statute of James (1 James I. c. 25) repealed the repealing Act of Mary, so that the Act of Edward was still in force, and Bastwick was perfectly right. The judges, in May, 1637, however, decided that Mary's repeal Act was still in force; and Charles, at Laud's instigation, issued a proclamation in August, 1637, to the effect that the proceedings of the High Commission and other ecclesiastical courts were agreeable to the laws and statutes of the realm. In this manner did the judges, the bishops, and the King conspire to subject Englishmen to the tyranny of the Church!

The consequences belong to general history. Never was scheme of ecclesiastical ambition more completely shattered than Laud's; never was historical retribution more condign. Among the first acts of the Long Parliament (November, 1640) was the release of Prynne and Bastwick and Burton; who were brought into the City, says Clarendon, by a crowd of some 10,000 persons, with boughs and flowers in their hands. Compensation was subsequently voted to them for the iniquitous fines imposed on them by the Star Chamber, and Prynne before long was one of the chief instruments in bringing Laud to trial and the block. But this was not before that ambitious prelate had seen the bishops deprived of their seats in the House of Lords, and the Root and Branch Bill for their abolition introduced, as well as the Star Chamber and High Commission Courts abolished. It is to be regretted, nevertheless, that his punishment went beyond the total failure of the schemes of his life.

Of the heroes of the books whose condemnation contributed so much to bring about the Revolution, only Prynne continued to figure as an object of interest in the subsequent stormy times. As a member of Parliament his political activity was only exceeded by his extraordinary literary productiveness; his legacy to the Library of Lincoln's Inn of his forty volumes of various works is probably the largest monument of literary labour ever produced by one man. His spirit of independence caused him to be constant to no political party, and after taking part against Cromwell he was made by the Government of the Restoration Keeper of the Records in the Tower, in which congenial post he finished his eventful career.

THE STORY OF THE COAT.

PART I.

ING, heavenly Muse !-if any muse there be who presides over

SING,

the externals of humanity, over "the grand tissue of all tissues, the only real tissue, the vestural tissue, namely, of woollen or other cloth, which man's soul wears as its outward wrappage and overall,"-sing, heavenly Muse! the chances and changes of the Coat! That is, of so much of the said vestural tissue as appertains to the upper portion of the body of civilised man, covering his chest and back, and eke his loins and limbs, down to his knees. Confining thy strain, O Muse! to the Englishman's coat, do thou trace its history from the days when wild in woods the noble Briton ran, down to these glorious times of great Victoria ! 1

Strabo, in his description of Britain, speaks of its inhabitants as wearing black garments, or cloaks, reaching to their heels, and bound round their breasts. Cæsar says they were clad in skins, and that they stained themselves with the blue dye of the woad (or Isatis tinctoria). Every man, therefore, in that early age was probably his own tailor, except in so far as he drew upon the industry and good taste of his "squaw." When the Northman's piratical galleys first ran up into our creeks and rivers, with their cargoes of fierce warriors, the ordinary dress of the Briton was a cloak or coat of sheepskin, or the hide of a brindled cow or of some beast killed in the chase. His chief, however, went to and fro in more sumptuous attire, exhibiting himself to the admiring vision of his tribesmen in a close coat, shaped like a tunic, and chequered with various colours, according to the wearer's fancy. It was open in front, and furnished with long close sleeves which reached the waist, where it was frequently kept within decent bounds by a girdle.

In Britain, as everywhere else, the Roman adhered to his national

In the following pages I am compelled to traverse ground which has already been occupied by Fairholt, Planché, Strutt, and others; but the method of my journey is my own, and I think I have brought together a mass of details un noticed by my predecessors.

costume with as much tenacity as does the modern Englishman; that is, to the toga and the tunic. "The tunic of the men," says Mr. Hope, "reached only half-way down the thigh; longer tunics. being regarded as a mark of effeminacy, and left to women and to Eastern nations. The inferior functionaries at sacrifices wore the tunic without the toga; so did the soldiers when in camp. The senatorial tunic was edged with a purple border, called latus clavus; that of the knights with a narrow border, the angustus clavus."

The tunic was the main feature of the Anglo-Saxon's attire. (May I be forgiven for employing the pre-Freeman nomenclature?) In St. Æthelwold's celebrated "Benedictional" one of the Magi is represented as doing homage to the infant Jesus in a plain purple tunic, reaching nearly to the knees, and fastened about the waist by a linen girdle. Sometimes the tunic was enriched with an ornamen tal border of leaves, or of square and circular figures, in a different colour to that of the garment itself. It fitted closely round the neck and was open half-way down the breast, like our modern waistcoat it was open also at the sides, from the hip to the bottom. The AngloDanes likewise wore the tunic. In the reign of Edward the Confessor Englishmen first showed a partiality for foreign fashions, and, like the Normans, curtailed the tunic considerably, until it was almost as short as that garment in which David danced when he shocked the prudish Michal. In his romance of "Harold," Lord Lytton describes the dress of his characters with archaeological accuracy, and shows us the pious Edward in a white upper tunic, clasped on his shoulder with a broad ouch, or brooch, white leggings, and white mantle. Norman William he introduces in "a vest of dark cramoisy, edged by a deep band of embroidered gold”.. perfectly bare his firm, full throat-firm and full as a column of granite,❞—and in a short jacket, or manteline, of fur, pendant from the shoulders. He also speaks of a Saxon, named Sexwolf, as wear ing a tunic of hide, which, tightened at the waist, fell down to his knee; "while a kind of cloak, fastened to the right shoulder by a large round button or brooch, flowed behind and in front, but lett both arms free."

We pass on to the reign of William the Conqueror. The great king himself figures, in the illuminated MSS. which have come down to us, in a wide-sleeved tunic, with a richly ornamented border sometimes the tunic is relieved by a number of vertical stripes. His subjects also wore the tunic-a shortened one, not below the

knees.

To the reign of his son, Henry I., belongs a curious MS. of Florence of Worcester, describing a dream of that monarch on his passage to Normandy in 1130. He supposed that three representatives, or types, of different orders of society, the husbandman, the knight, and the priest, in turn approached his bed, and threatened him so truculently that he awoke in a great panic, calling upon his attendants to protect him. In the drawings which illustrate this moral narrative the dress of the period is minutely delineated; and we see the husbandman in his cheap tunic, with plain, close-fitting, serviceable sleeves-the priest wearing, of course, his professional dress-and the knight habited in a long and costly tunic, the sleeves hanging down long and full, and apparently causing much inconvenience to the wearer.

If a man desired to go a-journeying, he attired himself accordingly, assuming a large skin-mantle, with a cape or hood, over a short tunic, and putting on also an under-tunic, usually of some white woollen material.

In the abbey of Fontevraud, in Normandy, were buried some of our early Plantagenet sovereigns, whose monumental effigies are better than "fashion-books" for the guidance of the archæologist in costume. For example, Richard Cœur de Lion is clothed in a red super-tunic, or dalmatic, with a white tunic underneath; and this double tunic was evidently a characteristic part of the attire of royal and illustrious personages in the twelfth century. In the garb of ordinary civilians, however, little change was to be observed, except that the tunic was made shorter and closed all round. In the next century Fashion began to reign, and insisted upon the adoption of such extravagant and costly devices as to evoke the censure of the priesthood and the ridicule of the satirists. There is a "Song upon (or against) Tailors," written in the reign of Henry III., which I take to be the earliest known attack upon that worshipful fraternity. It begins:"I have addressed you as gods: why should I omit the service which should be said upon festival days? Gods certainly you are, who can transform an old garment into the shape of a new one. The cloth, while fresh and new, is cut into either a cape or mantle; but, in order of time, it is first a cape, and, after a while, is transformed into the other. It is thus you change bodies. When it becomes old the collar is removed, and it is turned into a mantle. Proteus-like are garments metamorphosed. At length winter returns ; then many of you immediately engraft upon the cape a capeuce. Next, it is squared; after being squared it is rounded, and so it is turned into an amice. This is the way with all of them; they

all make one robe out of another-English, Germans, Franks, and Normans-almost without exception."

Some interesting information as to the dress of the later years of the thirteenth century may be picked out of the well-known Household Roll of Bishop Swinfield (of Hereford). It records the purchase of four pieces of linen cloth, called Keyneth, for

19. 6s. 8d. These were made up into long garments for the use of the bishop and his clerks by a tailor, who was provided with the necessary articles of binding, lining, and thread. Four pieces and six yards of striped cloth, at a cost of £12. 175. 6d., were bought for the tunics and cloaks of the squires and bailiffs. Three pieces and four yards of a coarser cloth, cost £7. 16s. 11d., were allotted to the serving-men; while a still commoner sort, of which four pieces and a half were obtained for £8. 15s. 9d., was made up for the grooms and pages. The total expenditure amounted to upwards of £50, equal, I suppose, to £700 or £750 at the present value of money. In winter the bishop purchased, for the better protection of his episcopal self, a surtout of furred skin and a furred cap. The cloths for summe: wear were purchased at Whitsuntide, were of a lighter texture, and were denominated bluett and russet. These, too, were of different qualities, and the servants were once more clothed in distinctive striped dresses. The cloth of this period had a very long nap, 50 that when the garment was over-used the nap could be re-shorn, and an air of newness economically obtained.

In the reign of the first Edward the tunic was still in vogue; it was worn with wide sleeves, which depended to the elbow. The super-tunic (the French gardecors) was also very generally adopted. Under the third Edward, dress occupied to a large extent the atten tion of the wealthier classes, and the prevalent ostentation led to the enactment of no fewer than eight sumptuary laws. The tunic, or cote-hardie, fitted close to the body; it had tight sleeves, and scarcely reached the knee, so as not to obscure the view of the embroidered garter which set off the manly leg. It was gorgeously embroidered, and from its sleeves hung long slips of cloth. The peasantry, how ever, wore no such splendid garments; they were forbidden by law to wear other than breeches of leather and a frock of russet, or

undyed

wool. The burghers of the towns were attired in dress of sim cut, but finer texture-for it was in this respect that the statute la insisted on the gradations of rank-and its general effect may be see in the costume still worn by the scholars of Christ's Hospital.

In two figures "of the period," which Mr. Fairholt reproduces from a contemporary MS., we note some interesting details. In