Tudor and Stuart dress
In the sixteenth century there were laws governing what cloths and colours you
could and couldn’t wear according to your rank. These were called the Sumptuary
Regulations. The regulations were started in the medieval period. How could the
Sumptuary Regulations be useful? Circle the answers:
They forced most
people to wear
wool and support
English industry.
It made it easier to
tell the ranks apart
and therefore how
you should behave to
other people.
It allowed the higher
ranks to be assured that
they would be the only
ones wearing the richest
clothes.
All of these answers are right. The laws themselves said that they were put in place
to stop people from buying foreign fabrics and to keep the harmony of Tudor
society where everyone knew their place. The higher ranking people were also
pleased to be able to wear rich fabrics and show their superiority. The regulations,
however, were less and less important in the Tudor period and were finally repealed
in 1604. The new trend in the sixteenth and seventeenth century was to wear what
you could afford instead of what was fitting to your rank. It still meant that the
rich wore silk and velvet in bright reds and black (two expensive dyes) and the poor
wore brown or green wool.
Figure 1: Woman in a replica Tudor costume of green wool, she must be poor
Tudor and Stuart dress
Not much Tudor or Stuart clothing survives to the present day. Can you think of
any reasons why that might be? When a piece of clothing survives, it could be
something unusual and will almost certainly be something a rich person would have
worn. Some items of Tudor and Stuart clothing are kept by Buckinghamshire County
Museum. Look at their website to search for some pieces of sixteenth or
seventeenth century clothes.
Figure 2: A Tudor woman’s coif or headdress in Buckinghamshire County Museum
Shoes survive better than other items of clothing. This is partly because they are
sometimes placed under floorboards or behind panelling in a room as a charm to
ward off the devil. Other items of clothing don’t survive so well because they were
reused as new garments. Cloth was very expensive and could not be wasted. If an
item of clothing were thrown out it would rot. Leather shoes sometimes survive if
they are thrown out because they survive very well in waterlogged conditions. They
are sometimes found in wells or in pits near rivers and streams.
Figure 3: A man’s shoe found behind the panelling in The Chantry, Aylesbury (left) and a pair of lady’s
shoes (right) from Buckinghamshire County Museum
Tudor and Stuart dress
Other items of dress survive better, like jewellery, buttons and buckles. Why is
this?
Look at the Portable Antiquities website to find Tudor and Stuart artefacts found
in Buckinghamshire. Do a search on the Buckinghamshire Photographs website to
find any sixteenth or seventeenth tombs or brasses showing the fashionable
costume of the time. Note the names of five people to whom the tombs or brasses
were dedicated. A lot of the people are known as Sir, Lady or Lord. This suggests
that mainly rich people had tombs like these made for them.
Figure 4: Tomb of Sir William Dormer and his wife, 1590
If all that survives from the Tudor and Stuart periods is either rich people’s
clothing, a few pairs of shoes and some rusted bits of metal decoration, how can we
find out more about it? What are the other forms of evidence we can look at apart
from archaeological artefacts?
Pictures and written records are very useful. Poor people’s clothes are the least
likely to survive, be painted or be written about and so much more research has to
be done. Do some more research on the Internet and in books to find pictures and
written descriptions of clothes.
Tudor and Stuart dress
From all the research you have done, fill in this table to describe what a poor and a
rich Tudor or Stuart person would wear. Some of them have been filled in for you.
Rich
Type of
cloth
Silk
Colour of
cloth
Decoration
Feathers
Poor
Type of
cloth
Colour of
cloth
Brown
Decoration
Using what you have written in the table, draw a picture of a rich and a poor Tudor
or Stuart person.
www.buckscc.gov.uk/archaeology