In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> , bevw <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes >I googled "Brilliana Lady Harley" and her dates are c. 1600 - 1643. Does >that help identify the sort of lace she might wear - if she wore it?
1600-43 translates to last three years of Elizabeth I, all of James I, and then to Charles I, and at this time the fashion changed from the stand up ruffs of Elizabeth to the falling collars of the Stuarts. A lot of the portraits of the time were, I think, a 'from the stock painted by the apprentices' body with a 'snapshot' portrait of the head added by the artist - if you look at old portraits, you will see an awful lot of unrelated women wearing the same dress, in more or less the same position! Lace was a sign of rank, and she would have been 25 when Charles I came to the throne. In J R Planche's History of British Costume (published 1836), he writes "At the commencement of the civil war, when the royalist party began to be denominated Cavaliers, and the republican, Round-Heads, the costume of England was as divided as its opinions; but the dress of the Cavalier was gallant and picturesque in the extreme. It consisted of a doublet of silk, satin, or velvet, with large loose sleeves, slashed up the front; the collar covered by a falling band of the richest point lace, with that peculiar edging now called Vandyke; a short cloak was worn carelessly on one shoulder. The long breeches, fringed or pointed, as we have already mentioned, met the tops of the wide boots, which were also ruffled with lace or lawn...." and that was only the men! It would appear, a few pages later, when talking about the female costume, that fashion changed greatly over the years, quoting from a play "Rhodon and Iris" first acted May 3 1631, part of the florists feast at Norwich - about half way through the (long!) quote about a fantastical lady of fashion, "Now she commends a shallow bande so small, That it may seem scarce any bande at all; But soon to a new fancy doth she reele, and calls for one as big as a coach wheele: ..." (almost as fickle as the 20th Century!) followed by a quote by another play from 1659, and then "And at this time accordingly we find a change in the female costume, which renders it equally elegant with that of the other sex. The hood and vardingale disappear, and with them the yellow starched ruffs and bands". He goes on to say that it was apparently the case of a Mrs Turner who went to the gallows for her part in a poisoning, wearing a yellow ruff, which resulted in that particular fashion falling from favour - Mrs Turner had been the one to introduce it from France in the first place. In contrast, "The ladies of the republican party were chiefly distinguished by the plainness of their attire and their adherence to some of the more staid and sober articles of the old dress, such as the hood, the high-crowned hat, etc." Being a noble woman, I suspect that she would have worn the bande (falling collar) with lace trim until approaching the years of the civil war, when if hers was a Parliament family, she would have dressed plainly to avoid being mistaken for a Royalist. I'm not sure when Puritanism first came into being in England; certainly up to a relatively short time before anyone not Church of England would have been executed for heresy and despite Elizabeth's tolerance, freedom of religion wasn't gained until the 1700s. The first we heard of it in history at school was with the reign of Oliver Cromwell - and that began five years after this lady died. -- Jane Partridge - To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
