The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century (18 page)

Let us move into the 1350s. What should you wear at court to welcome the king of France, brought to England in 1357 after his capture the previous year? Your underwear will still consist of a linen shirt and braies, but now the braies will be cut short and tight, not unlike modern underpants, with a fastening cord at the top. Over your braies you will wear colored hose (leggings) of the finest wool, like modern tights. These are normally attached to the fastening cord of the braies—a bit like a modern women’s garter belt. Over your shirt you will wear a tailored, mid-thigh-length cote. Alternatively you might go for a doublet (a padded version of the same). Both of these garments have tight-fitting buttoned sleeves and are buttoned up the front. They are normally in two colors: one half of, say, blue and the other of yellow. This is described as
“mi-parti”
or “parti-colored.” If you are wearing just one color, or if it is cold, you will probably wear a contrasting surcote over the top, with a belt slung low. Alternatively you might just wear a buttoned cotehardie (a lavish doublet) over your shirt. Should you button up your newly tailored doublet only to find that close-fitting tailoring cruelly reveals a fat belly, do not forget that men also wear corsets at this time. While the traditional image of knights in armor is accurate and widely accepted, the equally representative image of knights wearing corsets and garter belts is perhaps less well known.

Of course, fashion never stands still, and never does it change more rapidly than in the mid-fourteenth century. As the disgruntled author of the
Brut
chronicle points out, people change the shapes and style of their clothing every year. He is not at all happy to have to remark on the tapets (trailing pieces of cloth), which courtiers have dangling
from their sleeves and hoods, nor on the “dagges” of their clothing (where the edges of fabric are cut into points) nor on their lengthening of hoods. “The clothing of devils” he calls it, and blames the Hainaulters in Queen Philippa’s entourage.
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Nor is he alone in being horrified. In 1370 another writer remarks with shock that tunics have now grown so short that you can see the outlines of men’s bottoms. By then, in order to be well dressed at court, you will wear a paltock: a form of doublet with a lining to which the tights or hose are tied directly. Alternatively you might wear a long gown. Both of these newfangled items of dress seem to originate in England and spread quickly to the Continent. You might wear a hood in a rakishly folded shape, tied in place by its “liripipe” (the extra-long tubular peak of the hood). To have it hanging down your back like a normal hood in 1360 is simply passé. The same goes for the circular mantle: no one puts their head through the central head hole anymore, but rather men try to wear the mantle rakishly, by putting their head through an armhole and gathering up the extensive folds over one shoulder.

The end of the century sees all this experimentation come to a riotous climax of fashionable excess. To be a nobleman in the 1390s means wearing long gowns and short gowns, and gowns of medium length, cotehardies, doublets, and paltocks. Most lavish of all are the full-length gowns occasionally called “houpelands”: long, tailored garments with high waists, high collars (
really
high, up to the earlobes), and elaborate long sleeves with massive cuffs which hang down to the ground. In such a garment your foppish aristocrat can appear capable of tripping over his cuffs as well as the hem of his gown. At the other extreme you might prefer the “courtpiece” or
courtepie
, a very short doublet that not only reveals the wearer’s bottom but hangs barely two inches lower than the belt around his hips, so he can show off the bulge in the front of his tights as well as the roundness of his buttocks.
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Obviously there is a time and a place for such clothing: you would be unwise to stroll into Parliament wearing a courtpiece, for example, or to wear one to a funeral. But the end of the century marks the pinnacle in the sexualization of men’s clothing. We have come a long way since the reign of Edward I, when lords still wear tunics which hang from the shoulders like a pair of velvet curtains.

The development of men’s shoe styles is almost as radical and extreme as their clothing. In 1300 there is no real difference between left
and right shoes. They might be decorated in gold, stitched very tightly so the seams are nigh on invisible, but still one shape is cut to fit both feet. Over the course of the century cordwainers—men who make the best shoes from soft Cordovan leather—begin to distinguish between left and right. The really striking development, however, is the length of the toes. In 1300 your average nobleman wears shoes which would look expensive but not outlandish: the toe is a neat little point, nothing remarkable. In the 1330s the toe begins to grow. And grow. On both sides of the Channel noblemen seem to be in competition to wear the longest shoes. Whatever the cause of this trend (length of feet and manhood?) by 1350 the artificial lengthening of the toes is well under way—six inches long, seven, eight—with the points being partly stuffed with wool to make them semi-rigid. By the reign of Richard II some lords can barely walk without tripping over their own shoes. Although older men still wear normal-length shoes under their long robes, the younger men with very short paltocks push the boundaries of style ridiculously far. The longest style of all—the twenty-inch Crackow, an imported fashion from Bohemia—is so long that its tips have to be tied to the garter. Walking upstairs in them is almost impossible.

With all the radical changes in dress and footwear, it is something of a surprise to reflect that there is very little variation in men’s hairstyles over the century. The king sets the trend, of course, but you will not notice a significant difference between the hair of Edward I and that of his son, Edward II, or even that of Edward III before the age of fifty. All three men have their hair parted in the center, kept in place by a crown or circlet, so the long locks tumble down the sides of the face to chin level. In later life, Edward III wears his hair longer, to shoulder length. Even Richard II and Henry IV do not have hairstyles very different to their predecessors—at least, not until Henry goes bald. Richard has his hair cut very slightly shorter, so it hangs down thickly over the ears and is slightly longer at the back.

All of these kings with the sole exception of Richard are noticeably bearded. Their beards may be short and bushy like Edward II’s, or long and flowing like Edward III’s in old age, or short and forked like those of the Black Prince and Henry IV. Whatever the chosen style, most secular lords wear a beard. By contrast, clergymen never do. They are shaved and tonsured (the hair cut from the top of their head) every two weeks.
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Shaving is thus considered slightly inappropriate for a
nobleman and, by implication, for a king. Richard II, who hardly has any beard at all and barely a wisp of moustache, is quite an alarming figure in some men’s eyes, because his boyishly clean face contrasts so much with that expected in a king.
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The suspicion with which he is viewed by his people for most of his reign is a telling sign of how important it is to look the part in medieval society.

Just as it is important for clothes to reflect social rank, so too it is important that they reflect sexual differences. But how do you distinguish between male and female dress when it just hangs loosely from the shoulders? Men and women are wearing similar forms of tunics in 1300. There are differences in the neckline and the length of skirt, but the main difference lies in the way the head is presented. For the first three decades of the century, attention is focused not on your hips or breasts, nor on your arms or legs, but on your hair and face. It is not going too far to say that before 1330, in matters of clothing, men and women differ more from the shoulders up than the chest down.

By the end of the century the similarities in styles of clothing have almost entirely disappeared. Men’s clothing has become sexually more revealing whereas women’s skirts are still long and hanging. Certain rules remain unchallenged. Women may not expose their arms or legs without being deemed to have acted lewdly. Nor should an unmarried girl wear a headdress: the wimple is the preserve of the married woman. Nevertheless, this is the century during which men and women start to wear radically different clothing from each other. In the modern world, in which female clothing is more often designed to attract the attention of the opposite sex, the radical sexualization of men’s clothing is doubly surprising. It is not women’s skirt lengths which change with the times but those of men. No wonder monastic chroniclers feel obliged to pass comment: they blame the men for displaying very short skirts and well-packed hose, and they blame the women for being delighted by what they see.

Ladies wishing to cause a stir at an event in 1300 might wear a long-sleeved tunic, with a chemise or fine linen shift underneath. The sleeves to this will be sewn up after you have put it on, to bring the
material close to your arms. Over this you will probably wear a sideless gown of a contrasting color; this is like a full-length surcote but with large cut-away gaps instead of sleeves (hence “sideless”). Sometimes the sides are laced up with gold threads with tassels on the ends. The sideless gown is nearly always of a contrasting color: if your tunic is red, a blue floor-length gown is most appropriate. Over the whole ensemble you might consider wearing a mantle: perhaps a gold-lined one of violet cloth, woven with vermilion and blue patterns, cut long enough to trail behind you. Alternatively you might opt for an even longer, loose-sleeved, fur-lined
peliçon:
this is a cope of rich fabric which has such a long train that a servant is required to carry it for you.

By the middle of the century, the sideless gown is beginning to look dated. All that cloth trailing from your
peliçon
looks similarly old-fashioned and impractical. Besides, it has become fashionable for women to show off their necks (low necklines start to appear about 1325) and even their bare shoulders. Tailored sleeves and buttons mean that from the 1330s you no longer have to be sewn into your clothes but can wear long gowns and buttoned cotehardies like the men. You will still wear a long shift as your prime undergarment, so your skirts remain ground length. Your sexiness is, however, enhanced by having your tunic or cotehardie cut very close around your breasts, waist, and hips, to show off your figure. Some women exaggerate their buttocks with bustles made of foxtails.
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Alternatively, you might accentuate your waist with a corset. If you go for the figure-hugging style, golden and jewel-studded belts are slung low around your hips. At the same time, your mantle should be draped at a lower level than before and fastened with a golden cord or braid just above the breasts, allowing you to show off your bare shoulders.

By 1400 the best dresses to be seen at court have very little in common with those of 1300. They are cut from similar fabrics—mainly imported from Flanders and France—but the styles are wholly different. Long full and flowing skirts of bright purple and red, often with designs of heraldic symbols embroidered into them, are trimmed with gold brocade and jewels. Over this you might wear a short bodice of a contrasting color, with a corset underneath accentuating your hourglass shape, and with a matching fur-trimmed hip-length courtpiece on top, cut so that the fur rides up along the edges of the courtpiece and over your breasts and to the points of your shoulders. Gold and
jeweled buttons complete the picture of an exquisite damsel. Of course, this glamorous style does not suit all sizes and shapes; there are plenty of women who would be appalled at the prospect of being clothed in the latest corset-restricted and hourglass-shaped dresses. But by the end of the century it is almost only the old, the fat, and the religious who still wear the long hanging tunics of 1300.

Nothing about the medieval female “look” would be complete without the headdress. Nor is it possible to describe the headdress without referring to hairstyles. At the start of the century, perhaps the most popular aristocratic style of coiffure is the ramshorn. The long hair (all noblewomen wear their hair long) is parted in the center; each side is woven into a single long plait; this is then wound round and round into a sort of bun or ramshorn over the ear and fastened in place with hairpins. If you are married you will wear a circlet, hood, hat, or veil on the top of the head and fasten your wimple on either side. In 1300, with your tunic reaching to the ground, and your sleeves so long they reach to your knuckles, your face and your fingers are often the only parts of your entire body which can be seen.

In the reign of Edward III everything changes. The most striking development is the practice of taking the two plaits of hair and running them up and down over your temples to form columns of plaited hair, framing your face. Often the columns of plaited hair are carefully enmeshed in golden gauze, which is the way Queen Philippa likes her hair done in the 1360s. Her exact contemporary, the countess of Warwick, has her hair similarly dressed; but rather than stiff golden columns of hair framing her face she has the two plaited columns woven into one on top of her head and then encased in a gold-lattice frame. The result is a striking arch of golden hair all around her face. These are lavish hairstyles, which take hours to set in place. Most noblewomen are happy with simply long plaits of hair, or a variation on the ramshorn style, and their circlet, coronet, or hat and a wimple (if they are married). Richard II’s wife, Anne of Bohemia, favors a single long plait down her back. Unmarried girls tend to adorn themselves with jewels in their hair—often artificial flowers made of gold and precious stones—or fur-trimmed hoods. It is highly unusual for noblewomen to appear in public with their long hair loose and free-flowing. Even if just tucked up under a coif, it will be concealed. In the previous century, and in the next one, it is common for women to wear their
hair loose, but fourteenth-century noblewomen tend to do this only in the privacy of their solar chambers. Long, loose hair is generally considered seductive and so, like naked arms and legs, concealed to avoid impropriety. Only wild and wanton women dare to leave their hair undressed and loose in public.