Medieval Clothing and Textiles. Volume 7 [7] 1843836254, 9781843836254

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Medieval Clothing and Textiles 7

BENJAMIN L. WILD The Empress’s New Clothes: A Rotulus Pannorum of

Isabella, Sister of King Henry III, Bride of Emperor Frederick II ISIS STURTEWAGEN Unveiling Social Fashion Patterns: A Case Study of

Frilled Veils in the Low Countries (1200 –1500) KIMBERLY JACK What Is the Pearl-Maiden Wearing, and Why? MARK CHAMBERS “Hys surcote was ouert”: The “Open Surcoat” in Late

Medieval British Texts ELEANOR QUINTON and JOHN OLDLAND London Merchants’

Cloth Exports, 1350 –1500 CHRISTINE MEEK Laboreria Sete: Design and Production of Lucchese

Silks in the Late Fourteenth and Early Fifteenth Centuries

Robin Netherton is a professional editor and a researcher/lecturer on the

interpretation of medieval European dress. Gale R. Owen-Crocker is Professor of Anglo-Saxon Culture at The University of Manchester. Cover: Detail from the tomb of Hendrik II van Withem and Jacoba van Glymen in Sint Lambertus Church in Beersel, Belgium, dated ca.1460. Photo: Isis Sturtewagen.

MEDIEVAL CLOTHING AND TEXTILES

Contents

·7·

Editors Netherton & Owen-Crocker

An imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge IP12 3BL (GB) and 668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620-2731 (US) www.boydellandbrewer.com

MEDIEVAL CLOTHING AND TEXTILES

         ·7· Edited by Robin Netherton and Gale R. Owen-Crocker



Medieval Clothing and Textiles Volume 7

Medieval Clothing and Textiles ISSN 1744-5787

General Editors Robin Netherton Gale R. Owen-Crocker

St. Louis, Missouri, USA University of Manchester, England

Editorial Board John Hines Miranda Howard John H. Munro M. A. Nordtorp-Madson Frances Pritchard Lucia Sinisi Eva Andersson Strand Monica L. Wright



Cardiff University, Wales Western Michigan University, USA University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada University of St. Thomas, Minnesota, USA Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, England University of Bari, Italy Centre for Textile Research, Copenhagen, Denmark University of Louisiana at Lafayette, USA

Medieval Clothing and Textiles Volume 7

edited by

ROBIN NETHERTON GALE R. OWEN-CROCKER

THE BOYDELL PRESS

© Contributors 2011 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. First published 2011 The Boydell Press, Woodbridge ISBN 978-1-84383-625-4

Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view these images please refer to the printed version of this book.

The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Papers used by Boydell & Brewer Ltd are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests.

Typeset by Frances Hackeson Freelance Publishing Services, Brinscall, Lancs Printed in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

Contents Illustrations

page vi



Tables

viii

Contributors



ix

Preface



xi

1  The Empress’s New Clothes: A Rotulus Pannorum of Isabella,    Sister of King Henry III, Bride of Emperor Frederick II    Benjamin L. Wild 2  Unveiling Social Fashion Patterns: A Case Study of Frilled Veils    in the Low Countries (1200–1500)    Isis Sturtewagen 3  What Is the Pearl-Maiden Wearing, and Why?    Kimberly Jack 4  “Hys surcote was ouert”: The “Open Surcoat” in Late Medieval    British Texts    Mark Chambers



1

33

65 87

5  London Merchants’ Cloth Exports, 1350–1500    Eleanor Quinton and John Oldland

111

6  Laboreria Sete: Design and Production of Lucchese Silks in the    Late Fourteenth and Early Fifteenth Centuries    Christine Meek

141

Recent Books of Interest

169

Contents of Previous Volumes



177

Illustrations The Empress’s New Clothes Fig. 1.1

Isabella’s roll of cloths, 1234–35

5

Frilled Veils Fig. 2.1 Fig. 2.2 Fig. 2.3 Fig. 2.4 Fig. 2.5 Fig. 2.6 Fig. 2.7 Fig. 2.8 Fig. 2.9 Fig. 2.10 Fig. 2.11 Fig. 2.12 Fig. 2.13 Fig. 2.14 Fig. 2.15 Fig. 2.16

Console in the Sassenpoort gateway, Zwolle, the Netherlands, ca. 1410 Principalities in the Low Countries, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries Types of frilled veils in Netherlandish art Tomb of the Lords of Amstel, IJsselstein, the Netherlands, 1340–77 Tomb of Hendrik II van Withem and Jacoba van Glymen, Beersel, Belgium, ca. 1460 Tomb of Lodewijk van Lichtervelde and Beatrijs de Tollenaere, Koolskamp, Belgium, ca. 1375–80 Hairstyles worn with frilled veils in Netherlandish art Shrine of Saint Gertrude of Nivelles, Belgium, 1290s Figure types in the collected sources Number of images per figure type dated in 25-year intervals Number of images per figure type dated in 50-year intervals Social strata within the category of contemporary figures Artistic representation within the category of contemporary figures Frills depicted on contemporary, historical/legendary, and saintly/biblical figures Hairstyles depicted on contemporary, historical/legendary, and saintly/biblical figures Embellishments depicted on contemporary, historical/legendary, and saintly/biblical figures

35 43 44 45 47 48 50 53 55 57 57 58 58 59 59 61

What Is the Pearl-Maiden Wearing? Fig. 3.1

Brass of Elizabeth, wife of Sir Reginald Cobham, ca. 1380, Lingfield, Surrey vi

66

Illustrations Fig. 3.2 Fig. 3.3 Fig. 3.4 Fig. 3.5 Fig. 3.6

Column figure, Saint-Maurice, Cathedral of Angers, France A gown with “tippet” sleeves, from a French manuscript, ca. 1395 Brass of Margarete Brocas, ca. 1390, Sherborne St. John, Hampshire Brass of Joan Kniveton, ca. 1475, Mugginton, Derbyshire The Pearl-Maiden as depicted in the Pearl manuscript

70 74 80 82 84

The “Open Surcoat” Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2 Fig. 4.3

A petition to King Edward I, ca. 1275–1300 A petition to King Edward II, ca. 1321–22 Roll of liveries, 1360–61

92 93 105

Lucchese Silks Fig. 6.1 Fig. 6.2 Fig. 6.3 Fig. 6.4 Fig. 6.5

Entries from one of the Libri de’ Sensali showing sales of silk and silk thread, Lucca, 1409 Entries from one of the Libri de’ Sensali showing sales of silk fabrics, Lucca, 1409 Italian textile fragment Fragment of silk cloth Textile design from the sketchbook of Jacopo Bellini

144 152 164 165 166

Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view these images please refer to the printed version of this book.

vii

Tables Frilled Veils Table 2.1 Visual records of frilled veils in the Low Countries, by principality, 1200–1500

52

London Merchants’ Cloth Exports Table 5.1 Table 5.2 Table 5.3 Table 5.4

Annual exports of English broadcloths of assize 1347–1510, nationally and at London Cloths exported by London denizens, 1348–1410 Cloths exported by London denizens, 1410–58 Cloths exported by London denizens, 1471–72, 1480–81, and 1502–03

viii

112 119 126 131

Contributors ROBIN NETHERTON (Editor) is a costume historian specializing in Western European clothing of the Middle Ages and its interpretation by artists and historians. Since 1982, she has given lectures and workshops on practical aspects of medieval dress and on costume as an approach to social history, art history, and literature. A journalist by training, she also works as a professional editor. GALE R. OWEN-CROCKER (Editor) is Professor of Anglo-Saxon Culture at the University of Manchester. She is Director of a five-year project funded by the United Kingdom’s Arts and Humanities Research Council on the Lexis of Cloth and Clothing in Britain ca. 700–1450 and Co-Investigator of a three-year Leverhulme-sponsored project on Medieval Dress and Textile Vocabulary in Unpublished Sources. She is also General Editor of An Encyclopaedia of Medieval Dress and Textiles of the British Isles ca. 450–1450, in progress. Recent books include Medieval Textiles of the British Isles AD 450–1100: An Annotated Bibliography (2007; with Elizabeth Coatsworth) and Dress in Anglo-Saxon England: Revised and Enlarged Edition (2004). MARK CHAMBERS is Research Associate at the University of Westminster, where he is currently working on the Medieval Dress and Textile Vocabulary in Unpublished Sources project. He has lectured on medieval English language and literature at the University of Durham and at Trinity College, Dublin. His publications have addressed late medieval dramatic allegory, costuming, and clothing terminology, and he collaborated on an article about the lexicological history of “cuff ” for vol. 4 of Medieval Clothing and Textiles. KIMBERLY JACK is an Instructor at Auburn University in Alabama, where she teaches World Literature and Composition. She earned her Ph.D. in 2008 from Loyola University in Chicago, and is now expanding her dissertation research into a book on clothing and the body in the Pearl-poet corpus. She has recently completed a two-year term as President of the Pearl-Poet Society. CHRISTINE MEEK retired in 2007 from her post as Associate Professor in the Department of History, Trinity College, Dublin. Her research focuses on the political, social, and economic history of the Tuscan commune of Lucca, on which she has written two books and numerous articles. Her article in this volume is related to a monograph she is preparing on Paolo Guinigi, ruler of Lucca from 1400 to 1430. ix

Contributors JOHN OLDLAND is Emeritus Professor of Bishop’s University, Sherbrooke, Quebec. He wrote on the finishing of English woollens for vol. 3 of Medieval Clothing and Textiles. His most recent published paper, in Economic History Review, describes how early Tudor London merchants spent their money. He is now preparing a book on the English late medieval woollen cloth industry. ELEANOR QUINTON received her doctorate from the University of London in 2001 with a dissertation on the drapers and drapery trade of late medieval London. She spent six years at the University of Nottingham as a Research Fellow at the Institute for Name Studies and a seminar tutor in history. She taught at the King’s School, Canterbury, before taking her current teaching post at Ashford School in Kent, England. ISIS STURTEWAGEN earned her master’s degree in archaeology in 2009 and is now working on a Ph.D. at the University of Antwerp, focusing on production and consumption of dress and fashion in the Low Countries in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. She collaborated on an article analyzing the linen cap attributed to St. Birgitta for vol. 4 of Medieval Clothing and Textiles. BENJAMIN L. WILD teaches medieval history at Sherborne School in Sherborne, England. He has written various articles on the court of King Henry III and is now working on a book titled King Henry III and the Communication of Power.



Preface Volume 7 of Medieval Clothing and Textiles focuses on the later medieval period—from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries—and pays special attention to the surcoat. Four of the articles illustrate the rich information on dress and textiles to be gained from non-literary texts. Benjamin Wild discusses a cloth roll recording royal purchases of cloth from 1234 to 1235 associated with the prestigious marriage of Isabella, younger sister of King Henry II of England, to Emperor Frederick II. The purchases include gifts for the Emperor, clothes to be worn by the King at Easter, the bride’s trousseau, garments to be distributed to persons in service of the bride and her husband, and vestments for her chapel. The Latin text is here edited for the first time, and is accompanied by a translation. Mark Chambers focuses on the problematic garments called surcoats, discussing the “surcot ouvert” and the “surcot clos” in the multilingual context of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Britain. He contrasts the contemporary evidence with the assumptions of modern costume historians, making new suggestions about chronology and gender distribution. Christine Meek examines the details of textile transactions documented in brokers’ books from the Italian silk center of Lucca in the early fifteenth century, comparing these records with other texts, especially the regulations for the production of silk that had been established in the previous century. The wide-ranging discussion includes sources of silk, prices of raw material such as thread and dyestuffs, the names and specifications of different silks, the destinations of finished products, and designs and designers. John Oldland and Eleanor Quinton examine customs accounts to consider England’s export trade in wool and woollen cloths in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, addressing prices, destinations of exports, the professional associations of those who shipped the cloth—which included grocers, fishmongers, and ironmongers who traded these goods for the items they wanted to import, as well as the more obvious mercers and drapers—and their interaction with the foreign traders present in England. Turning to literature, Kimberly Jack revisits a famous late-fourteenth-century Middle English poem, Pearl, to reassess the dress of the Pearl maiden. Analyzing previous interpretations of the vocabulary of the garments and discussing the terminology in detail, the article convincingly argues that the Pearl maiden wears a sideless surcoat, and that far from being a conventional costume, the maiden’s dress is exceptional, conveying visually that she is a Queen of Heaven. xi

Preface Isis Sturtewagen, discussing frilled veils, presents a new approach to the analysis of dress in art. Working from over 200 visual records and using seriation technique, the author examines the incidence of different types of frilled veils in a variety of artworks from the Low Countries, tracing the style’s popularity and social significance from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries and comparing the art with written records. The editors are, as always, appreciative of the contributions of peer reviewers. All submissions to Medieval Clothing and Textiles are peer reviewed, and interdisciplinary articles often benefit from the input of several referees, who give their time and expertise most graciously. This year has seen the publication of The Troyes Mémoire: The Making of a Medieval Tapestry, by Tina Kane. This study—a translation and analysis of a late-fifteenth-century order for a tapestry design—is the first volume in our subsidia series “Medieval and Renaissance Clothing and Textiles,” published by Boydell and Brewer under the general editorship of Robin Netherton and Gale R. Owen-Crocker. Authors interested in submitting a book proposal for this series should apply using the publication proposal form on the publisher’s Web site, http://www.boydellandbrewer.com. Potential authors of monographs or collaborative books are invited to discuss their ideas for future publications with the General Editors in advance of making a formal proposal. We continue to consider for publication in this journal all papers read at sessions sponsored by DISTAFF (Discussion, Interpretation, and Study of Textile Arts, Fabrics, and Fashion) at the international medieval studies congresses held annually in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and Leeds, England. Proposals from potential speakers should be sent to [email protected] for Kalamazoo and [email protected] for Leeds. We also welcome independent proposals for contributions to Medieval Clothing and Textiles. Potential authors should send a 300-word synopsis to Professor Gale R. Owen-Crocker, English and American Studies, The University of Manchester, M13 9PL, UK; e-mail [email protected]. For author guidelines, see http://www. distaff.org/MCTguidelines.pdf.

xii

The Empress’s New Clothes: A Rotulus Pannorum of Isabella, Sister of King Henry III, Bride of Emperor Frederick II Benjamin L. Wild A crown of the most delicate work [engraved with four English kings, martyrs and confessors, especially chosen by the king for the care of his sister’s soul,] was made from the purest gold and the finest gems, as befitted the dignity of the empress. It was said that the treasures about to be taken out of England seemed almost priceless, and not just abundant, but excessive, what with the gold collars (monilibus) with precious gems, reliquaries, ornaments (faleris) and other womanly apparel (mulebribus ornamentis), as well as an abundant treasure of gold and silver, with horses and a retinue, which seized the eyes [and souls] of onlookers with envy. [… Moreover, dressed in festive garments (festivis), some silk, others wool and diverse linens, and with the most dignified colours for the empress, who was dressed to such a degree that she shone].

Thus is Matthew Paris’s description, adapted from Roger of Wendover, of the trousseau of Isabella, a younger sister of King Henry III of England and the bride of Emperor Frederick II. The gold, silver, and clothes were carried from London to Sandwich, where Isabella, her household attendants, and various imperial representatives bade farewell to the English court on May 8, 1235. As a parting gesture, an act of characteristic benevolence and brotherly affection, Henry III distributed gifts of plate to the imperial party before their embarkation. Three days later, Isabella reached Antwerp. After processing through Cologne, and distributing many of the gifts that had been received from her brother, Isabella married Frederick II at Worms on July 15, 1235.

I am grateful to Richard Cassidy for his advice, to Frédérique Lachaud for looking over my translation, and to David Carpenter for reading a draft of this paper. Muddles and omissions that remain are my fault.    Matthew Paris, Matthaei Parisiensis, Monachi Sancti Albani, Chronica Majora, ed. Henry R. Luard, 7 vols., Rolls series 57 (London: Longman, 1872–83), 3:319–20. Paris is here adapting a text written by Roger of Wendover; text in square brackets appears only in Roger’s description. See Matthew Paris, Flores Historiarum, ed. Luard, Rolls series 95 (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1890), 3:109.   ������� Paris, Chronica Majora, 3:321.   �������������� Ibid., 321–22.    �������������� Ibid., 323–24.

Benjamin L. Wild The description of Isabella’s trousseau in the Chronica Majora is rich, but vague. Roger of Wendover may have witnessed the procession from Westminster to Sandwich, but he could not have known the quality and quantity of all the items that Isabella carried with her. Moreover, the wording of the account suggests Wendover was not primarily concerned to offer a factual rendition, rather a commentary on the “conspicuous consumption” that affronted his sense of Christian sobriety. It is serendipitous and a mark of England’s administrative precocity that Isabella’s trousseau can be reconstructed, probably in its entirety, from three documents of King Henry III’s wardrobe: a wardrobe account enrolled on the exchequer pipe roll covering the period between May 17, 1234, and May 3, 1235; an inventory of royal gifts covering a seven-month period between November 11, 1234, and June 26, 1235; and a roll recording the acquisition and distribution of cloths from Henry III’s nineteenth regnal year, October 28, 1234, to October 27, 1235. Describing various garments that were made for Isabella to take “across the sea” for herself, her new imperial household, and various individuals affiliated with the court of Frederick II, the roll of cloths also mentions a suit of clothes that were to be made for Henry III to wear at Easter 1235. The roll is the earliest surviving document to record the wedding paraphernalia of an English royal bride. Its piece-by-piece description of an English king’s raiment is also a first. The fact that Isabella was betrothed to the emperor makes the roll all the more significant because it sheds new light on the people and process through which this important union was achieved. The roll does not record the cost of any items, but it is useful for showing how clothing and textiles occupied a central place in medieval politics and society, because of their ability to establish and define relationships. For all of these reasons the roll of cloths forms the focus of this article. A transcription of the roll and an annotated translation appear as Appendix 1.1. The utility and historical value of the roll of cloths cannot be appreciated until the political narrative has been sketched. English and German historians have studied   �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� London, National Archives, E 372/79, rot. 11d. and 5d. All documentary references refer to the National Archives unless stated otherwise. I am currently editing the wardrobe accounts of Henry III and Edward I for the Pipe Roll Society.   �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� C 47/3/4/1. For a discussion and partial transcription of this document, see Benjamin L. Wild, “A Gift Inventory from the Reign of Henry III,” English Historical Review 125, no. 514 (2010): 529–69. See also Nicholas Vincent, The Holy Blood: King Henry III and the Westminster Blood Relic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 23; Vincent, “The Pilgrimages of the Angevin Kings of England, 1154–1272,” in Pilgrimage: The English Experience from Becket to Bunyan, ed. Colin Morris and Peter Roberts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 35–36.   ��������� C 47/3/3.   ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ There are brief descriptions of some of King John’s “robae” in his misae rolls. Thomas D. Hardy, ed., Rotuli de Liberate ac de Misis et Praestitis, regnante Johanne (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1844), 150–51, 170–71; Henry Cole, ed., Documents Illustrative of English History in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1844), 235, 245, 257, 258, 267. Occasional references to the garments worn by John’s predecessors appear in the pipe rolls.   ����������������������������������������������������� Christian de Mérindol, “Signes de hiérarchie sociale à�� ������������������������������������������� la fin du Moyen Age d’après le vêtement méthodes et recherches,” in Le Vêtement: Histoire, archéologie et symbolique vestimentaires au Moyen Age, ed. Michel Pastoureau (Paris: Léopard d’Or, 1989), 181–222.



The Empress’s New Clothes the Anglo-imperial marriage at great length, and what follows is but a summary.10 The wedding of Isabella and Frederick II was the culmination of a ten-year diplomatic effort by the English court to neutralise the military and political resurgence of Capetian France and find new (anti-Capetian) allies. On July 27, 1214, the spectacular victory of Philip (II) Augustus of France at Bouvines transformed the balance of power in Europe. Defeat for England’s King John and his nephew, Emperor Otto IV, proved ruinous. The territorial extent of John’s continental dominion was reduced to Gascony. England’s network of alliances was wrecked. In a little under a year, John would be accepting concessions at Runnymede. Losing English pecuniary assistance, Otto IV was unable to check the advances of rival imperial candidate, King Frederick of Sicily, who was supported by Philip Augustus, endorsed by Pope Honorius III, and crowned at Aachen on July 25, 1215, as Frederick II. The Treaty of Catania (1223) confirmed England’s estrangement from Europe and set the tenor of diplomatic relations among a new generation of rulers. Frederick II assured Louis IX of France that he would never enter into an alliance with England’s Henry III, or his heirs. Furthermore, he would prevent any of his subjects from doing likewise. The volte-face that paved the way for Frederick II’s marriage to Isabella of England in 1235 is attributable in large part to the archbishops of Cologne, particularly Engelbert I of Berg (d. 1225) and Henry I of Mühlenark (d. 1237). Imperial regent north of the Alps, the Cologne archbishop had sufficient influence with Frederick II to protect and forward his city’s interests. At the beginning of the thirteenth century this meant maintaining commercial links with England and preventing the Capetian sphere of influence from spreading farther east.11 The collapse of French-imperial marriage negotiations in November 1224 owed much to the refusal of Archbishop Engelbert.12 Unwilling to sanction a French marriage alliance, the Cologne archbishop was positively inclined toward an English alliance. So, it appears, was Pope Gregory IX, who wanted to refocus the attention of Europe’s princes on the Holy Land. Moreover, since King John had made England a papal fief in 1213, the prospect of an Anglo-imperial alliance had the potential to increase Gregory’s influence in imperial affairs—a necessary precaution as Frederick had been excommunicated in 1227.13 The marriage of Frederick II and Isabella was announced on November 15, 1234, following eight months of negotiations between English and imperial representatives at Henry III’s court.14 Confirmation of the union was welcome news in England, as various attempts to find a suitable bride for Henry III in Austria, Bohemia, and Brittany, and thereby end England’s diplomatic isolation, had come to nothing. An attempt 10 ������������������� Joseph P. Huffman, The Social Politics of Medieval Diplomacy: Anglo-German Relations (1066–1307) (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 223–76; Björn K. U. Weiler, Henry III of England and the Staufen Empire, 1216–1272 (London: The Royal Historical Society, 2006), 45–85. 11 ��������� Huffman, Social Politics, 223–24, 228. 12 ����������� Ibid., 230. 13 �������� Weiler, Staufen Empire, 64–66. 14 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ Ibid., 60–1. Henry III had issued an ancipatory statement in February. Thomas Rymer, ed., Foedera, conventiones, litterae, et cujuscunque generis acta publica, new edition, vol. 1, part 1, ed. Adam Clark and Fred Holbrooke (London: Record Comm., 1816), 221.



Benjamin L. Wild to marry Isabella to Frederick II’s son, King Henry (VII), had also been rebuffed due to the then hostile political climate. Frederick II’s chief counsellor, Peter de Vinea, arrived in England in December to finalise arrangements, in particular, details of Isabella’s 30,000-mark (£20,000) dowry.15 Peter was followed by the duke of Brabant and the archbishop of Cologne, who were to escort Isabella to Germany.16 Isabella’s dowry, which was nearly equivalent to the Crown’s annual cash income, proved to be an enormous drain on England’s financial resources, but it underlined the importance of the union in Henry III’s scheme to regain his Angevin inheritance.17 With good reason did Matthew Paris refer to the twenty-one-year-old empress as the “glory and hope of England.”18 Henry III’s diplomatic success came at a time of increasing domestic stability. Henry had been a minor when his father, King John, died in October 1216. He assumed full power in January 1227, nine months before his twenty-first birthday, but it was not till the summer of 1234, in his twenty-eighth year, that Henry ruled without the great men inherited from his father at his side. Prior to this, the governance of the realm had been dominated by two long-serving and bitterly opposed ministers, the Justiciar, Hubert de Burgh, and Henry’s old guardian, the bishop of Winchester, Peter des Roches.19 The fall of these men—de Burgh in 1232,20 des Roches in 123421—­enabled Henry to overcome the fissures and frustrations that had increasingly beset his ambitions: Hubert’s failure to provide sufficient financial support for the king’s first military expedition to Poitou in 1230, and his perceived obstinacy regarding the king’s marriage; Peter’s divisive actions that provoked civil war in 1233, followed by the suspicious death of the earl of Pembroke, Richard Marshal, in 1234.22 The removal of de Burgh and des Roches also meant Henry could put his own stamp on the royal court. A unique roll of gifts that records the donors and recipients of plate and jewellery at the English court from November 1234 to June 1235 shows how Henry bolstered his authority through displays of largesse.23 The surviving roll of cloths shows how Henry, taking advantage of the imperial wedding, used clothing and textiles to demonstrate his political ascendancy in a different, but no less significant, form.

15 ���������������������������������������������������� Ernst H. Kantorowicz, “Petrus de Vinea in England,” Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung 51 (1937), 43–81. 16 ���������������������� Pierre Chaplais, ed., Treaty Rolls 1: 1234–1325 (London: HSMO, 1955), nos. 19, 20. 17 ������������������ Robert C. Stacey, Politics, Policy and Finance under Henry III, 1216–1245 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987), 93–131. 18 ������� Paris, Chronica Majora, 4:175–76. 19 ������������������ Nicholas Vincent, Peter des Roches: An Alien in English Politics, 1205–1238 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 455–65. 20 ��������������������������������������������������� David A. Carpenter, “The Fall of Hubert de Burgh,” Journal of British Studies 19 (1980), 1–17, reprinted in Carpenter, The Reign of Henry III (London: Hambledon, 1996), 45–60. 21 ��������� Vincent, Peter des Roches, 429–40. 22 ���������������������������������������������������������������������� For the most recent study of the Marshal rebellion, see Björn Weiler, Kingship, Rebellion and Political Culture: England and Germany, c. 1215–c. 1250 (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 11–21. 23 ����������� See note 6.



he Empress’s New Clothes

Fig. .: he face of Isabella’s roll of cloths. Photo: London, The National Archives, ref. C 7�3�3, by permission.

5

Benjamin L. Wild The circumstances surrounding Isabella’s marriage to Frederick II now explained, we can examine the roll of cloths in detail. Kept at the National Archives, Kew, ­London, and filed under Chancery Miscellanea C 47/3/3, the roll (fig. 1.1) consists of a single parchment membrane measuring 237 by 637 millimeters (9.3 by 25 inches). The membrane is square and cleanly cut, but has suffered damage. The right-hand margin is torn in three places, although no text is lost. The surface of the membrane is littered with ten small holes, which do obfuscate the text, quite extensively in some places. Another hole, framed by text, must have been an original defect in the parchment. Four roughly parallel lines divide the membrane vertically. The lines appear to have been scored as they show through on the dorse. The first line, drawn 40 millimeters (1.6 inches) from the left-hand edge of the membrane, serves as margin. The remaining lines, drawn at 124 millimeters, 138 millimeters, and 203 millimeters (4.9, 5.4, and 8 inches) from the left-hand edge serve no apparent function and are written over. This may indicate the membrane was originally prepared to record information of an entirely different nature.24 The text of the roll, a small and heavily abbreviated Latin cursive, appears to be the work of at least five scribes, which suggests the roll was compiled in stages. Continued usage over a prolonged period of time is also implied by numerous erasures and additions in different shades of ink. The text is arranged in fourteen paragraphs, which are separated by blank lines. The second paragraph has an indented subheading [entry 8].25 Eight marginal annotations clarify the content of other paragraphs [2, 14, 15, 16, 31, 37, 40, 92]. The text occupies 109 lines and fills almost the entire face of the membrane [1–115]. A new line is typically started for each new item, or type, of clothing, although some information is recorded by means of two parallel columns [39, 40, 88–94, 100–102]. A protective and reinforcing sheet has been pasted to the dorse of the membrane. This act of surgery may have been necessary, but it was performed by a butcher. The sheet has been cut very crudely so as not to conceal two headings [116, 117] and two short paragraphs [118–133], apparently the only text on the dorse. The writing is contemporaneous with that on the face, except for one of the headings, which is written in a larger and more elaborate script [117]. In total, the roll has 133 entries, mentions seventy-three different people (sixty-eight men, five women)26 and records at least 122 items of clothing. The majority of garments, forty-five, were made for Isabella. It must, of course, be remembered that in medieval accounts the ubiquitous “robe” (roba) refers to a set of matching garments, rarely a specific item of costume.27 24 ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� The pattern of ruling resembles that of another document from Henry III’s wardrobe, C 47/3/43, piece 3, which records the distribution of liveries. 25 �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Square brackets indicate line numbers of the transcription and translation of the roll, as presented in Appendix 1.1. 26 ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� The women are Isabella, Henry III’s sister; Benvenue, the wife of Robert de Bruera [59, 61–68]; the wife of Gilbert de Rue [91]; Margaret Bisset [92, 93], and what I take to be a female name, Ysend’ [94]. 27 ������������������������������������������������������������������ Frédérique Lachaud, “Liveries of Robes in England, c. 1200–1330,” English Historical Review 111 (1996), 279.



The Empress’s New Clothes The grounds for referring to the document as a roll of cloths are provided by the following title, written on the face of the membrane at the very top: Roll of cloths sent to the lord emperor and of the beds and robes made for the use of Isabella, sister of the lord king and her familia. Item roll of robes made for the use of the lord king. [1]

Another contemporary heading, written on the dorse, provides the date: Roll of robes […] regnal year nineteen (i.e., October 28, 1234, to October 27, 1235). [116]

There were two reasons for creating such a roll. The heading on the face of the membrane reveals the primary purpose. Referring to cloths that have been sent (missorum) to the emperor, and robes that have been made for Isabella (robarum factarum ad opus Ysabelle) and the king (robarum factarum ad opus domini Regis), the heading suggests the roll was intended to document the output of the tailors attached to Henry III’s wardrobe. The roll contains only one explicit reference to the royal wardrobe [118], but it is clear from content that this is where it originated. For example, a reference on the roll to fourteen ells of russet “by the gift of Sempringham” [4], which were sent to the emperor, corresponds to an entry in the wardrobe account of Walter of Kirkham, covering the period between May 17, 1234, and May 3, 1236.28 Enrolled on the exchequer pipe roll, the entry is as follows: The same (i.e. Walter of Kirkham) renders account for fourteen ells of russet of Sempringham that were sent to the emperor. And he (i.e. Kirkham) is quit.29

Corresponding entries like this between the roll of cloths and wardrobe account reveal the roll’s second purpose. The wardrobe may have functioned as the king’s privy purse, but its keeper (custos) was still expected to submit accounts to the exchequer. The idea that the wardrobe’s keeper should account regularly at the exchequer as an incumbent part of his duty originated during a period of financial reform in the mid-1230s.30 The exchequer audit of the wardrobe keeper’s account had three main

28 Russet was a woollen cloth. The English royal wardrobe accounts indicate russet could fetch high prices. Another russet cloth was the russetus grossus Anglie, which Frédérique Lachaud suggests was “dyed very cheaply with local vegetable dyes.” Lachaud, “Textiles, Furs and Liveries: A Study of the Material Culture of the Court of Edward I (1272–1307)” (doctoral thesis, University of Oxford, 1992), 354. Some scholars suggest the term russet was also used to mean undyed cloth of wool from a black sheep; Frances Elizabeth Baldwin, Sumptuary Legislation and Personal Regulation in England (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1926), 50 n. 124. 29 ��������������������������� E 372/79, rot. 5d., mem. 1. 30 ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� The wardrobe account of Walter of Kirkham, which covers the period between May 17, 1234, and May 3, 1236, was not the first of Henry III’s reign, but the second. Henry III’s first wardrobe account covers the period between January 5, 1224 and April 27, 1227. Frederick A. Cazel Jr., ed., Roll of Divers Accounts for the Early Years of the Reign of Henry III, Pipe Roll Society, n.s. 44 (London: J. W. Ruddock, 1982), 50–54. The audit of this account was probably an expedient, conceived to help the auditors of the Fifteenth, a tax on movables that was levied to recapture Poitou in 1225. It was not till



Benjamin L. Wild objectives: firstly, to check how the keeper had spent the wardrobe’s cash receipts; secondly, to guard against peculation; and thirdly, to inventory the precious items over which the keeper had custody, that is, the jewels, plate, and, before the institution of the Great Wardrobe in the second half of the thirteenth century, textiles.31 In order to prove how he had spent the wardrobe’s cash receipts and to establish the quantity and quality of items in his custody, the keeper submitted a series of rolls, known as rolls of particulars (rotuli de particulis), for the exchequer barons to examine. After the audit concluded, exchequer scribes used the rolls of particulars as exemplars when enrolling the wardrobe account onto the current year’s pipe roll. The following note, taken from Walter of Kirkham’s account, makes this clear: And for the robes of the king … and Isabella sister of the king and knights and other ladies (domicillarum) crossing with her (cum ea transfretantium) with 100 ells given to the senescal of Gascony and 40 ells sent to the emperor, as contained in the rolls of particulars for regnal year nineteen, 461 ells (sicut continetur in rotulis de particulis de anno xix cccc et lxi ulnas).32

It is almost certain that the roll of cloths which survives from Henry III’s nineteenth regnal year is a rotulus de particulis, and that it is one of the rolls being referred to in the above extract. The structure of the roll is particularly well suited to audit: entries on the face describe the quantity and type of cloth that had been used, entries on the dorse indicate what remained. The fact that the roll of cloths is today filed among Chancery Miscellanea (C 47) at the National Archives, rather than Exchequer Accounts (E 101), suggests it was returned to the wardrobe after the audit. Later in Henry III’s reign, all wardrobe rolls were retained by the exchequer. Presumably because the system of auditing the wardrobe’s accounts was still in its infancy, procedures had yet to be regularised.33 The entries on the roll of cloths can be grouped into six sections, as follows: 1  Entries 2–7: Six cloths sent to Frederick II. 2  Entries 8–15: Robes to be made for Henry III for Easter 1235 (April 8). 3  Entries 16–46: Garments and soft furnishings for Isabella to take “across the sea.” 4  Entries 47–113: Garments to be distributed to various individuals in the service of the emperor or Isabella: 47, 88–91, 103–107: imperial officials. 1236 that audits of the wardrobe were regularly convened at the exchequer. For a fuller discussion, see Benjamin L. Wild, “The Wardrobe Accounts of King Henry III of England, 1216–1272” (Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 2008), 20–21, 101–7, 117–25. For the financial reforms of the mid1230s, see Stacey, Politics, Policy and Finance, 83–92. For the Fifteenth, see Cazel, “The Fifteenth of 1225,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 34 (1961), 67–81. 31 ������������������������������������������������������������� For the evolution of the Great Wardrobe, see Thomas F. Tout, Chapters in the Administrative History of Mediaeval England: The Wardrobe, The Chamber and the Small Seals, vol. 4 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1928), 349–76; Wild, “Wardrobe Accounts,” 166–68, 220–22, 297–99. 32 ��������������������������� E 372/79, rot. 5d., mem. 1. 33 ��������������������������������� Wild, “Wardrobe Accounts,” 53–55.



The Empress’s New Clothes 48–54: royal household knights. 55–87, 92–99: members of Isabella’s familia. 108–113: John of Saxony and his men. 5  Entries 114–115: Vestments for Isabella’s chapel. 6  Entries 118–133 (dorse): Summary of cloths used by Henry III’s wardrobe. The six cloths sent to the emperor varied in colour and cost [2–7]. Whilst the roll of cloths does not record the value of textiles, the purchase of similar items, which are documented on the pipe rolls and wardrobe accounts from the same period, provide a tolerably accurate guide to the price of fabric and furs. It appears that the most expensive textile given to the emperor was the paonaz from Provence [2]. Paonaz was a woollen cloth of blue-green colour, its name deriving from the Latin word for peacock (pavo), a bird with blue-green plumage.34 The paonaz given to Frederick II was dyed with kermes (in grana), to make the colour deep and fast.35 According to the pipe roll of 1223, the paonaz was sold at 6s. 4d. per ell.36 The dimensions of the paonaz given to the emperor are not explicitly recorded on the roll of cloths although it is certain the marginal heading “panni integri” would have meant something specific to Henry III’s haberdashers [2]. Trying to understand the dimensions in which medieval cloth was sold is a difficult, often impossible, business. Henry II appears to have been the first English monarch to regulate the size of salable cloth, in 1197.37 According to Roger of Howden, the width of cloth was not to exceed two ells between its borders (infra lisuras).38 An ell (ulna) measured 1.25 yards (45 inches). The length of cloth was limited only in that it should be of good size (ejusdem bonitatis in medio et in lateribus). Henry II’s injunction was repeated in 1215, in the thirty-fifth clause of Magna Carta, but only in part.39 Magna Carta specified the width of salable cloth, which was to apply to dyed cloth, russet, and haberget (a woven cloth with diamond twill),40 but it said nothing about length. As far as I can tell, the length of salable cloth was defined only at the end of Henry III’s reign. An assize of 1272 stipulated that a cloth (pannus) should be twenty-four ells long and two ells wide (27.4 by 2.3 meters, or 30 by 2.5 yards).41

34 ������������������������������������������������������� Frédérique Lachaud, “Textiles, Furs and Liveries,” 351. 35 �������������������� Kenneth G. Ponting, A Dictionary of Dyes and Dyeing (London: Bell & Hyman, 1981), 118–20. 36 ����������������������������������������������������������������� “Et pro vij ulnis de poenacio ad robam faciendam ad opus eiusdem ������������������������������������ Ysabelle xv s. et ij d.” Adrian Jobson and Cecil F. Slade, eds., The Great Roll of the Pipe for the Seventh Year of the Reign of King Henry III, Pipe Roll Society, n.s. 56 (Loughborough: Quorn Digital Litho, 2008), 127–28. 37 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ Lachaud, “Textiles, Furs and Liveries,” 82–86. The following discussion owes much to Frédérique Lachaud’s research. 38 ��������������������� William Stubbs, ed., Chronica Magistri Rogeri de Houedene (London: Longman, 1871), iv. 39 ������������ James Holt, Magna Carta, 2nd. ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 460–61. 40 ������������������������������������������������� Margareta Nockert, “A Scandinavian Haberget,” in Cloth and Clothing in Medieval Europe: Essays in Memory of Professor E. M. Carus-Wilson, ed. Negley B. Harte and Kenneth G. Ponting (London: Heinemann Educational, 1983), 100–7. 41 ������������������������������������������������ Henry G. Richardson and George O. Sayles, eds., Fleta (London: Selden Society, 1953), 2:120.



Benjamin L. Wild Returning to Frederick II’s gifts, the scarlet42 appears to have been the next most expensive cloth, costing 6s. 3d. per ell in 1235 [3].43 The green cloth from Cambrai cost 6s. per ell, although again, the precise dimensions of the piece given to Frederick are not recorded [6].44 The woollen cloth of camelin, also from Cambrai, would have been brown, grey, or white and reasonably expensive [5].45 The cost of the blue cloth (bludum) from Provins would have depended on its dye. If the dye came from indigo, which was imported from India, the cloth would have been considerably more expensive than if the dye had been extracted from the woad plant [7].46 The russet from Sempringham was probably the cheapest of the cloths given to Frederick II [4]. It was almost certainly the russettus Anglie, which was cheaply dyed, rather than one of the more expensive variants.47 The pipe roll of 1224 suggests russet of this sort fetched 1s. 6d. per ell.48 The quantity of colours, range of textures, and volume of all these cloths would have made this a particularly arresting gift to Frederick II, especially if presented in public. In contrast to these multicoloured textiles, the cloths used to make Isabella’s garments were chosen from a limited palette of red (scarletta), blue (bludum), dark blue (burnettus),49 green (viridus), and dark brown (moretus). The cloths were set against contrasting colours of fur. For example, two sets of garments (ad duas robas) in a green cloth were trimmed with nine panes (penule) of bis (bissa), the spring fur of the northern squirrel, which was grey with red stripes [28]. A pane typically consisted of three or four tiers, a tier being a number of animal skins sewn together in a row.50 According to the pipe roll for Henry III’s regnal year fourteen (1229–30), a pane of bis cost 18s.51 Another set of clothes, made in blue cloth, was trimmed with four and a 42 �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Scarlet was a fine woollen broadcloth dyed with kermes. The cloth was often, but not always, red. John H. Munro, “The Medieval Scarlet and the Economics of Sartorial Splendour,” in Harte and Ponting, Cloth and Clothing in Medieval Europe, 13–70. 43 ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� “Et pro ccccl ulnis de scarlatta c et xvj li. x s. vj d. et ob.” E 372/79, rot. 11d., mem. 1. In 1223, scarlet had cost 5s. 6d. per ell. “Et pro ijbus ulnis et iijbus quateriis de scarletta emptis ad opus regis ad j supertunicam faciendam xv s. et x d.” Jobson and Slade, Roll of the Pipe … Seventh Year, 127. In January 1256, royal buyers paid £66 16s. 8d. for eight scarlets, thus making one scarlet worth £8 7s. 1d. Calendar of the Liberate Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, 6 vols. (London: HMSO, 1916–), vol. 4, 1251–1260, 113. 44 �������������������������������������������� “Et pro vij ulnis de viridi ad opus eiusdem ���������������������������������������������� Ysabelle xvj s. et iiij d,” Jobson and Slade, Roll of the Pipe … Seventh Year, 128; “Et pro m et c et xlvij ulnis de viridi … c et xxviij li. iij s. x d. ob.” E 372/79, rot. 11d., mem. 1. 45 �������������������������������������������� Lachaud, “Textiles, Furs and Liveries,” 338. 46 �������������������������������������� Françoise Piponnier and Perrine Mane, Dress in the Middle Ages, trans. Caroline Beamish (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 16. 47 �������������������������������������������� Lachaud, “Textiles, Furs and Liveries,” 354. 48 ��������������������������������������������������������������������������� “Et pro vj ulnis de russeto ad opus Albrici nuncii ix s.” Emilie Amt, ed., The Great Roll of the Pipe for the Eighth Year of the Reign of Henry III, Pipe Roll Society, n.s. 54 (Loughborough: Quorn Litho, 2005), 123. 49 �������������������������������������������� Lachaud, “Textiles, Furs and Liveries,” 337. 50 ������������������ Elspeth M. Veale, The English Fur Trade in the Later Middle Ages, 2nd. ed. (London: London Record Society, 2003), 28–29, 221, 223; Lachaud, “Textiles, Furs and Liveries,” 28–31. 51 ������������������������ Chalfont Robinson, ed., The Great Roll of the Pipe for the Fourteenth Year of the Reign of King Henry III, Pipe Roll Society, n.s. 4 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1927), 201.

10

The Empress’s New Clothes half panes of vair (de vario), the pure white winter fur of the northern squirrel [29]. A similar but altogether more striking effect would have been achieved with the ­matching tunic and surcoat made from burnet and trimmed with one and a half panes of bis [32]. Burnet was an expensive woollen cloth. The pipe roll for Henry III’s fourteenth regnal year records the price of black burnet at £2 3s. per ell.52 The burnet supplied for Isabella’s garments is not described as black (nigra). The cloth was probably dark blue and, perhaps, slightly cheaper. Many of Isabella’s clothes were made from scarlet. The empress had two dressing gowns (chupas) of scarlet [25]. One of the gowns was lined with cendal, an inexpensive but brightly coloured silk resembling taffeta; the other was trimmed with bis. This same combination was used for three of Isabella’s coverlets [17]. The most expensive and visually impressive of Isabella’s clothes would have been the three sets of matching garments of cloth of gold in serico, that is, cloth woven from silk threads wrapped with fine strands of gold. In August 1240, purveyors for King Henry III had paid £6 14s. for four pieces of cloth of gold, suggesting a single piece of the cloth cost £1 13s. 6d.53 A surcoat, pallium, and three tunics were made of the same material [16]. Some of the clothes were trimmed with vair; others appear to have been lined with cendal. Those that made use of arest, another type of cloth of gold with a distinctive ribbed weave,54 would have been particularly striking. According to the king’s wardrobe accounts, one cloth (pannus) of arest cost 10s. 9d. in 1237.55 The clothes of cloth of gold would have been worn on specific occasions, perhaps the wedding day itself. It may not be a coincidence that these particular garments resemble those that were supplied for Isabella’s chapel (capellam ipsius), namely, a choir cape (capa de choro), chasuble, tunic, and dalmatic, all fashioned in Spanish cloth of gold [114]. Another cope, chasuble, tunic, and dalmatic were of arest. Two albs, two amices, and two surplices (superpellici) appear to have been made of the same material. The chapel was to be decorated with a gold cloth, perhaps from Genoa (pannus de janua ad aurum), which was hung before the altar. All of these items were acquired for William the chaplain and his clerk, Jacob of Dover, by the king’s household knight, Robert de Mucegros.56 Several of Isabella’s garments would have had similarly specific usages. Two aketons, short padded garments, would have probably been worn whilst riding [33]. They are mentioned next to saddlecloths (sambuas) of scarlet [35], burnet [36], and paonaz [37]; hose of burnet [38]; and a rain cloak [34]. The purchase by Henry III’s wardrobe of forty-four horses for Isabella, at a cost of £147 12s. 4d., would have made suitable riding equipment essential.57

52 ������������� Ibid., 20–21. 53 Calendar of the Liberate Rolls, vol. 1, 1226–1240, 488. 54 �������������������������������������������� Lachaud, “Textiles, Furs and Liveries,” 335. 55 ������������������������������������������������������������������������ “Et pro xij pannis de aresta vj li. et ix s.” E 372/81, rot. 13, mem. 2. 56 Close Rolls of the Reign of Henry III (London: HMSO, 1902-), vol. 3, 1234–1237, 73. 57 ���������������������������� E 372/79, rot. 11d., mem. 2.

11

Benjamin L. Wild The dark hues of Isabella’s wardrobe were mirrored in the clothes and textiles that were distributed to her household. The colour of garments appears to have been chosen to distinguish clerks (clerici) from servants (servientes). The chief clerks in Isabella’s household, her chaplain, William [55], her physician, Master Gilbert [57], and four chamberlains [60], received robes of burnet. A clerk’s particular status could be distinguished by subtle adjustments in the quantity of cloth and quality of fur he received. For example, where William the chaplain received a matching set of garments from twelve ells of burnet, Master Gilbert received a set of robes from eleven and a half ells of burnet. In this particular case, a difference of half an ell could be due to the wearers’ size rather than their status. However, the different quantities and grade of fur that each man received was almost certainly due to their status. Both men had garments trimmed with bis, but where William also received lamb’s fur, Gilbert had fur of the Italian squirrel instead. Presumably the Italian squirrel fur (scurella), which is ubiquitous in the accounts of Henry III’s wardrobe, was cheaper than that of the lamb, if only marginally. Margaret Biset, who appears to have been one of the more important ladies in Isabella’s household, as she alone is mentioned in the king’s wardrobe accounts, received robes of russet as well as surcoat, pallium, and cape [92].58 Her garments were probably trimmed with lamb’s fur, although damage to the roll makes this uncertain. Margaret’s clerk certainly received lamb’s fur, so it is unlikely she would have been given less [93]. The fifteen servants in Isabella’s household [73–87], which included her two cooks [74, 85], marshal [81], tailor [78], and goldsmith [87], appear to have received robes of blue cloth furred with lamb, although this is not entirely clear. The servants certainly received the same provision, and so all looked alike, but the material of their robes, which is not explicitly recorded, has to be inferred from preceding entries referring to Isabella’s washerwoman (lotricix). The laundress received a set of robes made from ten ells of an unspecified cloth trimmed with lamb’s fur [70]. She also received a cloak [71] and saddlecloth [72] of blue cloth (bludum) of Beverley. It is interesting that the colours used to distinguish Isabella’s household attendants—burnet and russet for clerks and blue for servants—matched the liveries of her brother’s household. A unique roll of liveries survives from Henry III’s wardrobe.59 Arranged in two columns, one headed clerici, the other servientes, the roll records the clothing allowance for 169 people serving in the royal household. Though without a main heading and date, the roll must have been drawn up during Walter of Kirkham’s term as wardrobe keeper, that is, between May 17, 1234, and October 27, 1236. After the bishop of ­Lincoln, Jocelin of Wells, and two almoners, Kirkham receives the highest allocation of cloth. He is followed by William of Haverhull, who was to vouch for the accuracy of both of Kirkham’s accounts at his exchequer audit.60 The roll shows that clerks within Henry’s 58 ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� E 372/79. rot. 11d., mem. 1. Margaret was to become a long-serving member of Queen Eleanor of Provence’s household after her marriage to Henry III in January 1236. Margaret Howell, Eleanor of Provence: Queenship in Thirteenth-Century England (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), 22–23. 59 ������������������� C 47/3/43, piece 3. 60 ��������������������������������������������������������� E 372/79, rot. 11d., mem. 1.; E 372/80, rot. 2d., mem. 1.

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The Empress’s New Clothes household received robes of burnet or camelin. Servants received robes of blue or green cloth. A small number of servants appear to have received mi-parti robes (partita), that is, robes of two colours divided vertically. Few received robes trimmed with fur. The allocation of liveries described on this roll is similar to that of Christmas 1221.61 It is not surprising that the dress of Isabella’s household resembled that of Henry III’s considering it was he who paid for it. However, there was one significant difference. Like-for-like comparison between Henry III’s roll of liveries and Isabella’s roll of cloths reveals that those serving in the empress’s household received a greater allocation and quality of cloth. William the king’s chaplain received eight ells of burnet, one cendal, and no fur. We have already seen that Isabella’s chaplain received twelve ells of burnet and furs of lamb and squirrel. William the king’s tailor received a robe of blue cloth (bludum) and one cendal. His opposite number in Isabella’s household probably received a robe of blue cloth trimmed with lamb’s fur. The clothes of blue cloth trimmed with lamb’s fur that were given to Isabella’s laundress stand in stark contrast to the clothes of green cloth, without fur, that were given to Henry’s. Whilst based on the sartorial fashion of the English royal household, the garments of Isabella’s attendants were made of higher-grade textiles. Not only did this befit their status as members of the empress’s familia, that is, the personal attendants of her household, it demonstrated Henry III’s largesse. Perhaps deliberately, Henry’s extravagant provision gave an exaggerated impression of the wealth of the English court. Moreover, the use of colour to define ranks in Henry and Isabella’s households challenges the idea that this was a later medieval phenomenon.62 The pipe rolls provide conclusive evidence that King Henry III consistently clothed his messengers in blue cloth.63 Russet appears to have been used to distinguish messengers of a higher status. Royal writs refer to garments “as for one of the king’s other messengers,” implying, as Mary Hill points out, that “everyone knew pretty well what kind of clothing a messenger ought to wear.”64 Throughout Henry III’s reign there are scattered references to royal emblems being sewn onto clothing.65 The argument that liveries made use of specific colours to define internal hierarchies and portray a lord’s strength to individuals outside his household only from the fourteenth century is connected, at least in England, to the idea that the administrative

61 ������������������ David Crook, ed., The Great Roll of the Pipe for the Fifth Year of the Reign of King Henry III, Pipe Roll Society, n.s. 48 (London: J. W. Ruddock, 1990), 99. Though providing less detail, the royal wardrobe accounts show that Henry III’s liveries consistently comprised cloths of blue, brown, and green. E 372/81, rot. 1, mem. 2; E 372/83, rot. 7, mem. 1 and 2. 62 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ For an analysis of liveries in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, see Françoise Piponnier, Costume et vie sociale: La cour d’Anjou XIVe-XVe siècle (Paris: Mouton, 1970), 195–230. 63 ������� Crook, Roll of the Pipe … Fifth Year, 201; Jobson and Slade, Roll of the Pipe … Seventh Year, 129; Amt, Roll of the Pipe … Eighth Year, 21. 64 �������������� Mary C. Hill, The King’s Messengers 1199–1377: A Contribution to the History of the Royal Household (London: Edward Arnold, 1961), 29; Close Rolls, vol. 7, 1251–1253, 346. 65 ������ Hill, King’s Messengers, 28; Jobson and Slade, Roll of the Pipe … Seventh Year, 127; Calendar of the Liberate Rolls, 4:113.

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Benjamin L. Wild developments of this period were a prelude to l’époque moderne.66 However, in light of recent research, the foundations for this argument are now rather weak.67 Whilst there was certainly a greater sophistication and ability in the use of colours and clothes to exalt a lord’s authority from the fourteenth century, and certainly a lot more record evidence to show it, Henry III does appear to have been using clothes in a similar fashion during the first half of the thirteenth century.68 The distribution of garments to imperial representatives and servants within Frederick II’s household also relied on colour to define status. The five grooms (garciones) of the empress [96–99], who included two messengers (nuncii) and three grooms of the pack horses (sometarii), appear to have received identical clothes, although damage to the roll prevents us from knowing the grade and colour of fabric. They may have received robes of burnet, matching those given to the three grooms (garciones) who served Peter de Vinea, Frederick II’s chief counsellor. Admittedly, this point is difficult to establish, because the Latin in the roll is abbreviated to “de burr” [106]. It is possible, though I think unlikely, that the cloth referred to here is burrell.69 Burrell was a coarse, and relatively cheap, woollen cloth. In 1239, buyers for Henry III bought burrell at 7½d.70 I doubt, however, that the grooms and messengers serving Isabella, and possibly also those serving Peter de Vinea, would have received a lesser provision than their opposite numbers in the household of the duke of Brabant, who received garments of green cloth [104]. The duke had long been a contact of the English and played a significant role in the anti-Staufen alliances of King John,71 but his status was not equivalent to the empress, and so it is difficult to accept that his servants would have been thought eligible for more costly textiles. The seven jesters (ystriones) of the duke and the archbishop of Cologne also received robes of green [103]. Moreover, if

66 ������������������������������������������������������������� Frédérique Lachaud, “Les livrées de textiles et de fourrures ��à ������������������������������������� la fin du Moyen Age: l’exemple de la cour du roi Édouard 1er Plantagenet (1272–1307),” in Pastoureau, Le vêtement, 169. 67 ����������������������������������������������������������� Michael C. Prestwich, “Exchequer and Wardrobe in the Later �������������������� Years of Edward I,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 46 (1973): 1–10; John R. Maddicott, “Edward I and the Lessons of Baronial Reform: Local Government 1258–1280,” in Thirteenth Century England I: Proceedings of the Newcastle upon Tyne Conference 1985, ed. Peter R. Coss and Simon D. Lloyd (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 1986), 1–30; W. Mark Ormrod, “State Building and State Finance in the Reign of Edward I,” in England in the Thirteenth Century: Proceedings of the Harlaxton Symposium 1989, ed. W. Mark Ormrod (Stamford: P. Watkins, 1991), 15–35. These papers consider the administrative and judicial problems that Edward confronted at the beginning of his reign. They suggest the king’s achievements, which drew much from previous reigns, went hand in hand with failure. 68 ���������������������������������������� For a different view, see Malcolm Vale, The Princely Court: Medieval Courts and Culture in NorthWest Europe, 1270–1380 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 111, who follows Lachaud, “Textiles, Furs and Liveries,” 220–29. Though see Frédérique Lachaud’s recent paper, “Dress and Social Status in England Before the Sumptuary Laws,” in Heraldry, Pageantry and Social Display in Medieval England, ed. Peter Coss and Maurice Keen (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2002), esp. 119–20, which has, I think, a slightly different emphasis. 69 �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� There is one occasion on the roll where the abbreviation “de burr” does appear to refer to burrell; see entry 100. 70 Calendar of the Liberate Rolls, 1:388, where £7 17s. 10½d. was paid for 250 ells of burrell. 71 ���������������������������������������������� Natalie Fryde, “King John and the Empire,” in King John: New Interpretations, ed. Stephen D. Church (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2003), 335–46.

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The Empress’s New Clothes Isabella’s messengers were given robes of burrell, they would have also received a lesser provision than King Henry III’s messengers. If the empress’s household received cloths of burnet, however, they would have had a better allocation than their counterparts in Henry III’s household. This seems more likely. Providing clothing for his sister’s familia, King Henry clearly had to abide by a courtly and diplomatic etiquette which paid due obeisance to the empress’s elevated status. It was only appropriate, then, for the most important imperial representatives in England, Peter de Vinea and a “certain knight” of the archbishop of Cologne (almost certainly Henry de Zudithorp senior, a ministerialis in the service of the Cologne archbishops who had established links with England during the reign of King John72) to receive garments of scarlet trimmed with bis [47]. Five household knights, ­Robert de Bruera, Hubert Huse, Robert Mucegros, Bartholomew Pecche, and Waleran Teutonicus, along with their men, received identical cloth and fur [48–54]. In May 1235, Bruera and Mucegros were granted safe protection for as long as they remained overseas with Isabella.73 Soft furnishings were also included in Isabella’s trousseau. There were blankets from Reims [44] and Winchester (chaloni, baunkeri) [45] as well as tablecloths (mappare) and towels [44]. Linen cloth from Reims and Liège was purchased in very large quantities [41, 42]. By far the bulkiest items in Isabella’s trousseau were her two beds [40]. Made of Genoese (de Jauna) cloth of gold and arest, the beds had mattresses fashioned from cendal. The cost of Isabella’s soft furnishings, including additional items not mentioned on the roll of cloths, are recorded in Walter of Kirkham’s wardrobe account: And for 1,452 ells of linen (linea tela) for the use of the king and Isabella his sister and for 728 ells [?of linen] for tablecloths and fifty-six towels, four tapestries of Reims (de tapetis ramensibus) and six from Winchester, £38 8s. 8d. Item, for 158 ells of linen (linea telea), tablecloths, towels, saddles (scellis), bridles (loris), and in the manufacture of three beds (lectorum) of silk from the wardrobe of the king, books for the chapel, shoes, veils (peplis), and other minute things for the use of the aforesaid Isabella, sister of the king, £82 15s.74

The importance of the Anglo-imperial nuptials to the English court meant there were lots of associated ceremonial acts through which Henry III demonstrated his munificence and power. One of these was the knighting of John of Saxony and “his man” (socio suo) [108–113]. John must have been affiliated with the imperial delegation, but I cannot ascertain why he is accorded such a prominent place on the roll of cloths. To my knowledge, John is not mentioned in any English or continental chronicle. There is but one reference to him in the English chancery rolls.75 John and his associ72 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Joseph P. Huffman, “Prosopography and the Anglo-Imperial Connection: A Cologne Ministerialis Family and Its English Relations,” Medieval Prosopography 11 (1990), 53–134. 73 Calendar of the Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office: Henry III (London: HMSO, 1906–), vol. 3, 1232–1247, 103. 74 ���������������������������� E 372/79, rot. 11d., mem. 2. 75 Calendar of the Liberate Rolls, vol. 6, 1267–1272, no. 2224.

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Benjamin L. Wild ate each received three sets of garments. The first was of silk and included a tunic and pallium trimmed with bis [108]. The second set of garments was of scarlet [109]; the third set was of green cloth [110]. In addition, they received a variety of textiles and furs, including bed linen [111], cloaks from Ypres [112], coverlets of green cloth and bis [113]. According to Walter of Kirkham’s wardrobe account, the cost of supplying John and his man with a palfrey and the requisite apparel for knighthood was £13 2s. 9d.76 The roll of gifts that survives from this period reveals John also received a silk and gold embroidered belt and a ring.77 How many people would have been required to make all of the garments associated with Isabella’s wedding, and how long it took them, is not certain. During his eleventh regnal year, between May 1209 and May 1210, King John spent 12d. to have a set of garments (roba) made for him.78 How long this work took, and how much the cost was affected by the inflation of this period, is unknown.79 A later comparison may provide a better idea. In 1296, it took thirty-five workers in London four days and nights to make garments for the trousseau of Edward I’s fifteen-year-old daughter Elizabeth, who was marrying the count of Holland. The workers received wages of 6d. per day. Henry the tailor, who supervised the work, received 3d. per day while staying in the metropolis.80 Unfortunately, we know nothing of the quantity or quality of garments that were made for Elizabeth. The applicability of these figures to Isabella’s garments could therefore be very low. The roll of cloths also indicates that some of the cloth for Isabella’s garments was taken from stock [31]. Furthermore, it appears that not all of Isabella’s clothes were newly made. An annotation next to five entries reveals that certain garments were merely trimmed or re-lined—the verb ampliare is vague—with two panes of bis [27–31]. Based on the figures provided above, the textiles procured for Isabella’s wedding cost £380 17s. 9d. The majority of items on the roll of cloths were associated with Isabella’s wedding, but not all. Some entries shed shafts of light on England’s connections with other kingdoms. Laurence, a clerk of the count of Holland, received garments of burnet [88]. A messenger from Hákon, the king of Norway, may have received the same provision, although he is only recorded as being given a cendal [89]. It is possible the Norwegian messenger was Friar Laurence, who had received 40s. for his homeward expenses in February 1233.81 Finally, the roll of cloths describes garments that were made for King Henry III. To celebrate Easter in 1235, Henry III had three sets of garments made for him. The first and perhaps most visually striking set of clothes was in burnet and trimmed with miniver [9]. The second set was of murray, trimmed with vair [11]. The third set, which

76 �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� “Et pro palefridis et alio apparatu ad miliciam Johannis de Saxonia se altero xiij li. ij s. ix d.” E 372/79, rot. 11d., mem. 2. 77 ����������� C 47/3/4/1. 78 ������� Hardy, Rotuli de Liberate, 170–1. 79 ������������������������������������������������������������ Paul Latimer, “Early Thirteenth-Century Prices,” in Church, King John, 41–73. 80 ������������� E 101/354/21. 81 Calendar of the Liberate Rolls, 1:199.

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The Empress’s New Clothes included two surcoats, was made from seventeen ells of green cloth trimmed with bis [10]. An annotation reveals that all of these garments had to be modified (ampliandas) with a half pane of bis. The king had two more green surcoats made for him, one with sleeves, one without [14]. In addition, the king had two cloaks [12, 13], one of scarlet lined with green cendal, the other, a rain cloak from Ypres. The repeated references to green should remind us that colour choices were also personal, at least for those who could afford to pick and choose. Henry III’s penchant for green decorative schemes in his palaces is well documented.82 It is difficult to know how people would have interpreted the king’s fondness for green. Whilst the colour was positively associated with youthfulness and vigour, for the same reasons it had negative connotations of chaos and disorder.83 The unease with which green was perceived explains why jesters often wore it and why the colour seldom appears in heraldry.84 That said, at Christmas 1214, King John and his attendants were all dressed in green.85 Indeed, in the later medieval period, green became a popular colour amongst the nobility.86 It is possible the colour green had associations with justice. Commenting on the fact that justice was often done out in the open, “at a certain green place,” John Watts has suggested the colour green may have had a specific association with justice in England. In Westminster Hall, the court of Common Pleas convened in front of a green painted wall. The exchequer made use of green wax.87 Not all of Henry III’s garments were newly acquired for Easter. One set of garments of russet, a gift from Walter Marshal, were re-trimmed with vair [15]. It is possible the garments were originally gifted to Henry on January 1, 1235, when Walter presented him with a silk and gold-threaded belt.88 As Walter was the younger brother of the earl of Pembroke, Gilbert Marshal, and the recently deceased Richard Marshal, his gifts formed part of the process of rapprochement between the king and his subjects following the fall of the bishop of Winchester, Peter des Roches, in the summer of 1234.89

82 ������������� Paul Binski, The Painted Chamber at Westminster (London: Society of Antiquaries, 1986), 16–17; Tacred Borenius, “The Cycle of Images in the Palaces and Castles of Henry III,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 6 (1943), 45. 83 �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Michel Pastoureau, “Les couleurs médiévales: systèmes de valeurs et modes de sensibilité,” in Pastoureau, Figures et Couleurs: Étude sur la symbolique et la sensibilité médiévales (Paris: Léopard d’Or, 1986), 40. 84 ���������������������������������������������������������������������������� Michel Pastoureau, “Formes et couleurs du désordre: le jaune avec le vert,” Médiévales 4 (1983), 62– 73, reprinted in Pastoureau, Figures et Couleurs, 23–34; H. Pleij, Colors Demonic and Divine: Shades of Meaning in the Middle Ages and After, trans. Dianne Webb (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 84–85; Piponnier, Costume et vie sociale, 236–37. 85 ��������������������������� Reginald Allen Brown, ed., The Great Roll of the Pipe for the Seventeenth Year of the Reign of King John, Pipe Roll Society, n.s. 37 (London: J. W. Ruddock, 1964), 21. See also Lachaud, “Liveries of Robes,” 289. 86 ������ Vale, The Princely Court, 101–2, 105, 117, 128. 87 ������������������������������������������������������������������������ John Watts, “Looking for the State in Later Medieval England,” in Coss, Heraldry, 249–50. 88 ���������� C 47/3/41. 89 ������������������������������� Wild, “Gift Inventory,” 541–45.

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Benjamin L. Wild The foregoing discussion has attempted to analyse and explain the utility and value of a unique roll of cloths that survives from Henry III’s nineteenth regnal year. The robe that was given to Henry III by Walter Marshal and the various garments that were made for Isabella and her familia show how clothes had an important role in the establishment and definition of political and social relationships in the thirteenth century. The use of specific colours and grades of textiles, along with subtle alterations in the allocation of furs, indicates that clothing did distinguish internal hierarchies in the royal English household, as well as seek to exalt the king’s authority to those outside the household. In fact, it appears these sartorial rules were so engrained by the first half of the thirteenth century that they were employed when Henry III’s haberdashers were tasked with clothing the household of Isabella. The roll of cloths also shows how the work of royal tailors was monitored and reviewed before the creation of the Great Wardrobe in the second half of the thirteenth century.

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Appendix 1.1 Transcription and Translation of the Roll of Cloths Following is a transcription of London, National Archives, C 47/3/3, along with a line-by-line translation. The punctuation and use of capitals has been standardized in the transcription. Punctuation has been added to the translation for ease of reference. The symbol […] indicates a portion of text that is illegible or lost because of damage to the membrane. Words that are struck through follow cancellations on the membrane. Words in parentheses represent interlined text. Words in square brackets are editorial insertions. Underlining indicates marginal headings. In the English translation, words that have no clear translation are retained with the original spellings and italicized.

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Benjamin L. Wild [FACE] Rotulus pannorum missorum domino imperatori et lectorum et robarum factarum ad opus Isabelle sororis domini regis et familie ipsius. Item rotulus robarum factarum ad opus domini regis. [Two lines blank] [2] Panni integri missi domini imperatori. Una pounacia de Proviniac’ (in grana) integra. [3] Item j skarletta continens xxxviij ulnas dimidiam. [4] Item de russetho de dono de Sempingham de duplici inverso: xiiij ulne. [5] Item de Caumbr’: j camelinum integrum. [6] Item eidem j vir’ de Caumbr’. [7] Item eidem j blud’ de Proviniac’. [One line blank] [8] ¶ Robe domini regis contra Pascha. [Two lines blank] [9] Domino regi ad robam integram de burnetto: xv ulne cum iiijor penulis de vario. [10] Eidem (de virido) ad robam integram cum duabus (super)tunicis: xvij ulne cum v penulis de biss’. [11] Eidem de morreto ad robam integram: xvj ulne cum iiijor penulis de vario. [12] Eidem ad capam de skarl’: iiijor ulne; ad eandem lineandam, j cendallum et dimidium viridi. [13] Eidem ad pluviam: j capam de Ypre. [14] Vir’. Eidem ad unam supertunicam cum manicis et aliam sine manicis de virido: v ulne, cum uno cendallo et dimidio. [15] Furr’. Eidem ad furrandam unam robam quam W. Maresc’ dedit domini regi de russeto: j furrura de vario et xxviij ventres. [Two lines blank] [16] Sorori domini Regis. Ysabelle sorori domini regis ad tres robas de pannis sericeis ad aurum: (vj panni et dimidium de aresta) cum una supertunica et pallio: vij pen’ de vario. Et ad iij tunicas: tria cendalla. [17] Eidem ad tria coopertoria: xvij ulne j quarter’ skarl’ cum tribus coopertoriis de biss’ factis de vque coopertoriis de empto. [18] Eidem j pouniaca in grana de Linc’ integra continens xxxvj ulnas ad deferendum secum ultra mare. [19] Eidem j burn’ de Beverl’ continens xlj ulnas ad deferendum secum. [20] Eidem j camelinum de Kaumbr’ integrum ad deferendum secum. [21] Eidem j morr’ integrum ad deferendum secum. [1]

   ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� The following note, “Ad robas ampliandas dimidia penula” [“To modify robes, half a pane”], is written after entry 9, but is connected by multiple pen-strokes to entries 9 through 11.   ��������������������������������� This entry makes it clear that a coopertorium could be a household textile, namely a coverlet, but it could also be a measure of fur. As a quantity of fur, the coopertorium was much larger than the penula and had between eighteen and twenty-two tiers. Lachaud, “Textiles, Furs and Liveries,” 29–31.

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The Empress’s New Clothes [FACE] Roll of cloths sent to the lord emperor and of the beds and robes made for the use of Isabella, sister of the lord king, and her familia. Item, roll of robes made for the use of the lord king. [Two lines blank] [2] Whole cloths sent to the lord emperor. 1 whole paonaz of Provins dyed in grain. [3] Item, 1 scarlet containing 38½ ells. [4] Item, of russet de duplici inverso by the gift of Sempringham, 14 ells. [5] Item, of Cambrai 1 whole cloth of camelin. [6] Item, for the same, 1 green cloth of Cambrai. [7] Item, for the same, 1 blue cloth of Provins. [One line blank] [8] ¶ Robes of the lord king for Easter. [Two lines blank] [9] To the lord king for a complete robe of burnet—15 ells with 4 panes of vair. [10] To the same, for a complete robe of green cloth, with two surcoats—17 ells with five panes of bis. [11] To the same, for a complete robe of murray—16 ells with 4 panes of vair. [12] To the same, for a cloak of scarlet—4 ells, and for lining it, 1½ green cendal. [13] To the same, for the rain, 1 cloak of Ypres. [14] Green. To the same, for a surcoat with sleeves and another without sleeves of green cloth, 5 ells with 1½ cendal. [15] Fur. For the same, for furring a robe which Walter Marshal gave to the lord king, of russet—1 fur of vair and 28 belly furs. [Two lines blank] [16] To the sister of the lord king. To Isabella, sister of the lord king, for 3 robes of silk cloth of gold: 6½ cloths of arest, with a surcoat and pallium, 7 panes of vair and for 3 tunics, 3 cendals. [17] To the same, for 3 coverlets, 17¼ ells of scarlet with 3 coverlets of bis made from 5 purchased coverlets. [18] To the same, 1 whole paonaz of Lincoln dyed in grain, containing 36 ells, to take across the sea with her. [19] To the same, 1 burnet of Beverley, containing 41 ells, to take with her. [20] To the same, 1 whole camelin from Cambrai, to take with her. [21] To the same, 1 whole murray, to take with her. [1]

   ������������������������������������������������������������� Ronald E. Latham suggests the term means reversible. Latham, Revised Medieval Latin Word-List (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), s.v. “invers/satio,” 259.   ���������������������������������������������������������������� Whilst referring to the fur-coated skin of an animal, the Latin furrura could also denote a specific quantity of tiers. According to Veale, a “fur” could consist of anything between six and eleven tiers. Veale, English Fur Trade, 29.

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Benjamin L. Wild [One line blank] [22] Item eidem ad ijas robas integras de skarl’: xxviij ulne cum ix penulis de vario. [23] Eidem ad capam, tunicam, supertunicam cum manicis de skarl’: xj ulne cum ij cendallis et dimidio. [24] Eidem ad aliam capam de skarl’ lineatam: iiij ulne cum uno cendallo et tribus (ulnis) cendalli. [25] Eidem ad duas chupas de skarl’ ad surgendum de nocte: v ulne iij quarter’. Quarum una fuit lineata cum j cendallo et alia furrata cum j biss’. [26] Eidem ad robam de morreto integram: xvj ulne cum iiijor biss’ et dimid’. [27] Eidem ad duas robas de camelino integras: xxxij ulne cum ix penulis de biss’. [28] Eidem ad duas robas de virido de Caumbr’: xxxij ulne cum ix penulis de biss’. [29] Eidem ad unam robam de bludo: xvj ulne cum iiijor penulis et dimidia de vario. [30] Eidem ad robam de pouniaco in grana: xvj ulne—cum iiijor b’ et dim’. [31] Staurum anni precedentis. Eidem ad capam de pouniaco in grana: iiij ulne dim’—cum uno cendallo et ijbus ulnis. [32] Eidem ad tunicam et supertunicam de burnetto: viij ulne—cum j penula et dimidia de biss’. [33] Eidem ad ij alkethonas [cum] cendallo cooperiendas: ij cendalla. [34] Eidem ad j capam ad pluviam: ij cap’ de Ypr’. [35] Eidem ad ij sambuas ad sellas ipsius: viij ulne scarlet’. [36] Eidem de burnetto ad j sambuam: iiij ulne. [37] Staurum anni precedentis. Eidem de pouniaco in grana ad j sambuam: iiij ulne. [38] Eidem ad caligas: iiij ulne burnetti. [39]   Item eidem ad robam de burnetto integram: xv ulne cum iiijor penulis de biss’. [40]   Panni ad aurum. Item eidem domine ad ij lecta: x panni ad aurum de Janua. Item eidem ad eadem: vque panni de aresta sine auro. Item ad cooperiendos fundos matric’ […] vque cendalla. [Two lines blank] [41] Eidem de tela linea de Reyns, Ciiijxxvij ulne. [42] Eidem de linea tela de Leg’, iiijxxxviij ulne. [43] Eidem iiij cendalla ad deferendum secum. [44] Item vij chalon’ de Reyns ad trussandum.   ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� The following note, “Item ad omnes robas ampliandas ij penule” [“Item to modify all robes, 2 panes”)], is written after entry 27, but is connected by a single pen-stroke to entries 27 through 31.    ������������������������������������������������������������������ Entries 34 through 54 appear to be the work of a different scribe.   �������������������������� Written opposite entry 34.   �������������������������� Written opposite entry 37.

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The Empress’s New Clothes [One line blank] [22] Item, to the same, for 2 complete robes of scarlet, 28 ells with 9 panes of vair. [23] For the same, for a cloak, tunic, and surcoat with sleeves of scarlet, 11 ells with 2½ cendals. [24] To the same, for another lined cloak of scarlet, lined, 4 ells with 1 cendal and 3 ells of cendal. [25] To the same, for 2 dressing gowns of scarlet for rising in the night, 5¾ ells, of which 1 gown was lined with cendal and another was furred with one bis. [26] To the same, for a complete robe of murray, 16 ells with 4½ bis. [27] To the same, for 2 complete robes of camelin, 32 ells with 9 panes of bis. [28] To the same, for 2 robes of green cloth from Cambrai, 32 ells with 9 panes of bis. [29] To the same, for a robe of blue cloth, 16 ells with 4½ panes of vair. [30] To the same, for a robe of paonaz dyed in grain, 16 ells—with 4½ of bis. [31] Stock from the previous year. To the same, for a cloak of paonaz dyed in grain, 4½ ells—with 1 cendal and 2 ells. [32] To the same, for a tunic and surcoat of burnet, 8 ells—with 1½ panes of bis. [33] To the same, for covering 2 aketons with cendal—2 cendals. [34] To the same, for 1 rain cloak, 2 cloaks from Ypres. [35] To the same, for 2 saddlecloths for her saddles, 8 ells of scarlet. [36] To the same, of burnet cloth for a saddlecloth, 4 ells. [37] Stock from the previous year. To the same, 1 paonaz dyed in grain for 1 saddlecloth, 4 ells. [38] For the same, for hose, 4 ells of burnet. [39]   To the same, for a whole robe of burnet, 15 ells with 4 panes of bis. [40]   Cloths of gold. Item, to the same lady, for 2 beds, 10 cloths of gold of Genoa. To the same, for the same, 5 cloths of arest without gold. Item, for covering the undersides of the mattresses: […] 5 cendals. [Two lines blank] [41] To the same, of linen from Reims, 187 ells. [42] To the same, of linen from Liège, 98 ells. [43] To the same, 4 cendals, to take with her. [44] Item, 7 blankets from Reims, for packing.

23

Benjamin L. Wild [45] Eidem ij chalon’ de Winton’ et ij baunker’ et ij mapp’ et xiij toall’. [46] Item xlv ulne grisengis ad pannos integros et robas suas involvendas. [One line blank] [47] Magistro Petro de Vinea nuncio imperatoris et cuidam militi archiepiscopi [ad] […] robas integras de scarl’: xxiij ulne cum viij biss’. [48] Huberto Hosato ad robam de scarlet’: xj ulne dimidia cum iiij biss’. [49] Duobus sociis ipsius: xxiij ulne scarl’ cum viijto penulis de biss’. [50] Roberto de Mucegros ad robam: xij ulne scarl’ cum iiij biss’. [51] Roberto de Bruera ad robam: xij ulne scarl’ cum iiij biss’. [52] Bartholomeo Beche ad robam: xj ulne dimidia scarl’ cum iiij biss’. [53] Waleranno Teuton’ ad robam: xj ulne dimidia scarl’ cum iiij biss’. [54] Socio ipsius ad robam: xj ulne dimidia scarl’ cum iiijor biss’. [One line blank] [55] Willelmo capellano imperatricis ad robam: xij ulne burnetti cum j biss’ et ij penulis agnin’. [56] Willelmo clerico capelle ad robam: vij ulne dimidia pouniaci cum j furrura scurell’ et j penula agnin’. [57] Magistro Gilberto phisico10 ipsius ad robam: xj ulne dimidia burnetti cum ij biss’ et ij furruris de scurell’. [58] Rogero de Esswell’ v ulne burnetti cum j furrura scur’. [59] Uxori Roberti de Bruera11 ad robam: xiiij ulne scarl’ cum iiij biss’. [60] Quatuor camerariis imperatricis ad iiij robas de burnetto: xl ulne. Cuilibet earum x ulne cum viij biss’ ad pallia et supertunicas. [61] Eidem uxori R. de Bruera et ipsis iiij camerariis ad v robas de moretto: lviij ulne ad tunicas supertunicas et capas cuilibet earum xj ulne […] cum v furruris de scur’ ad supertunicas suas et v cendall’ dimid’ ad capas earum lineandas. [62] Eisdem ad v robas de bludo transmarin’ ad tunicas, supertunicas et pallium: l ulne et ad easdem lineandas: vj cendalla dimidium. [63] Eisdem ad v coopertoria: xvij ulne dimidia de pouniaco et virido cum v coopertoriis de biss’ et grisso. [64] Uxori R. de Bruer’ ad j samb’: iiij ulne scarl’. [65] iiijor camerariis ad samb’: xv ulne pouniaci. [66] Quinque camerariis ad capas: v cape de Ypr’ cum j cendallo. [67] Eisdem ad camisias: iiijxxx ulne linee tele. Eisdem ad lintheamina ccxx ulne. [68] Item eisdem de linea tela: ciiijxxxvj ulne.   �������������������������������������������������������������� The “certain knight” is probably Henry de Zudithorp senior, a ministerialis in the service of the Cologne archbishops.   ������������������������������������������������������������������ Entries 55 through 94 appear to be the work of a different scribe.   �������������������� Isabella’s chaplain. 10 ��������������������� Isabella’s physician. 11 ������������������������������������������� The wife of Robert de Bruera was Benevenue.

24

The Empress’s New Clothes [45]

To the same, 2 blankets from Winchester and 2 bench-coverings and 2 tablecloths and 13 towels. [46] Item, 45 ells of grey cloth for wrapping the whole cloths and her robes. [One line blank] [47] To Master Peter de Vinea, ambassador of the emperor, and a certain knight of the Archbishop [of Cologne], for […] complete robes of scarlet, 23 ells with 8 bis. [48] To Hubert Huse, for a robe of scarlet, 11½ ells with 4 bis. [49] To two of his companions, 23 ells of scarlet with 8 panes of bis. [50] To Robert de Mucegros, for a robe, 12 ells of scarlet with 4 bis. [51] To Robert de Bruera, for a robe, 12 ells of scarlet with 4 bis. [52] To Bartholomew Pecche, for a robe, 11½ ells of scarlet with 4 bis. [53] To Waleran Teutonicus, for a robe, 11½ ells of scarlet with 4 bis. [54] To his companion, for a robe, 11½ ells of scarlet with 4 bis. [One line blank] [55] To William, chaplain of the empress, for a robe, 12 ells of burnet with 1 bis and 2 panes of lamb. [56] To William, clerk of the chapel, for a robe, 7½ ells of paonaz with 1 squirrel fur and 1 pane of lamb. [57] To Master Gilbert, her physician, for a robe, 11½ ells of burnet with 2 bis and 2 squirrel furs. [58] To Roger de Esswell, 5 ells of burnet, with 1 squirrel fur. [59] For the wife of Robert de Bruera, for a robe, 14 ells of scarlet with 4 bis. [60] For 4 ladies of the chamber of the empress, for 4 robes of burnet, 40 ells. For each 10 ells with 8 bis for palliums and surcoats. [61] To the same wife of Robert de Bruera and the said 4 ladies of the chamber, for 5 robes of murray, 58 ells for the tunics, surcoats, and cloaks, for each 11 ells […] with 5 furs of squirrel for the surcoats and 5½ cendals for the lining of the cloaks. [62] To the same, for 5 robes of blue cloth from overseas for tunic(s), surcoat(s), and pallium, 50 ells and for lining the same, 6½ cendals. [63] To the same, for 5 coverlets, 17½ ells of paonaz and green with 5 coverlets of bis and squirrel. [64] To the wife of Robert de Bruera for one saddlecloth, 4 ells of scarlet. [65] To the four ladies of the chamber, for saddlecloths, 15 ells of paonaz. [66] To the five ladies of the chamber, for cloaks, 5 cloaks of Ypres—with 1 ­cendal. [67] To the same, for shirts, 90 ells of linen cloth. To the same, for bed linen, 220 ells. [68] Item, to the same, of linen cloth, 196 ells.

25

Benjamin L. Wild [69] Item xix capellis de filtra lineandis: ij cendalla j ulna. [One line blank] [70] Lotrici ipsius ad robam: viij (x) ulne dimidia panni cum j con’ et j agn’. [71] Eidem ad capam: iiij ulne bludi de Beverl’. [72] Eidem ad samb’: iiij ulne bludi. [One line blank] [73] Rogero Pilet12  } [74] Johanni de Sandon’ coco13  } 14 [75] Willelmo salsario   } [76] Willelmo filio Henrici15  } [77] Waltero de Derneford’16  } [78] Ricardo scissori17 } cum xiiij agninis [79] Willelmo de Taýden’18  } [80] Willelmo Malet’19  } [81] Hamoni mariscello20  } [82] Thome de Erlham’21  } 22 [83] Ricardo de Hauvill’   } [84] Alget’  } [85] […] coco } [86] […] de Cumb’ custodi equorum  } [87] Ricardo Abel aurifabro [blank] j agn’ [One line blank] [88]23   Laurentio clerico comitis Holland’: vij ulne dimidia burn’ cum ij biss’. [89]24   Nuncio regis Norweg’: j cendallum. [One line blank] [90]25   Frank’ de Bresne26: j cap’ de Ipr’. [91]27   Uxori Guiberti de Rue: vij ulne pouniaci j con’. [Two lines blank]

12 ���������������������������� Usher of Isabella’s chamber. 13 ���������������� Isabella’s cook. 14 ���������������������������������������������������������� Probably in charge of the salsary in Isabella’s household. 15 ���������������������������������� Dispenser in Isabella’s household. 16 ������������������ Isabella’s butler. 17 ������������������ Isabella’s tailor. 18 ����������������� Isabella’s valet. 19 ����������������������������� Keeper of Isabella’s palfrey. 20 �������������������������������� Marshal of Isabella’s household. 21 �������������������� Isabella’s falconer. 22 ����������������������������� Brother of Henry de Hauville. 23 �������������������������� Written opposite entry 75. 24 �������������������������� Written opposite entry 78. 25 �������������������������� Written opposite entry 79. 26 ����������������������������������� A servant in Henry III’s household. 27 �������������������������� Written opposite entry 81.

26

The Empress’s New Clothes [69] Item, for lining 19 hats of felt—2 cendals and 1 ell. [One line blank] [70] To the empress’s laundress, for a robe, 8 10½ ells of cloth with 1 coney and 1 lamb. [71] To the same, for a cloak, 4 ells of blue cloth of Beverley. [72] To the same, for a sambuam, 4 ells of blue cloth. [One line blank] [73] For Roger Pilet  } [74] For John de Sauden the cook  } [75] For William the saucer  } [76] For William son of Henry  } [77] For Walter of Derneford  } [78] For Richard the tailor  } with 14 lambs [79] For William de Tayden  } [80] For William Malet  } [81] For Hamo the marshal  } [82] For Thomas de Erlham  } [83] For Richard de Hauville  } [84] For Alget’   } [85] […] the cook  } [86] […] Cumb’ keeper of the horses  } [87] For Richard Abel, goldsmith [blank] one lamb [One line blank] [88]   To Lawrence clerk of the count of Holland, 7½ ells of burnet with 2 two bis. [89]   To the messenger of the king of Norway—1 cendal. [One line blank] [90]   To Frank de Bresne, 1 cloak of Ypres. [91]   To the wife of Gilbert de Rue, 7 ells of paonaz, 1 coney. [Two lines blank]

27

Benjamin L. Wild [92]28   Russettus. Margarete Býseth’ ad supertunicam, pallium et capam: xiij ulne dimidia russeti. [93]29   clerico ipsius […] cum iijbus penulis agn’. [94]30  Ysend’ camerar’ […]: j penula con’ et j furrura agn’. [95]31 Cuidam templario nuncio imperatoris […] ulne de blanketto. [One line blank] [96] Garciones imperatricis. Sometario capelle: j roba  } [97] Duobus nunciis ipsius: ij robe  } [98] Colino sometario: j roba  } […] [99] Sýmoni sometario: j roba  } [Two lines blank] [100]32   Item ad involvendas robas imperatricis: ij ulne de burr’. [101]33   Item ad huscias ad cooperiendos coforos suos: iiij ulne de grisengis. [102]34   Item ad involvenda loeremia ipsius et pannos et ad alia fac’. [103] Septem ýstrionibus archiepiscopi Colon’ et ducis Braibant’: vij robe viridi cum ij furruris con’ et v agn’. [104] Tribus nunciis ducis Brabant: iij robe viridi cum iij furruris agn’. [One line blank] [105] Angelo clerico P[etri de] vinea de virido: viij ulne et dimidia—cum j penula de biss’ et ij furruris de scur’. [106] Tribus garcionibus Petri [de Vine]a: iij robe de burr’. [107]35 Fratri Egidio de hospitali […]ann’ ad pallium de saga de Lue: viij ulne. [One line blank] [108] ¶ Johanni de Saxon’ et socio suo […] ad ij robas: iij panni de serico. Ad robas et ad tunicas (pallia) eorundem ij biss’. [109] Eisdem ad duas robas de skarl’ integras: xxv ulne et dimidia. Eisdem iij penule biss’ et iiij furrure scur’. [110] Eisdem ad duas robas de virido integras: xj ulne cum ij furruris scur’. [111] Eisdem ad lintheamina et pann’ linee [tele]: xxix ulne de Leg’. [112] Eisdem ij cap’ de Ypr’. [113] Eisdem ad ij coopertoria: vij ulne viridi et ij copertoria de biss’. [One line blank]

28 �������������������������� Written opposite entry 85. 29 �������������������������� Written opposite entry 86. 30 �������������������������� Written opposite entry 87. 31 ������������������������������������������������������������������� Entries 95 through 106 appear to be the work of a different scribe. 32 �������������������������� Written opposite entry 96. 33 �������������������������� Written opposite entry 97. 34 �������������������������� Written opposite entry 98. 35 �������������������������������������������������������������������� Entries 107 through 113 appear to be the work of a different scribe.

28

The Empress’s New Clothes [92]   Russet. To Margaret Biset, for a surcoat, pallium, and cloak, 13½ ells of    russet. [93]   To her clerk, […] with 3 panes of lamb. [94]   For Ysend’ of the chamber, 1 pane of coney and 1 fur of lamb. [95] To a certain Templar messenger of the emperor […] ells of blanket cloth. [One line blank] [96] Grooms of the empress. For the pack-man of the chapel—1 robe } [97] To her two messengers—2 robes    } [98] To Colin the pack-man—1 robe    } […] [99] To Simon the pack-man—1 robe    } [Two lines blank] [100]   Item, for wrapping the robes of the empress, 2 ells of burrell. [101]   Item, for 2 covers for covering her chests, 4 ells of grey cloth. [102]   Item, for wrapping her horse harness3 and cloths and for making other things. [103] To the seven jesters of the Archbishop of Cologne and the Duke of Brabant—7 robes of green cloth with 2 furs of coney and 5 of lamb. [104] To three messengers of the Duke of Brabant—3 robes of green cloth with 3 furs of lamb. [One line blank] [105] To Angelo, clerk of Peter de Vinea, 8½ ells of green cloth—with 1 pane of bis and 2 squirrel furs. [106] To three grooms of Peter de Vinea, 3 robes of burnet (burr’). [107] For Brother Giles of the hospital […] for a pallium of say of Lue, 8 ells. [One line blank] [108] ¶ To John of Saxony and his companion […] for 2 robes, 3 cloths of silk for robes and for the tunics and palliums of these robes, 2 bis. [109] To the same, for 2 complete robes of scarlet—25½ ells. To the same, 3 panes of bis and 4 squirrel furs. [110] To the same, for 2 complete robes of green cloth, 11 ells with 2 squirrel furs. [111] To the same, for the bed linen and linen cloth, 29 ells from Liège. [112] To the same, 2 cloaks of Ypres. [113] To the same, for 2 coverlets, 7 ells of green cloth and 2 coverlets of bis. [One line blank]

29

Benjamin L. Wild [114]36 Item ad capellam ipsius. Ad capam de choro et ad casulam tunicam et ­dalmaticam: ij panni de Hispann’ (ad aurum). Item ad aliam capam casulam tunicam et dalmaticam cum toto apparatu suo: ij panni de haresta (cum vijto cendallis). Item ad duas albas et ad duo amitos et ad ij rochettos et ad duo s(u)perpellicos et iiijor thoall’ ad altare et ijo paria thoall’ ad sacrarium: lxvj ulne. [115] Item j pannus de Janua ad aurum ad pendendum ante altare ipsius. [DORSE] [116] Rotulus robarum […] xix. [117] Rotulus robarum pannorum etc. pro domino imperatore et Isabelle sorore regis. [Eight lines blank] [118] […] recepta in garderoba de pannis emptis de Bern’ de Silac’. [119] Vir’. De virido ij ulne et dimidia. [120] Item v ulne et j quarter’. Item xv ulne dimidia. [121] Blud’. Item de bludo vj ulne. [122] Item xiij ulne et dimidia. [123] Item viij ulne. [124] Item vj ulne et dimidia. [125] Kamelýn. De kamelino xiiij ulne. [126] De panno in grana xvij ulne et dimidia quarter’. Remanent j ulna j quarter’ et dimidia. [127] Morr’. De moretto xij ulne et dimidia emptas de P. Daniel. [Nine lines blank] [128] […] de pannis Anglie. [129] Burn’. De burnetto vij ulne et dimidia. [130] Scarl’. De skarletta iij ulne. [131] Item ij ulne et iij quarter’. [132] Item ij ulne et iiij quarter’. [Two lines blank] [133] Item de bludo transmar’ remanent v ulne et j quarter’.

36 Entries 114 and 115 appear to be the work of a different scribe.

30

The Empress’s New Clothes

[114] Item, for her chapel. For a choir cape and for a chasuble, tunic, and dalmatic, 2 cloths of gold of Spain. Item, for another cape, chasuble, tunic, and dalmatic with all their apparel, 2 cloths of arest with 7 cendals. Item, for 2 albs, 2 amices, 2 rochets, 2 surplices, and 4 towels for the altar, and 2 pairs of towels for the sacrament, 66 ells. [115] Item for 1 cloth of gold of Genoa for hanging before her altar. [DORSE] [116] Roll of Robes […] nineteen. [117] Roll of robes, cloths, etc. for the lord emperor and Isabella sister of the king. [Eight lines blank] [118] […] received in the wardrobe from the cloths purchased from Bernard of Chillak. [119] Green. Of green, 2½ ells. [120] Item, 5¼ ells. Item 15½ ells. [121] Blue. Item, of blue, 6 ells. [122] Item, 13½ ells. [123] Item, 8 ells. [124] Item, 6½ ells. [125] Camelin. Of camelin, 14 ells. [126] Of cloth dyed in grain, 17¾ ells. 1¾ ells remain. [127] Murray. Of murray, 12½ ells bought from P. Daniel. [Nine lines blank] [128] […] cloths of England. [129] Burnet. Of burnet, 7½ ells. [130] Scarlet. Of scarlet, 3 ells. [131] Item, 2¾ ells. [132] Item, 2 ells and 4 quarters. [Two lines blank] [133] Item, of blue cloth from overseas 5¼ ells remain.

31

Unveiling Social Fashion Patterns: A Case Study of Frilled Veils in the Low Countries (1200–1500) Isis Sturtewagen

Veils with frilled or ruffled edges have long been recognized as a fashionable accessory for upper-class women in some parts of Europe in the later Middle Ages. Until recently, however, it was generally believed frilled veils were very rare in the Low Countries. This study will make clear that the opposite is the case. Nearly 200 visual records of frilled veils—including paintings, sculptures, and figurative objects such as utensils and accessories—were collected from this region and subjected to statistical analysis. Written accounts mentioning frilled headdresses were examined as well. The morphological evolution and the social patterns in the development of this headdress style were studied using the seriation technique (described below). To my knowledge, this technique has not yet been used to extract social information from visual sources. This case study is designed to demonstrate the usefulness of such an approach. I would like to extend my thanks to Dr. Arjen Bosman, Dr. Maximiliaan Martens, and the late Dr. Johnny de Meulemeester for their support and enthusiasm during the writing of my final thesis and beyond. I am also obliged to Milena Bravermanová (Prague Castle), Jeannine Baldewijns (Stadsmuseum Gent), Nadia Vangampelaere (Musea Brugge), Sofie Derom (Dienst Monumentenzorg Gent), Eline van der Weele (Slot Zuylen), and Micha Leeflang (Museum Catherijneconvent) for patiently replying to all my questions concerning museum objects of their respective collections. Lastly, I want to thank Carla Tilghman and Chris van de Velde for proofreading the text of this article, and Bertus Brokamp for both proofreading and helping with the translation of Middle Dutch quotations.   ������������������������������������������������������������������������������� For general background on this fashion, see Eveline Grönke and Edgar Weinlich, Mode aus Modeln. Kruseler- und andere Tonfiguren des 14. bis 16. Jahrhunderts aus dem Germanischen Nationalmuseum und anderen Sammlungen (Nuremberg: Verlag des Germanischen Nationalmuseum, 1998).   ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� This study relies on visual and written sources only, as no extant frilled veils exist from the Low Countries. There are, however, several fragments of frilled headwear from Spain, uncovered in 1946 from twelfth-century graves at Burgos Cathedral. Camilla Luise Dahl, Marianne Vedeler, and Concha Herrero Carretero, Report on the Textiles from Burgos Cathedral in Patrimonio Nacional, Palacio Real, Madrid, Spain (Nykøbing, Denmark: Middelaldercentret, 2008). The remains of another frilled veil were found in Prague Cathedral. These two frilled textile fragments originally belonged to one of the four wives of Emperor Charles IV (d. 1378), who were buried together in the same coffin. The two fragments have not yet been conserved and are in a poor state; Milena Bravermanová, e-mail message to author, April 27, 2009.

Isis Sturtewagen STATUS QUAESTIONIS OF FRILLED HEADWEAR IN THE LOW COUNTRIES

Research on the subject of frilled veils in the Low Countries has been very limited. Anne Liebreich’s conclusion, in her article of 1925 in the German journal Waffen- und Kostümkunde, is still widely accepted; she believed frilled headdresses in the Southern and Northern Netherlands were very rare, as opposed to their popularity in the other parts of the Holy Roman Empire. She was aware of only three Flemish visual sources for the frilled veil. Two are paintings by Jan van Eyck: the betrothal portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and Giovanna Cenami (1434, National Gallery, London) and the portrait of Margareta van Eyck (1439, Groeningemuseum, Bruges). The third example is a scene of the birth of John the Baptist from the Turin-Milan Book of Hours. In 1928, Liebreich mentioned a fourth, a frilled veil depicted on the donatrix in a Ghent missal from 1366. Eveline Grönke and Edgar Weinlich referred to Liebreich’s work in 1998 when they wrote that the frilled veil did not appear in Flanders and Northern France. In 1980, however, in her milestone book Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince, Stella Mary Newton had already briefly discussed frilled veils in her chapter on “National Traits and Deviations in the Dress of the Period.” She concluded that although the frilled veils were, apparently, not worn in France, they were in the Low Countries. In this argument, she relied solely on the previously mentioned Ghent missal, citing both the image of the donatrix and another figure in the same manuscript. In 2003, Ulrich Lehnart stated that frilled veils were also worn outside of the Holy Roman Empire in Flanders, Northern France, Hungary, England, and Scandinavia. The first in-depth study on Netherlandish frilled veils, by Carla Tilghman, was published in this journal in 2005. Her article, concerning mainly the previously mentioned fifteenth-century portraits by Jan van Eyck depicting this style of headdress, showed that there is more to this subject than was previously believed. She concluded the first part of her article, concerning the images showing frilled veils, with the following: “At this point it seems reasonable to conclude that the layered ruffle-edged veil did indeed exist as a garment, but was probably worn as a current fashion in the mid-to-late fourteenth century. Any later instances of the headdress’s

  ��������������������� Anne Liebreich, “Der Kruseler ������������������������������ im 15. Jahrhundert,” Zeitschrift für Historische Waffen- und Kostümkunde, n.s. 1 (10), no. 8 (1925): 222–23.   ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� The Turin-Milan Book of Hours was divided among different locations in the eighteenth century: Turin, Bibliotheca Nazionale, MS K.IV.29 (destroyed); Paris, Musée du Louvre, Cabinet des dessins, R.F. 2022–25; and Turin, Museo Civico, inv. no. 47.   ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� The Hague, Royal Library, MS MMW 10A14. There are three depictions of frilled veils in this manuscript, on fols. 27v, 139r, and 143v. Anne �������������������������������������������������� Liebreich, “Kostümgeschichtliche Studien zur Kölnischen ����������� Malerei des 14. Jahrhunderts, ���������������” Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft (1928): 95.   �������������������� Grönke and Weinlich, Mode aus Modeln, 29.   �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� The second example, Newton notes, is “an elegant lady who sits reading a book at the foot of fol. 11v.” Stella Mary Newton, Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince: A Study of the Years 1340–1365 (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 1999), 97–98.   ���������������� Ulrich Lehnart, Kleidung und Waffen der Spätgotik, vol. 2, 1370–1420 (Wald-Michelbach: Karfunkel Verlag, 2003), 53–54.

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Frilled Veils

Fig. 2.1: Console in the Sassenpoort gateway in Zwolle, the Netherlands, ca. 1410. Photo: Isis Sturtewagen.

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Isis Sturtewagen actual use were probably ceremonial, while the veil was used artistically to indicate ceremony and/or historicization.” Several art historical works have touched briefly on the subject of frilled veils, mainly in the description and discussion of the artworks depicting them. In 1905, Belgian artist and amateur historian Armand Heins identified a group of chimney consoles sporting frilled veils as “female heads with exotic or foreign hairdos,” mistakenly interpreting the frilled edges as being hair instead of fabric.10 A little over forty years later, D. P. R. A. Bouvy labelled similar sculpted consoles from Zwolle, a Hanseatic town in the Northern Netherlands, as being “archaic, Greek-inspired heads”11 (fig. 2.1). In a later work, Bouvy did recognize veils with frills along the edges on two statues of St. Anne the Threefold. He thought this type of veil was typical of the Utrecht area, and attributed both statues to the Utrecht school, on this and other stylistic grounds.12 In 1980, Elizabeth Dhanens gave a short and quite accurate description of Giovanna Cenami’s headwear in the Arnolfini portrait: “The woman in this picture is still very young; she wears an elegant headdress with horns over which a veil with a frilled edge is hung.”13 In 1985, James Snyder erroneously identified the frilled veil in Margareta Van Eyck’s portrait as “Bruges lace.”14 STATUS QUAESTIONIS OF THE SERIATION TECHNIQUE

The above summary serves to illustrate that research into this subject has been quite subjective and lacked any systematic approach whatsoever, making it impossible to draw any general conclusions about the matter, let alone understand the place frilled veils had in late medieval Netherlandish society. Inspired by the perspectives of material culture studies, content analysis, and archaeology, this article attempts to fill in this gap in the study of frilled headwear and develop a more detailed understanding of the morphological evolution and especially the social meanings of this style of headdress in the Low Countries. Material culture studies center on the idea that materiality is an integral element of culture, and that there are dimensions of social existence that cannot be fully understood without it. Material culture studies thus emphasize the relationship between people and things,   �������������������������������������������������������������� Carla Tilghman, “Giovanna Cenami’s Veil: A Neglected Detail,” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 1� (2005): 155–72. 10 �������������������������������������������������� Armand Heins, “L’Ancien Foyer dans les Flandres,” L’Art Flamand et Hollandais 2, vol. 4 (1905): 1–37. Chimney consoles were used to support the mantel above an open fireplace. In many cases these consoles were decorated with sculptures: animals, heraldry, or human faces and bodies. Translations in this article are my own unless noted otherwise. 11 ������������������� D. P. R. A. Bouvy, Middeleeuwsche Beeldhouwkunst in de Noordelijke Nederlanden (Amsterdam: A. A. Balkema, 1947), 44. 12 ������������������� D. P. R. A. Bouvy, Beeldhouwkunst van de middeleeuwen tot heden uit het Aartsbisschoppelijk Museum te Utrecht (Amsterdam: Agon Elsevier, 1962), 142–43. 13 ������������������� Elizabeth Dhanens, Hubert en Jan van Eyck (Antwerp: Mercatorfonds, 1980), 199. 14 �������������� James Snyder, Northern Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, the Graphic Arts from 1350 to 1575 (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1985), 90.

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Frilled Veils one that is often built on implicit attitudes, beliefs, or mental structures. Since ­material culture is not an independent, stable referent for evaluating cultural history, both material objects themselves and the cultural and social context in which objects circulate have to be studied.15 A method especially suited for studying the morphology and variation of objects of different kinds is the seriation technique, which was first introduced in fashion studies by Sarah Turnbaugh in 1979.16 This technique was developed as a method for measuring and interpreting stylistic change in fashion. The technique combines two established research methods—content analysis and seriation. Content analysis is a systematic method of data collection for items that are difficult to study because of their large frequency or volume. It can be used with verbal or nonverbal communications, and is often used to study the hidden or implicit meaning of those communications.17 Seriation or sequence dating is a standard method of relative dating in archaeology, allowing assemblages or artifacts to be arranged in a serial order in the best possible time sequence, even without knowledge of the absolute dates of the objects. This technique is based on the idea that artifact styles and characteristics change over time. Seriation can also be used when the objects are firmly dated, to analyze the rates of change in physical features of objects, the modes of occurrence, and other characteristics of temporal distribution.18 Turnbaugh first carried out content analysis of the bonnets featured in Godey’s Lady’s Book between the years 1830 and 1898, in order to collect data pertaining to stylistic change in bonnets. Physical characteristics of the headdresses were used to classify them into types. Seriation was then applied to order these data against time for analysis and interpretation.19 Jo Paoletti, Catherine Beeker, and Diana Pelletier also used the seriation technique in their study of stylistic changes in men’s jacket styles from 1919 to 1941. Their study included both visual sources and extant clothing in museum collections.20 In a 1987 article, Sarah Cosby, Mary Lynn Damhorst, and Jane Farrell-Beck described the development of an instrument for visually analyzing women’s daytime clothes as depicted in fashion illustrations from 1873 to 1912. Their main goal was to examine the relative changes in diversity of women’s clothing

15 ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Wim De Clercq, Jan Dumolyn, and Jelle Haemers, “‘Vivre Noblement’: Material Culture and Elite Identity in Late Medieval Flanders,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 38, no. 1 (2007): 1; Susan Downs Reed, “From Chaperones to Chaplets: Aspects of Men’s Headdress, 1400–1519,” (M.A. thesis, University of Maryland, 1992), 1–2; Chris Tilly et al., eds., Handbook of Material Culture (London: Sage, 2009), 2–4. 16 ��������������������������������������������� Sarah Turnbaugh, “The Seriation of Fashion,” Home Economics Research Journal 7, no. 4 (March 1979), 241–48. 17 ���������������������������������������� Reed, “From Chaperones to Chaplets,” 23. 18 ����������������������������� Colin Renfrew and Paul Bahn, Archaeology: Theories, Methods, and Practice, 3rd ed. (London: Thames & Hudson, 2000), 122–24; Reed, “From Chaperones to Chaplets,” 20–21. 19 ���������������������������������������������� Turnbaugh, “The Seriation of Fashion,” 241–48. 20 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Jo B. Paoletti, Catherine Beeker, and Diana Pelletier, “Men’s Jacket Styles, 1919–1941: An Example of Coordinated Content Analysis and Object Study,” Dress 13 (1987): 44–48.

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Isis Sturtewagen styles over time.21 Susan Downs Reed was, it appears, the first and only researcher to apply the seriation technique to the study of medieval clothing. She did this in 1992, in her thesis about men’s headdresses between 1400 and 1519. She was able to create a detailed foundation of knowledge of what kind of headdresses existed, what their dominant features were, by whom and where they were worn, and how long different types of headdress were popular.22 When working with a large quantity of sources, as in this study, it is necessary to have an instrument through which to approach the collected sources both individually and as a group. A standardized instrument also allows for easier comparison of studies on similar pieces of clothing from different regions, or different pieces of clothing from the same region, and facilitates putting all the pieces together in the end. The seriation technique seems to be very much suited for these tasks. Through this technique it becomes possible to gain a clear view of the variety, the evolution, and the geographical diversity of items of clothing, as shown by the research discussed above. In this study, the seriation technique will be applied not only in order to gain insights into morphological, chronological, and geographical variation of frilled veils, but also to examine questions about the social context of frilled headwear in the Low Countries for the first time. NATURE AND SELECTION OF THE SOURCES

When working with visual records for a research project on clothing, one has to be aware of the weaknesses and advantages inherent in this type of source material. One of the first problems encountered is the dating of images. For the majority of visual sources, no precise date is known; we often have to content ourselves with the vague designation circa. Common practice in art history is to date artwork based on the style, technique, and content—including clothing—of the artwork. When studying costume, one must be alert for visual sources that have been dated based on the depicted clothing. This practice leads to circular reasoning, obstructing a clear view of the matter being studied. When an artifact is made of wood, dendrochronology can prove useful in establishing a date; this technique, often used in archaeological dating, has only rarely been applied to artworks so far.23 However, this method only gives a post-quem date, as the object could have been made at any time after the tree was cut. Iconographic sources from an archaeological origin can often be dated stratigraphically. This technique, as opposed to dendrochronology, yields an ante-quem date, as

21 ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Sarah Cosbey, Mary Lynn Damhorst, and Jane Farrell-Beck, “Development of an Instrument for a Visual Analysis of Dress from Pictorial Evidence,” Clothing and Textiles Research Journal 20, no. 2 (March 2002): 110. 22 �������������������������������������������� Reed, “From Chaperones to Chaplets,” 113–18. 23 ��������������������������������������������� Jeltje Dijkstra, “Technical Examination,” in Early Netherlandish Paintings: Rediscovery, Reception, and Research, ed. Bernhard Ridderbos, Anne Van Buren, and Henk van Veen (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2005), 293–94.

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Frilled Veils the object must have been made before it was deposited.24 Stratigraphical datings typically cannot be more precise than periods of fifty years. In studies focusing on regional variety in costume, two other aspects need to be taken into account. First, the provenance of the artwork must be established. The site of discovery or current location is often not the same as the location of production of the object. The lively art trade that has flourished since the Middle Ages often precludes any knowledge of where an object was originally produced.25 Second, visual sources can vary from region to region in both quantity and quality. The production of art depended largely on patronage, and was heavily dictated by the wishes, wealth, and ideology of the patrons.26 Growing urbanization stimulated an increase in the production of secular art such as portraiture. Factors unrelated to the production of art also play an important part in the geographical continuity of art. For instance, the iconoclasm of some Reformation regimes, the Napoleonic wars, and the first and second World Wars resulted in the damage or destruction of much medieval art in the Low Countries, making the study of regional distinctions in medieval dress more difficult. Another issue is the quantitative unevenness in representation of the different strata of medieval society. Women are depicted far less often than are men. There is a plethora of images of the nobility and the wealthy compared with representation of the lower classes and peasantry. This often makes gaining a clear image of the clothing of the lower classes nigh to impossible. When using visual representations as a source for historical dress studies, the basic idea is that the clothing depicted in these sources is more or less a reflection of contemporary fashion. It can, however, be extremely misleading to accept visual sources at face value: Historical figures and saints were often portrayed in archaic clothing; foreigners were frequently depicted in exotic dress. No painting or sculpture is free from the personal preferences and prejudices of its creator, nor free from the etiquette, politics, and prejudices of the day. The relationships between images and their cultural meanings are often difficult to spot, understand, and analyze, due to their multilayered and complex nature.27 This is especially true for portraits, votive portraits, and funerary monuments. All of these were commissioned for the purpose of public display in churches and chapels, or for the decoration of private property. In this sort of artwork people are mostly depicted in a way that is socially desirable to be seen by others. These artworks therefore are not always naturalistic renderings. 24 ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Stratigraphy uses the sequence of soil layers that are deposited by human or natural activity to determine a relative dating for the objects in the strata. For more information about stratigraphy as a relative dating method, see Renfrew and Bahn, Archaeology, 118–20. 25 ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Lorne Campbell, “The Art Market in the Southern Netherlands in the Fifteenth Century,” The Burlington Magazine 118, no. 877 (April 1976): 188–98. 26 ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� An example in this context is the patronage of the Dukes of Burgundy, under which Paris flourished as a center of artistic exchange and production. Sophie Jugie, “The Dukes of Burgundy: Princes of Paris and the Fleur-de-lis,” in Art from the Court of Burgundy: the Patronage of Philip the Bold and John the Fearless 1364–1419, ed. Stephen N. Fliegel and Sophie Jugie (Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2004), 42–44. 27 ������������ Lou Taylor, The Study of Dress History (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 115.

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Isis Sturtewagen This is specifically true for grave monuments that were often mass-produced based on prototypes available in each workshop. Visual sources add further complexity in that the representation of garments does not allow examination of the real objects. It is not possible to study the actual physical qualities—fabric, sewing technique, cut, etc.—of the depicted garment. Visual distortion is thus inevitable.28 Despite all its difficulties, the study of visual sources has important advantages when compared to preserved pieces of actual clothing and written records. The visual record is far more complete and continuous than collections of actual garments. The further back in history, the fewer original textiles are preserved, and generally the more fragmentary they are. Original clothing from the late Middle Ages is very rare, especially complete garments, and those examples are geographically scattered. Visual sources provide—in a more or less detailed manner depending on the nature of the source—information on style, quality of fabrics and garments, cut, and decoration. They can reveal subtleties of sartorial gender and age coding, social aspirations, and national, regional, and local differences.29 There is one rare testimonial regarding visual depictions of dress from the viewpoint of a medieval person. In 1389, Tilemann Elhen von Wolfhagen wrote the following in his Limburger Chronik: In four hundred years, people will find that this clothing really existed, because they will see this well in old cloisters and churches where one will find stones and statues thus dressed.30

Of course it should be clear that in an ideal situation the study of visual sources should be accompanied by analysis of supportive texts of the period, and, if available, the study of surviving examples of clothing. Juxtaposing visual sources against other types of sources is necessary in order to help confirm or deny the authenticity of the clothing shown in artwork, and to draw out the full weight of hidden social nuances and details of style and construction.31 The visual records for this study on frilled veils in the Low Countries were collected as follows. As a starting point, all art catalogues covering the geographical area and timeframe of this project published in the past 150 years were consulted, from the library of Ghent University, the library of the University of Utrecht, and the Royal Library in The Hague. Secondly, visual sources were collected from the photographical archives of the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage in Brussels, the Image Database

28 ������������������������������������������������������������������������ Cosbey, Damhorst, and Farrell-Beck, “Development of an Instrument,” 110. 29 ������� Taylor, Dress History, 115. 30 ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� The original German quotation is “Wi wol man findet, daz dise kleidunge vur vir hondert jaren auch etzlicher maße gewest ist, als man wol sehet an den alden stiften unde kirchen, da man findet solche steine unde bilde gekleidet.” ������������� Arthur Wyss, Die Limburger Chronik des Tilemann Elhen von Wolfhagen, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, Deutsche Chroniken 4, part 1 (Hanover, Germany: Hahn, 1883), 79. 31 ������� Taylor, Dress History, 117, 130.

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Frilled Veils of Ghent University, and the German Bildindex der Kunst und Architektur. Lastly, the Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts database, a joint project of the Dutch Royal Library and the Meermanno Museum in The Hague, proved to be a valuable source of visual records.32 Apart from original works of art of the 1200–1500 period, later copies of lost originals—in the form of paintings, drawings, sketchbooks, and etchings—were also included in this study. This study used mainly the sketchbooks of the Recueil d’Arras (Arras, France, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 266), the Mémoriaux of Anthonio de Succa (Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale), and the Costume Book of Pieter Paul Rubens (London, British Museum, 1841-12-11-8). Of course it is difficult to establish the accuracy of these copies.33 This collection of sources resulted in a database containing 193 individual depictions of frilled veils collected from a total of 173 works of art. Many types of artwork are included in this database: About 35 percent of the frilled veils can be found in paintings, of which most date to the fifteenth century; about 5 percent in illuminated manuscripts; about 10 percent in funerary monuments; another 25 percent in consoles and architectural decorations; and about 10 percent in religious sculptures. The last 15 percent consists of various objects ranging from decorated shoes to ceramics and pewter badges. The same sample of visual sources was used for both instrument development and for the detailed data collection that formed the basis of this study. This made it possible to tailor the instrument to the types of pictorial representations of frilled veils in the sample.34 DESIGNING THE DATA COLLECTION INSTRUMENT

The instrument needed for data collection in this study had to meet two main requirements. First, it was necessary that the instrument would allow for the description of changes that took place in frilled headwear fashions over the studied years. Second, the instrument had to make it possible to distinguish different types of usage of this 32 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ The image archive of the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage in Brussels is partly available online at http://www.kikirpa.be. The image database of Ghent University can be consulted at http://search. ugent.be/meercat/x/images. The German Bildindex der Kunst und Architektur is accessible at http:// www.bildindex.de. The Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts database of the Dutch Royal Library and the Meermanno Museum can be visited at http://www.kb.nl/manuscripts. 33 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� John Coales made a study of the accuracy of the drawings of Roger de Gagnières in 1997. Roger de Gagnières was a French antiquary in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century who made a collection of drawings from funerary monuments and other objects of antiquarian value, many of which are no longer preserved. Coales compared Gagnières’ drawings against surviving pieces and fragments and came to the conclusion that most of the drawings are extremely accurate, with only minor differences, mostly in the proportions and anatomical rendering of the figures. John Coales, “The Drawings of Roger de Gagnières: Loss and Survival,” Journal of the Church Mionuments Society 12 (1997): 14–34. 34 ������������������������������������������������������������������������ Cosbey, Damhorst, and Farrell-Beck, “Development of an Instrument,” 111.

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Isis Sturtewagen fashion in period art and to deduce information about the place frilled veils had in society.35 The classification system that was developed consisted of ten features, with two or more response categories into which each feature could be classified. The ten features were date, place of origin, veil type, frill type, presence of other veils, coverage and arrangement of hair, embellishment type, type of figure, social class of wearer, and type of artwork. Each feature was defined in such a way that it was mutually exclusive with the other features. In establishing response categories for each feature identification item, it was important that response category labels were not too broad or vague, so that meaningful variations could be represented. Each response category was defined in such a way that it did not attempt to describe more than one separate style of that feature. However, although the instrument required specificity, categories of features that were essentially the same had to be grouped together to avoid an exaggeration of a measure of diversity.36 Date Two time scales were used in this study. Because 48 of the 193 visual sources were not dated more precisely than to half a century, a scale of fifty-year periods was used for those examples. For the other 145 works of art, which had more specific dates, the studied period was divided into blocks of twenty-five years each. It was not possible to narrow down these time spans further, because a large part of the source material could not be dated precisely enough. The division in quarter-centuries did, however, seem to capture the rapidity of fashion change during the period of this study. The division in fifty-year blocks gave the opportunity to counterweight or affirm the results seen in the works categorized on the twenty-five-year timescale. Place of origin The studied geographical area was divided into the principalities it comprised during the studied period. The response categories for the place of origin were Artois, Brabant, Cleves, Flanders, Guelders, Hainault, Holland, Jülich, Liège, Namur, Upper Bishopric of Utrecht, Lower Bishopric of Utrecht, and Zeeland (fig. 2.2). Veil types There are innumerable types of frilled veils, as well as many ways in which they were worn and arranged on the heads of their respective wearers. Throughout the studied period, the variation in depiction of frills (e.g., as box pleats, waves, crisp triangles, etc.) seems constant (see “Frill types,” below). In the styles 35 ����������� Ibid., 111. 36 ����������� Ibid., 114.

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Frilled Veils

Fig. 2.2: Map showing the principalities in the Low Countries during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. LBU = lower bishopric of Utrecht; UBU = upper bishopric of Utrecht. Drawing: Isis Sturtewagen.

of arrangement, however, there seems to be a chronological evolution. That is why this article focuses solely on the arrangement of the veils when dividing them into types. Also, because the data collection for this study relies on visual representations of clothing instead of actual clothing items, the types were based on the appearance 43

Isis Sturtewagen

Fig. 2.3: The five main types of frilled veils in Netherlandish art. From left to right: Type I, Type Ia, Type II, Type III, Type IV. Drawing: Isis Sturtewagen.

of the veils in visual records rather than speculations as to how they would have been constructed.37 The response categories for the veil type were as follows (fig. 2.3): Type I—This headdress, when viewed from the front, resembles the shape of an inverted letter U. Type Ia—This type of frilled veil is very similar to Type I, the only difference being the length of the frilled veil. In this type, the frilled edge does not hang down to the shoulders, but reaches only from ear to ear. Type II—This type of frilled veil can be best described as an O-shape framing the face of the wearer. The O-shape is larger than the circumference of the face, so that it shows part of the neck. 37 ����������� Ibid., 113.

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Frilled Veils

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Fig. 2.4: Detail of Berta van Heukelom from the tomb of the Lords of Amstel in Sint Nicolaas Church in IJsselstein, the Netherlands, dated 1340–77. Photo: Bertus Brokamp, by ­permission.

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Isis Sturtewagen Type III—This type of frilled veil is even shorter than Type Ia. It covers only the top of the head. Type IV—This type corresponds with the Kleeblatt-Kruseler defined by Anne Liebreich (named for its trefoil shape).38 Other. Frill types During the studied period, several types of frills appear in visual sources, ranging from tiny, single-layered frilled edges to very elaborate, artfully pleated thick frills consisting of six or even more layers of fabric. There were two response categories for the frill type feature: Thin, or single-layer (figs. 2.4 and 2.5). Thick, or multiple-layer (figs. 2.1 and 2.6). It was decided to let this characteristic—thin or thick—predominate over the exact number of layers of fabric that were worked into the frill. In many cases, thick, voluminous frilled edges seem to consist of only one layer of fabric. However, in style and appearance, these have more in common with the thick frills made with several layers of fabric than with the more modest frilled edges also made of a single layer. This article does not address the detail of different frill shapes used on veils (round, triangular, etc.). That would lead too far away from the social angle of this study. However, this would make an interesting subject for future study in itself.39 Other veils Attention to additional veils combined with frilled headdresses is needed because in many cases they heavily influence the appearance of the headdress. In some cases neck veils also have a frilled edge. The frilled neck veil was not listed separately in the typology, as it appears only once by itself without a frilled head veil. In all other cases, it appears to be an accessory to the frilled head veil. There were four main response categories for this feature: Veil—Sometimes a plain veil is placed on top of or underneath the frilled veil. 38 ���������������� Liebreich, “Der Kruseler ���������������������������������� im 15. Jahrhundert,” 221. 39 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Some research on frill types has been done by Camille Luise Dahl and Lene Steenbuch. The results of their joint research and experiments have shown that different types of frills seen in artwork can be constructed from fabric using medieval sewing techniques. Camilla Luise Dahl, “Kruseler og Krusedug,” Herolden 9, no. 2 (2005): 14–19; Camilla Luise Dahl, 1300-tallets krusede hovedduge: Rekonstruktionsforsøg af dronning Helvegs hoveddug i Næstved Skt. Peders Kirke, Workpapers: Tekstilforskning på Middelaldercentret 2 (Nykøbing, Denmark: Middelaldercentret, 2006), 3–20; Lene Steenbuch, “Et rekonstructionsforsoeg af det krusede lin, kruseler,” Herolden 9, no. 2 (2005): 20–21. The author of this article has done experimental research with fretwork or honeycomb frills; Isis Sturtewagen, “En kruset hoveddug: Catherine de Beauchamps hovedtøj,” Middelaldercentrets Nyhedsblad, Winter 2006–07: 20–21; Isis Sturtewagen, “The Fretwork Veil of Catherine De Beauchamp, Countess of Warwick” (Nykobing, Denmark: Middelaldercentret; in process).

46

Frilled Veils

Fig. 2.5: Detail from the tomb of Hendrik II van Withem and Jacoba van Glymen in Sint Lambertus Church in Beersel, Belgium, dated ca. 1460. Photo: Isis Sturtewagen.

47

Isis Sturtewagen

Fig. 2.6: Detail from the tomb of Lodewijk van Lichtervelde and Beatrijs de Tollenaere in Sint Martinus Church in Koolskamp, Belgium, dated ca. 1375–80. Photo: Isis Sturtewagen.

48

Frilled Veils Stiffened band—In earlier examples of frilled veils, sometimes a stiffened cylindershaped band is worn on the crown of the head, fixed on the head by a thin chin band. This combination is often referred to in studies of dress history as touret-gorgerette in French or Gebende in German. Neck veil—Throughout the whole period that was studied, visual records show examples of the frilled veil combined with a veil covering the neck of the wearer. This neck covering is also known as a wimple. Chin-band—This is the smaller version of a wimple, and is virtually identical to the gorgerette, but not paired with a touret. All four categories were further divided in two: one category for the frilled variation, and one for the non-frilled variation, thus producing eight response categories. Finally, there was a ninth category for the visual sources that showed no veils other than the frilled headdress. Coverage and arrangement of the hair Frilled veils appear in visual sources in combination with a wide variety of hairstyles, which were grouped into the following four categories (fig. 2.7): 1  No visible hair—In many cases the hair is completely covered by the headdress. In some cases only a small corner of hair is shown at the temples; these examples were also included in this response category. 2  Loose hair—In many pictorial sources one can see the frilled veil combined with loose hair that is peeking out from beneath the headdress. 3  Short compact braids—From the mid-1340s onward, the fashion of braiding the hair into two short plaits that hung down from the temples to the jawbones gained in popularity (figs. 2.1 and 2.4). 4  Buns/horns—After the decline of the short braids near the end of the fourteenth century, a tendency toward hairstyles that were more vertical in nature can be seen all over Europe.40 At the end of the fourteenth century and the early fifteenth century, in Flanders the hair was often worn in small buns fixed on top of the head or just above the temples (fig. 2.6). Horns are a more extreme and pronounced variation of the buns (fig. 2.5). Embellishment type In many cases, embellishment on frilled veils influences the appearance of the veil and gives an indication of the wealth and social status of the depicted figure. There were three main embellishment types to be found on frilled veils: jeweled circlets (fig. 2.6), elaborate crowns, and jeweled pins or brooches (fig. 2.5). Rare instances of other

40 ���������������������� Georgine de Courtais, ���������� Women’s Headdress and Hairstyles in England from AD 600 to the Present Day (London: Batsford, 1974),���� 22.

49

Isis Sturtewagen

Fig. 2.7: The five main hairstyles worn with frilled veils in Netherlandish art. From left to right: no visible hair, loose hair, short compact braids, buns, and horns. Drawing: Isis ­Sturtewagen.

embellishments were classified along with the absence of embellishments under the no/other embellishments response category. Type of figure In order to gain insight into the social context of the frilled veil, it was necessary first to understand what types of figures were depicted wearing this fashion. The four response categories for this feature were contemporary figures, historical/legendary figures, saintly/biblical figures, and a fourth category for all visual records that were not clear about the nature of the depicted figure. Social class of wearer The contemporary figures were further analyzed for their social status. There were four response categories: nobility, wealthy burghers, ecclesiastical persons, and a last category for undetermined persons. 50

Frilled Veils Types of artworks These were analyzed only for the figures in the contemporary category. There were four response categories: grave monuments, votive portraits (that is, images of donors or other contemporary figures placed in religious scenes in a devotional context), portraits, and a category for other types of art. RESULTS

When analyzing visual sources, the most obvious approach is to look only at what the sources tell you on the surface. It is the goal of this study to expose hidden meanings as well. The information that is readily available from visual sources will be discussed briefly; a second section will be entirely devoted to the more subtle social and societal data that can be derived from the evidence. The frilled veil in visual records Generally, frilled veils are considered to be a fashion of the second half of the fourteenth century.41 However, the visual sources gathered for this study demonstrate that long before 1350, frills were used in headwear and depicted in art. Although only two of the 193 examples in the data set for this study predate 1350, there are at least seven more surviving depictions from before that date; these were omitted from the study sample because they could not be dated to a range narrow enough for analysis. In addition, starting around 1200, one can find visual records of frilled edges on other types of headwear that don’t fall strictly within the definition of a veil (such as filletbarbette arrangements). There is a dramatic increase in the numbers of frilled veils depicted in art from the 1350s onward, and many visual sources can be found from throughout the fifteenth century. The latest examples in the data set are dated ca. 1500, and depictions can also be found from the early sixteenth century (beyond the time scope of this study). When looking at the geographical distribution of depictions of the frilled veil in the Low Countries, a substantially higher quantity can be seen in Flanders, Brabant, Holland, and the lower bishopric of Utrecht compared with the other principalities (table 2.1). It appears to be a pattern that the highest numbers of examples of frilled headwear can be found in the regions with the highest level of urbanization. Within these regions, most visual sources originate from influential and important towns: Bruges, Ghent, Tournai, Brussels, and Utrecht. In the less urbanized regions, there also seem to be clusters of visual sources in the urban centers. This concentration in and around towns can be explained by the nature of art production itself: The quantity and quality of art production was, in the late Middle Ages, increasingly higher in urban 41 ��������������������� Grönke and Weinlich, Mode aus Modeln, 28; Liebreich, “Der Kruseler im 15. Jahrhundert,” 219; Ottilie Rady, “���� Der Kruseler, �����������” Zeitschrift für Historische Waffen- und Kostümkunde, n.s. 1 (10), no. 8 (1925): 131–36; Tilghman, ����������������������������������������� “Giovanna Cenami’s Veil,” 158.

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Isis Sturtewagen centers than it was in rural settings. It might, however, also indicate that frilled veils were mostly worn in an urban context. Table 2.1: Visual records of frilled veils in the Low Countries, by principality, 1200–1500 Principality

       Number

    % of total

Flanders

88

45.5%

Brabant

55

28.5%

Lower Bishopric of Utrecht

19

10%

Holland

15

8%

Hainault

4

2%

Zeeland

4

2%

Artois

3

1.5%

Upper Bishopric of Utrecht

2

1%

Namur

1

0.5%

Cleves

1

0.5%

Guelders

1

0.5%

Jülich

0

0

Liège

0

0

Total

193

100%

On the subject of the morphological evolution of the frilled veil, the following model emerges from this research. The U-shaped veil (Type I) appears to be the earliest type to have existed in these regions. It also seems to have been the most popular type throughout the time periods and regions of this study; no less than 112 examples of this type are included in the source material. This comes as no surprise, since one of the most common headdress styles throughout the later Middle Ages was a veil draped on the head in exactly the same manner. In the Low Countries, the oldest type of U-shaped veil was edged with only a very fine frill, which appears in visual sources from the thirteenth century (fig. 2.8). In the fourteenth century, this basic type is still widely shown in period art. The use of simple U-shaped veils with a thin or single frilled edge continued until at least the end of the fifteenth century. During the second half of this century, the veils were often folded double, so that the frilled edge appears somewhat thicker. U-shaped veils with a thick frilled edge appear in depictions from the Low Countries from about 1350 until the end of the fifteenth century. With only one exception, all examples of U-shaped veils with a thick frilled edge that date from after ca. 1450 are shown on images of saints or biblical figures. A more detailed discussion of this trend will be made below. In the early phase, the U-shaped veils were shown mostly without any hair visible. Once hair is seen, the arrangement of the hair seems to be consistent with contemporary 52

Frilled Veils

Fig. 2.8: Detail from the shrine of Saint Gertrude of Nivelles, Collegiate Church of Nivelles, Belgium, executed in the 1290s. Drawing: Isis Sturtewagen, after Claudine Donnay-­Rocmans and Monique Hargot, La Châsse Gothique de Sainte-Gertrude de Nivelles, Exposition ­parmanente des vestiges dans la Collégiale de Nivelles (Nivelles, Belgium: Office de Tourisme de Nivelles, 1997), 8.

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Isis Sturtewagen fashions, evolving from short braids, to small buns on top of the head, to elaborate horned styles from ca. 1425 onward. Most sources showing loose hair along with frilled veils (with both thin and thick frilled edges) are depictions of the Virgin Mary. In some other cases it is not clear who or what is being depicted. It is unclear whether or not real women of the medieval period would have worn their hair loose under their veils, as it was customary for married women to cover or braid their hair.42 During the whole period of its use, the U-shaped veil could be paired with a wimple covering the neck; in some cases, the lower edge of this wimple was frilled as well. The U-shaped veil could also be worn with the hanging sides pinned together under the chin. This style seems to have been especially popular in the Northern Netherlands during the last half of the fifteenth century. Type Ia seems to have been popular between ca. 1450 and ca. 1500. The sample set includes eight depictions from this period. One other example is older: It is the short frilled veil worn by St. Anne on The Marriage of the Virgin by Robert Campin, painted ca. 1430 (Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid). The frilled veil appears to be fixed at the back of the neck, creating a wreath of frills around the crown of the head. In some cases this type of veil is accompanied by a narrow chin band, or by a wimple. Together with the wimple, another veil could be added on top of the frilled veil, making up a headdress consisting of at least three pieces. Type II is less prevalent among the collected sources than is the U-shaped veil: Only eight examples of this type have been found. Outside of Flanders this type does not seem to have enjoyed much popularity.43 This veil arrangement seems to have existed only with a frilled edge; similar arrangements with non-frilled edges are not known to me. In some cases, an interruption in the frilled edge can be observed, indicating that the veil is pinned or otherwise fixed together to form the circular frilled edge. The range of hairstyles combined with this veil type is mostly consistent with those found with the U-shaped veil. Only loose hair and horns do not seem to have been used together with O-shaped veils; however, the combination with the smaller buns does exist. Type III, the flat frilled veil, appears around 1425 and disappears by 1475. Only seven examples of this type were found. The frilled edge of the veil is much shorter than the U-shaped veil of Type Ia. It covers only the top of the head, and always rests on top of a horned headdress. It seems this type of frilled veil was worn only in Flanders and Brabant. Type IV, the so-called Kleeblatt-Kruseler, is very rare in the Low Countries. It appears only twice in the source material, in both cases in copies of lost artworks. The originals of both works probably date back to 1425–50. In the same period this type

42 �������������������������������������� Françoise Piponnier and Perrine Mane, Dress in the Middle Ages, trans. Caroline Beamish, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 41. ��� 43 �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� I am aware of only one similar example outside of Flanders: a statue dated around 1375 in the collection of the Stadtmuseum of Cologne. In that case, however, the frilled edge fits snugly around the face, so the veil does not leave the neck exposed.

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Frilled Veils was very popular in Germany, where it was often combined with a wimple, a practice not seen in the Netherlandish examples.44 The remaining 55 records that fall in the “other” response category mostly show loosely draped veils. These veils are often depicted in fifteenth-century artwork. They are worn only by saints or biblical women, and with a certain nonchalance: The veil is shown as having partly or completely slipped off the head in the commotion of the moment. The Virgin Mary is often depicted wearing a jeweled circlet with this type of veil. The frilled veil in medieval society The first question that arose was this: What types of figures were depicted in visual records wearing frilled headwear? Figure 2.9 shows that of a total of 193 frilled veils, 24 percent are depicted on contemporary figures, 4 percent on historical or legendary figures, and 46 percent on biblical or saintly figures. In 26 percent of cases, the nature of the figure is unclear.45 When plotted on a timeline, these numbers, as shown in figures 2.10 and 2.11, make clear immediately that the majority of biblical and saintly figures in the sample date from after 1400, and that number increases toward the end of the fifteenth century. There appear to be two peaks in contemporary representations of frilled veils: the first one in the 1350–75 period, and the second in the 1425–50 period. The decrease of the contemporary figures around the turn of the fourteenth century is matched by a peak in visual records with unclear figures. Nearly all of the unclear records are of a very specific type: They were consoles, mostly belonging to

26%

Contemporary Historical/Legendary

46%

Saints/Biblical Unclear

24% 4%

Fig. 2.9: Figure types in the collected sources (n=193). 44 ���������������� Liebreich, “Der ���������������������������������� Kruseler im 15. Jahrhundert,” 221. 45 �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� It is important to isolate the biblical and saintly figures and to a certain extent also historical and legendary figures, because often these are depicted wearing archaic, exotic, or fantastic clothing and attire. It was clear that in the case of frilled headwear, including them in the analysis would seriously distort our view of the use of these veils in a civil context.

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Isis Sturtewagen chimneys, some with other architectural purposes. Most were originally part of the interior or exterior of civil buildings, of both private and public nature. Given this secular context, one is tempted to include this group of artworks in the category of contemporary figures. If this were to be done, the statistics would show an increase rather than a decrease in contemporary records of frilled veils. Secondly, the social status of figures within the contemporary category was analyzed. Among the forty-six contemporary figures, thirty-three (72 percent) belonged to the nobility, eight (17 percent) were wealthy burghers, one (2 percent) was ecclesiastical, and four (9 percent) had an unclear social standing (fig. 2.12). Common townspeople and farmers/peasants were completely absent from the visual records. The oldest record of a burgher woman wearing a frilled veil dates to the 1380s and comes from Bruges.46 The only source for the use of frilled veils in a ecclesiastical context is a statue showing a nun from the late thirteenth century.47 Depictions of nobility and burgers often represent self-glorification. This contemporary category includes fourteen funerary monuments (30 percent), which include twelve three-dimensional stone effigies, one incised stone slab, and one brass engraving; eight portraits (17 percent); and eighteen votive portraits (40 percent), ordered by the depicted person or a relative (fig. 2.13). The remaining six (13 percent) of contemporary examples are mostly scenes of life at court. Some sources can also be linked to engagement or marriage rituals. Examples here are the Arnolfini double portrait by Jan van Eyck, the Seven Sacraments altarpiece by Rogier van der Weyden (Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp), and an enameled brooch with what is presumed to be an engaged couple in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. When looking at the category of biblical and saintly figures, it is evident that the frilled veil is depicted in a variety of circumstances, ranging from scenes related to birth and motherhood (mostly in connection to the Virgin Mary and Christ), scenes of marriage or engagement (the marriage of the Virgin), travel (the flight into Egypt, scenes from pilgrimages), and mourning and death (lamentation scenes and pietàs). In the category of undetermined figures, there is one striking group of visual records showing frilled veils: carnal pewter badges. Current scholarship does not agree on the meaning of these badges with erotic scenes. Scholars have suggested that they might have been used as amulets for protection against evil or for the improvement

46 ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� This record, the effigial slab of Michiel van Assenede, Adriana Stat, and Elisabeth van Aertryke, is now lost and only known to us by means of an engraving in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, hs. 455. Michiel van Assenede belonged to a wealthy and influential butcher’s family. He himself became alderman in 1369, counselor in 1374, and eventually mayor in 1381. P. de Stoop, “Particularités sur les Corporations et Métiers de Bruges,” Annales de la Société d’ Emulation pour l’Etude de l’Histoire et des Antiquités de la Flandre, 2nd ser., no. 1 (1843): 136–38. 47 ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� This polychrome wooden statue shows a nun wearing a U-shaped veil with a wimple, of which only the wimple has a pleated edge. On top she wears a black veil. This sculpture is in the Royal Museums of Art and History, Brussels, inv. no. 1003.

56

Frilled Veils

35

Number of images

30 25 20

Contemporary

15

Historical/Legendary

10

Saints/Biblical Unclear

5

1475-1500

1450-1475

1425-1450

1400-1425

1375-1400

1350-1375

1325-1350

1300-1325

1275-1300

1250-1275

1225-1250

1200-1225

0

Fig. 2.10: Number of images per figure type dated in 25-year intervals over time (n=145).

35

Number of images

30 25 20 Historical/Legendary 15 Saints/Biblical 10 Unclear 5

1450-1500

1400-1450

1350-1400

1300-1350

1250-1300

1200-1250

0

Fig. 2.11: Number of images per figure type dated in 50-year intervals over time (n=48). None of the figures from the contemporary category fell into this group.

57

Isis Sturtewagen

9% 2%

Nobility

17%

Burghers Ecclesiastical Unclear 72%

Fig. 2.12: Social strata represented within the category of contemporary figures (n=46).

13% 30% Tomb/Effigy 17%

Votive portrait Portrait Other

40%

Fig. 2.13: Types of artistic representation within the category of contemporary figures (n=46).

of fertility, or that they were simply popular erotica.48 Six pewter badges are included in the data set; five of these show erotic scenes, and one is a pilgrim badge.

48 ��������������������������������������������������� Malcolm Jones, “The Sexual and Secular Badges,” in Heilig en Profaan 2: 1200 laatmiddeleeuwse insignes uit openbare en particuliere collecties, ed. H. J. E. van Beuningen, A. M. Koldeweij, and D. Kicken, Rotterdam Papers 12 (Cothen, Netherlands: Stichting Middeleeuwse Beligieuze en Profane Insignes, 2001): 204–5.

58

Frilled Veils 90

Number of images

80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10

ar Un cle

Sa

in

ts /B

ibl

ica

l

ge nd ar y al/ Le st or ic Hi

Co nt em po ra

ry

0

Thick frill

Thin frill

Fig. 2.14: Types of frills depicted on contemporary, historical/legendary, and saintly/biblical figures (n=193).

90

Number of images

80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10

lea r Un c

l ca bli ts in Sa

Hi

st

or

ica

Co n

l/L

te

eg

/B i

en

m po

da

ra r

ry

y

0

With fashionable hairdo

Without fashionable hairdo

Fig. 2.15: Types of hairstyles depicted on contemporary, historical/legendary, and saintly/­ biblical figures (n=193).

59

Isis Sturtewagen Lastly it was considered whether there were differences in the types of frilled veils depicted in each figure type group. Frill types (thick or thin frills), hairstyle (fashionable or not), and the presence of embellishments and accessories (jeweled circlets, crowns, and brooches) were examined. The picture that emerges from figures 2.14, 2.15, and 2.16 is that the frilled veils on contemporary figures seem to be both more fashionable and more complex. In most cases contemporary figures are depicted wearing a veil with a thick, eye-catching frill. Thick frills are very rare in the category of biblical and saintly figures. The same pattern can be seen with the hairstyles, even more pronounced than with the frill types. With respect to the presence of embellishments, however, the picture is similar for all four figure types: The larger part of each category has no embellishments. In these areas of style, the unclear category more closely resembles the contemporary category than the biblical/saintly category, adding evidence for the likelihood that most of the unclear figures are likely to be contemporary. INTERPRETATION

The results of this statistical analysis indicate that in the Low Countries, the frilled veil was a popular headdress among the wealthy top layer of society. The 1350s show the first depictions of frills in headwear worn by the nobility, and the first appearance of veils with a thick frilled edge. Before that time, only one visual source clearly shows a noble woman.49 The wealthy burghers of important Flemish and Dutch towns appear to have adopted this fashion from at least the 1380s onward. In the visual record, two peaks in the depiction of frilled veils appear, the first around 1350–75, the second around 1425–50. It is difficult to explain this lack of visual sources in the early fifteenth century. One possibility is that the frilled veil was less popular in this period, and saw a revival a few decades later. However, if one includes the category of unclear figure types—a group of visual sources constituting 26 percent of the total visual records and mostly consisting of figural consoles, with a civil character in both the production and use of the artworks themselves and the nature of the depicted veils—it can be stated that the frilled veil was very popular during the whole period from 1350 to 1450, and declined in use only after that date. This decline in visual records seems to indicate that around this time, the frilled veil was abandoned as a fashionable accessory. Since frilled veils were still often included in religious scenes, they were obviously still known or existed in the memory of contemporaries as a piece of clothing. It is impossible to tell only from visual records whether the frilled veil disappeared completely toward the end of the century, or whether it was still used by certain groups of women or for certain occasions. However, since we can see frilled edges in later headwear (for example, in the French and English hoods 49 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� This example is a fragment of an anonymous incised slab showing a woman in fashionable headdress of the second half of the thirteenth century. The slab is situated in the Sint-Baafs Cathedral in Ghent, Belgium.

60

Frilled Veils 90

Number of images

80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10

lea r Un c

l ibl ica Sa int

s/ B

ge n Le sto ric al/ Hi

Co

nt

em po

da

rar

ry

y

0

With embellishments

Without embellishments

Fig. 2.16: Embellishments depicted on contemporary, historical/legendary, and saintly/biblical figures (n=193).

that appear in art starting at the very beginning of the sixteenth century), it is not too hard to imagine some sort of continuity between these styles. It seems the frilled veil was a piece of attire that was used to mark social standing, or at least perceived as doing so, in the late medieval Low Countries. There are no indications that after 1400 the frilled veil received a ceremonial status, nor that it was used artistically to indicate ceremony or historicization. The occasions in which the frilled veils are used in art are extremely diverse, both in religious and non-religious scenes. At most it can be said that the frilled veil was depicted in more or less formal situations. WRITTEN ACCOUNTS

The above conclusions were put to the test by comparing them with written sources mentioning frilled veils. The Middle Dutch name for a frilled veil is ranse (other spellings: rans, ranss, ransse, rantse, ransgen, ranskijn). The frilled edge itself is referred to as lobben or lobbekens. Written records of the ranse were found only in the Northern Netherlands, the earliest one dating to 1361–62, the most recent one to the last quarter

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Isis Sturtewagen of the fifteenth century.50 Outside that region, one frilled veil is mentioned in the will of Marie Narrette from Douai, France, from 1405.51 Of the 25 written records of frilled veils collected for this study, 15 of them fall in the date range of 1435–50. Written accounts attest to the use of frilled veils in the contexts both of the nobility and, more often, of wealthy townspeople. Most records can be found in wills or in lists of donations to the church.52 In most cases they are mentioned in lists of headgear, precious jewelry, and clothing, indicating that they are of a costly and valuable nature. In the Low Countries one legislative text from Kampen (dated 1366) also mentions frilled veils: It regulates the number of layers that were permitted, in this case three.53 Written texts, however, tell little or nothing about the occasions on which the veils were worn. There are two instances in which a frilled veil is mentioned as being worn for dancing.54 This information supports our conclusions based on visual records. Finally, it can be said that frilled veils existed in the studied region from at least the thirteenth century. They increased dramatically in popularity from the mid-fourteenth century onward. Between 1360 and 1380 the frilled veil was adopted by the burgher elites throughout the Low Countries. The frilled veil was still in use as an actual piece of clothing at least until the end of the 1470s. Written accounts indicate the existence of frilled veils until the end of the fifteenth century. We cannot tell, however, if they were still actually worn at that time. As the most recent sources both record donations of frilled veils to

50 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ The earliest written record of frilled veils in the Low Countries can be found in the accounts of the County of Holland: “Des woensdaghes na Sinte Jans dach Decollacio in den Haghe ghegheven Elen tcamerwijf om zeepe ende zide tot mier vrouwen ende hare joncvrouwen ransen behoef XII d. groot.” [On Wednesday after Saint John’s day in the Hague Elen the chambermaid received 12 d. groot for soap and silk for the frilled veils of my lady and her ladies-in-waiting.] The lady mentioned in this quotation is Margaretha van Brieg, the wife of Albrecht of Bavaria. D. E. H. Boer, D. J. Faber, and H. P. H. Jansen, De Rekeningen van de grafelijkheid van Holland uit de Beierse periode, 1358–1361 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1980), 571. Translation by Bertus Brokamp and myself. 51 ���������������������������������������������������������������������������� M. C. Howell, “Fixing Movables: Gifts by Testament in Late Medieval Douai,” Past & Present 150 (1996): 6. Th. H. F. van Riemsdijk, Geschiedenis van de Kerspelkerk van St. Jacob te Utrecht (Leiden: Brill, 1882), 52 ������������������������� 217, 219, 226, and 228; F. A. L. Rappard, “De rekeningen van de rentmeesters der Buurkerk te Utrecht in de 15e eeuw,” Bijdragen en mededeelingen van het Historisch Genootschap gevestigd te Utrecht 3 (1880): 45, 74, 82, 85, 87, 101, 129, 146, 161, 175, and 178. 53 �������������������������������������������������������������������� “Ende die ranse niet meer dan van drien vacken ende sunder lobben”; Boeck van Rechten der Stad Kampen (Zwolle, Netherlands: W. J. E. Tjeenk Willink and J. J. Tijl, 1875), 32. The exact meaning of this fragment is uncertain, as both vacken and lobben can mean “layer” in several contexts; in this sentence, however, they appear to be distinct, but the difference is unclear. 54 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� The older quotation dates to ca. 1437: “Die guede man dede sijns wijfs raet; Si ghinc hem cleden recht of hi soude gaen dansen. Gelijc ene vrouwe was sijn ghelaet; ghehult was hi mit eenre ransen.” [The good man followed his wife’s advice; She clothed him as if he was going to a dance. Like a woman was his face, covered was he with a frilled veil.] Eelco Verwijs, Van vrouwen ende van minne: middelnederlandsche gedichten uit de XIVde en XVde eeuw, Bibliotheek der Middelnederlandsche Letterkunde 4–5 (1871): 35. The second quotation dates to ca. 1485–1500: “Gy borgerynne mit dycken ransen; gy pleget hoeveren ind toe dansen.” [You female citizen with thick frilled veils, you court and you dance.] Hellmut Rosenfeld, Der Mittelalterliche Totentanz, Entstehung, Entwicklung, Bedeutung (Münster, Germany: Böhlau Verlag, 1954), 335–36. Translation by Bertus Brokamp and myself.

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Frilled Veils charitable institutions in Utrecht, it may have been that these items had already been out of use for some time. The nobility seemingly stopped wearing the frilled veil in the 1460s, but it was still common in burgher milieus in the Northern Netherlands, and possibly, but there is no certainty about this, in the southern principalities as well. The frilled veil was a precious and costly item in a lady’s wardrobe, that indicated, together with other costume items, the wealth and prominence of its owner.

63

What Is the Pearl-Maiden Wearing, and Why?

Kimberly Jack

Anyone who has read and studied Pearl, the late-fourteenth-century Middle English poem classified variously as a dream vision or consolatio, likely retains only a vague mental image of the Pearl-Maiden’s garments. In Pearl—which survives only in the Cotton Nero A.x. manuscript along with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Patience, and Cleanness or Purity—the Pearl-Maiden acts as a guide and instructress to the grief-stricken narrator or Dreamer. The Maiden appears within the Dreamer’s vision wearing a brilliant white gown ornamented with pearls and a crown decorated with yet more pearls, and she bears—somehow affixed to the breast of her gown—“a wonder perle withouten wemme” [a wondrous pearl without equal] (221–22). In addition to this mention of the wonder perle, the poem opens and closes with pearl references, the Dreamer identifies the Maiden herself as the lost pearl he grieves over (242), the Pearl-Maiden reiterates to the Dreamer the parable of the Pearl of Price (729–32), and the Maiden refers to Christ as her “dere Juelle” [dear Jewel] or pearl (795). Due to the extensive repetition and diversity of pearl images throughout the poem, the wonder perle on the Maiden’s gown has been a major focus of scholarship since the poem was

A version of this paper was presented in May 2009 at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, Michigan. Thanks to Robin Netherton and Melanie Schuessler for their advice and research assistance, and to Yann Kervran for help in locating images.   ����������������������������������������� Malcolm Andrew and Ronald Waldron, eds., The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript, 4th ed. (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2002), 53–110. Unless otherwise specified, all further quotations from Pearl are taken from this edition. Parenthetical citations in the text indicate line number.   ������������������������ The earliest editors of Pearl viewed the poem as an elegy for the poet’s dead daughter; see Richard Morris, ed., Early English Alliterative Poems, in the West-Midlands Dialect of the Fourteenth Century (London: Trubner, 1864); Sir Israel Gollancz, ed., Pearl: An English Poem of the Fourteenth Century, 2nd ed. (London: Chatto and Windus, 1921); and Charles G. Osgood, ed., The Pearl: A Middle English Poem (London: D. C. Heath, 1906). An alternative, allegorical tradition was initiated by William Henry Schofield, “The Nature and Fabric of The Pearl,” PMLA 19 (1904): 154–203. Although the debate continues, identification of her precise identity is outside the scope of my current argument.   ���������������� Matt. 13:45–46.

Kimberly Jack

Fig. 3.1: Rubbing of a funerary brass commemorating Elizabeth, first wife of Sir ­Reginald Cobham, second Baron Cobham of Sterborough, ca. 1380, Lingfield, Surrey. Image ­reproduced by courtesy of H. Martin Stuchfield.

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What Is the Pearl-Maiden Wearing? first edited in 1869. The symbolism of this singular pearl, the Pearl-Maiden herself, and the Pearl of Price has, understandably, been explored and examined in great depth. However, amid attempts to assess the unanswerably large question of what the wonder perle signifies, the garment to which it is attached has been ignored. In most critical examinations, the details of the Pearl-Maiden’s attire blur and contract into an ornate, white setting described only to highlight the centrally located wonder perle. Although I agree that the central perle does, indeed, merit the critical attention it continues to receive, the purpose of this study is to examine the setting rather than the stone. What is this garment to which the “perle withouten wemme” is attached? Is it, to cite E. V. Gordon’s oft-quoted description, merely “a simple form of the aristocratic dress of the second half of the fourteenth century”? Is the gown a bleaunt, a style described by Charles G. Osgood—and later simplified by Gordon—as a “surcoat” or overgarment “with openings at the side extending from the lowest hem up towards the waist” and “short sleeves reaching to the elbow” from the back of which “hung long lappeȝ” or “tippets”? I contend that these descriptions, which have been summarized, repeated, or merely footnoted since they were developed by the earliest editors of the poems, are, essentially, inaccurate. The description in these notes has twisted actual features of fourteenth-century English fashion—adapting them to match competing editors’ readings of a few key words and phrases—to the point where the resulting garment no longer corresponds with the visual record of contemporary fashions. The Pearl­Maiden’s gown is not the “simple form of aristocratic dress” accepted by editors for over five decades, but is a specific form of aristocratic dress—a sideless surcoat—which was worn to distinguish royalty during ceremonial occasions, was portrayed by artists as a costume for brides, and was featured in funeral effigies from the mid-fourteenth century through the fifteenth century (fig. 3.1). The symbolic and semantic content of this garment style would have been clear to the poem’s late-fourteenth-century readers, allowing the poet to visually underscore the Pearl-Maiden’s existence as a departed soul, and her newly elevated status as a Queen of Heaven and Bride of Christ, prior to the dialogue that explicates these details to the grief-stricken and oblivious Dreamer. On a purely practical note, the construction of the sideless surcoat further answers the logistical quandary of how and where, precisely, the wonder perle was attached to the Pearl-Maiden’s garment.

  ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� To cite only a few examples: William Henry Schofield, “Symbolism, Allegory, and Autobiography in the Pearl,” PMLA 24 (1909): 585–675; Robert J. Blanch and Julian N. Wasserman, From Pearl to Gawain: Forme to Fynisment (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1995); or many of the essays from John Conley, ed., The Middle English Pearl: Critical Essays (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1970).   ������������������� E. V. Gordon, ed., Pearl (Oxford: Clarendon, 1953), 56 n. 228.   �������� Osgood, Pearl, 63 n. 197.   �������� Gordon, Pearl, 56 n. 228. Cited by Andrew and Waldron, Poems, 63 n. 197–228.

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Kimberly Jack TEXTUAL EVIDENCE

The description of the Pearl-Maiden includes her physique, garments, accessories, complexion, and mannerisms, with evidence for the form and construction of her gown sprinkled through multiple stanzas. When the Dreamer first spies her seated at the base of the crystal cliffs, he states, “Blysnande whyt watz hyr bleaunt” [her bleaunt was gleaming white] (163). He further notes that she wore “araye ryalle” [royal array] (191), but he withholds details until later stanzas. In 197 to 199 he declares that “blysnande whyt watz hir beauuiys / Vpon at sydez, and bounden bene / Wyth þe myryest margarys” [her beauuiys was gleaming white, open at the sides, and bound with the merriest pearls]. He then notes in 201 that it has “lappez large … / Dubbed wyth double perle and dyȝt” [large lappes decorated with a double row of pearls] (201–3). Her “cortel” [kirtle or visible undergown] is made “of self sute” [the same fabric], and it, too, is “vmbepyȝte” [set] with pearls (203–4). More pearls are “pyȝt” [set] “in porfyl” [fur trim] at “vche a hemme / At honde, at sydez, at ouerture” [each hem, at the hands, at the sides, at the neck opening] (216–17). This outfit is decorated “Wyth whyte perle and non oþer gemme, burnished white” [with white pearls and no other gem, burnished white], and set with the wonder perle in the middle of her breast (219–22). She wears a “coroune” [crown] that is likewise bejewelled with “marjorys and non oþer ston” [pearls and no other stone], is “Hiȝe pynakled of cler quyt perle, / Wyth flurted flowrez perfet vpon” [high, peaked, of clear, white pearls, and decorated with flowers] (205–8). “To hed” [on her head] she wears “non oþer werle” [no other circlet], but her “semblaunt” [face] is “vmbegon” [enclosed] by a “lere-leke,” a term variously glossed as radiant skin, wimple, or hair (209–11). The color of her garments, white, is clearly established (163, 195, 203, and 220), as is the fact that both gown and crown are ornamented with pearls, and only pearls (196–97, 202, 203–4, 216–19, 221–22). However, the form and style of her gown are less easily determined, and have, therefore, been the subject of editorial and critical speculation.

  ��������������������������������� I use the manuscript spelling of beauuiys rather than Andrew and Waldron’s emendation as beau biys. Discussion of this editorial emendation follows.   �������� Morris (Early English, 106 n. 210) emends the manuscript’s “lere-leke” to “hair eke,” rendering the line as “Her hair also all about her gone.” This is supported by Gollancz, Pearl, 130 n. 210, and Osgood, Pearl, 65 n. 210. E. V. Gordon and C. T. Onions propose reading leke as the past tense of louke [to form one mass], “Notes on the text and interpretation of Pearl,” Medium Aevum 2, no. 3 (1933): 165–88. Mary Vincent Hillmann glosses “lere leke” (which she presents without the hyphen) as “face-radiance,” from the Old Norse hleor [cheek] and Old English lacan [to flash]; Hillmann, “Pearl: Lere Leke, 210,” Modern Language Notes 59 (1944): 417–18. Andrew and Waldron (Poems, 64 n. 210–16) prefer Hillmann’s reading of lere [cheek] over proposed emendations, but cite the Middle English Dictionary to read leke as a form of lake [fine linen], leading them to gloss “lere-leke” as “facelinen, wimple.” However, according to Laura Hodges (pers. comm.), during the second half of the fourteenth century, wimples were typically worn only by nuns, widows, and older women, and were not worn without corresponding veils or headcoverings. Since 209 states that the Pearl-Maiden wore “non oþer werle” [no other covering] but the crown on her head, it is unlikely that lere-leke refers to a wimple.

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What Is the Pearl-Maiden Wearing? BLEAUNT AND BEAUUIYS

Since early editions, two terms have been cited as descriptors for the style and form of the Pearl-Maiden’s gown: bleaunt and beauuiys. The first, bleaunt, is found in line 163 and is one emendation suggested for beauuiys in 197. Richard Morris glosses bleaunt as “a robe of linen,” based on an Old English etymology for “fine linen.”10 Sir Israel Gollancz traces the word through the Old French bliant, a “kind of tunic or uppergarment, or rich stuff or fabric used for this garment.”11 Other editors and translators simply gloss bleaunt with generic terms such as “mantle,” “garment,” “robe,” or “gown.”12 Despite the slight variations in etymology and glossing, these editors all accept bleaunt in line 163 as a noun signifying the specific “blysnande whyt” garment the Dreamer first observes when he spies the Pearl-Maiden from a distance. The use of bleaunt as a descriptor for the style of the Pearl-Maiden’s garment, however, is both anachronistic and less likely in this Middle English text than a French source. In French, bliaut, a variant of the Middle English bleaunt, is a twelfth-century term signifying a costly material or a lady’s court dress.13 Janet Ellen Snyder observes both one- and two-piece versions of what she identifies as the bliaut on female figures in early Gothic sculptures from twelfth-century France (fig. 3.2). She describes the one-piece bliaut as “an ankle-length tunic with a flaring skirt and long, hanging sleeves,” and the two-piece bliaut gironé as having a “tight bodice” and a skirt “that was finely

10 �������� Morris, Early English, 106 n. 163. 11 ���������� Gollancz, Pearl, 124–25 n. 163, cites a variant spelling of bliaut as bliant. The link to Old French bliaut is also noted by Osgood, Pearl, 63–64 n. 197; Mary Vincent Hillmann, The Pearl: Mediaeval Text with a Literal Translation and Interpretation (New York: College of Saint Elizabeth Press, 1961), 121; William Vantuono, Pearl: An Edition with Verse Translation (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 19; and Victor Watts, Pearl: A Modernized Version of the Middle English Poem (London: Enitharmon, 2005), 33. 12 Bleaunt is glossed as “mantle” by Gordon, Pearl, 121; A. C. Cawley and J. J. Anderson, eds., Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1976), 9; Margaret Williams, trans., The Pearl-Poet: His Complete Works (New York: Random House, 1967), 272; Andrew and Waldron, Poems, 305; and Charles Moorman, ed., The Works of the Gawain-Poet (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1977), 214. The term is translated as “garment” or “vesture” by Osgood, Pearl, 113; Hillmann, Pearl, 11; Brian Stone, trans., Medieval English Verse (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1964), 147; Vernard Eller, trans., Pearl of Christian Counsel for the Brokenhearted (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1983), 24; as “robe” by John Gardner, trans., The Complete Works of the Gawain-Poet (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), 101; Ann S. Haskell, ed., A Middle English Anthology (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1985), 287; and J. J. Anderson, ed., Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Cleanness, Patience (London: Everyman, 2003), 7; and as “gown” by Marie Borroff, trans., Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Patience, and Pearl: Verse Translations (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001), 129; and J. R. R. Tolkien, trans., Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo (London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1979), 85. 13 ������������������������� Eunice Rathbone Goddard, Women’s Costume in French Texts of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries, Johns Hopkins Studies in Romance Literatures and Languages 7 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1927), 40.

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Kimberly Jack

Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the image on this page please refer to the printed version of this book.

Fig. 3.2: Column figure, right jamb, west portal, Saint-Maurice, Cathedral of Angers, France. Photo: Janet Ellen Snyder, by permission.

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What Is the Pearl-Maiden Wearing? pleated into a fitted, low waistband.”14 The form-fitting torso of both styles is achieved by lacing the sides from waist to underarm, openings which, on seductive females in romances, might be left loose enough to reveal the chemise [undergarment] or even bare skin beneath.15 Gollancz’ derivation of the poet’s bleaunt from the Old French implicates this garment. But while references to the bliaut as a garment style rather than a material are frequent in French texts, the double use is significantly less common in Middle English.16 Furthermore, the bliaut was a distinctly twelfth-century style, would be decidedly anachronistic—and possibly ridiculous—to fourteenth-century readers, and would be somewhat scandalous if vpon at sydez to show skin or undergarments on a Bride of Christ such as the Pearl-Maiden. If bleaunt does not refer to the style of the Pearl-Maiden’s garment, then we must explore alternate readings of the term. Morris originally derived bleaunt from an Old English word meaning “fine linen.” This connection is largely ignored in favor of Gollancz’ reading of “upper-garment,” but it is interesting to note that the Middle English Dictionary defines bleaunt primarily as “a costly silk fabric,” and only secondarily as “a garment” or “a bedspread” made “of this fabric.”17 Eunice Goddard confirms that variants of the term signify costly material in Middle High German, Middle English, and Old High French. It should also be remembered that the Dreamer describes the Pearl-Maiden’s gleaming white bleaunt when he originally sees her, at a distance, seated at the base of the crystal cliffs (159–63). The distance and suddenness of the Dreamer’s observation suggest that bleaunt refers not to a specific clothing style, but to the overall quality and sheen of the fabric from which her garments are made. The second term often cited as a descriptor for the Pearl-Maiden’s garment style appears in line 197 of the manuscript as beauuiys, but has been variously emended as beaumys, beau amice, beau biys, and even bleaunt of biys. The line partially restates the Dreamer’s original assessment of the Pearl-Maiden’s garment, rephrasing “Blisnande whyt watz hyr bleaunt” as “Al blysnande whyt watz hir beauuiys.” The variation from bleaunt to beauuiys was extensively debated by early editors of the poem. Gollancz reads beauuiys as a contraction of beau amice into beaumys, through Old French from the Low Latin amictus.18 In explaining the garment’s construction, he notes that an amice was “the ecclesiastical garment of white linen folded diagonally, worn by celebrant 14 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ Janet Ellen Snyder, “From Content to Form: Court Clothing in Mid-Twelfth-Century Northern French Sculpture,” in Encountering Medieval Textiles and Dress, ed. Désirée G. Koslin and Janet E. Snyder (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 85–101, at 87. In contrast to Snyder’s and Goddard’s assessment that the visual evidence portrays a two-piece garment, Christina Frieder Waugh argues that the bliaut was a single-piece garment with gores added to form the skirt; Waugh, “Well-Cut Through the Body: Fitted Clothing in Twelfth-Century Europe,” Dress 26 (1999): 3–16. 15 ������������� See Goddard, Women’s Costume, 52; Waugh, “Well-Cut,” 7; Jennifer Harris, “‘Estroit vestu et menu cosu’: Evidence for the Construction of Twelfth-Century Dress,” in Medieval Art: Recent Perspectives, ed. Gale R. Owen-Crocker and Timothy Graham (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), 94. 16 ��������� Goddard, Women’s Costume, 42, 47; Harris, “Estroit vestu,” 100 n. 4. 17 Middle English Dictionary, online ed. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), s.v. “bleunt”; variants include blihand, blehand, blihaut, blyot, bleaut. 18 ���������� Gollancz, Pearl, 127 n. 197.

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Kimberly Jack priests, formerly on the head,” and that a “like word,” the Old French aumusse, “was also applied to an article of costume of the religious orders made of, or lined with, grey fur.” Osgood discounts Gollancz’ connection between a priest’s fur hood and a woman’s overgown, and radically emends beaumys into bleaunt of biys.19 This serves a dual purpose. It reinforces—or, as critics of the emendation note, it repeats—the reference to bleaunt in 163. It also opens up a symbolic reading of biys as the byssino splendenti, the fine linen garment worn by the Bride of Christ in Revelations 19:8.20 This connection is also noted by Gollancz, although he connects the byssino to the blysnande whyt of both lines rather than emend the manuscript’s uiys into biys. In defense of Gollancz’ reading, Mary Vincent Hillmann notes that amictus can be traced to an eighth-century variation of anagolagium, a vestment defined by Isidore of Seville as “a sort of linen wrap used by women to throw over their shoulders.”21 This counters Osgood’s critique with a lay, feminine referent for amice. However, later editions of the poem wind a middle course between Gollancz and Osgood. Some editors follow Gollancz in claiming the Pearl-Maiden wears an “upper garment” or amice, but many cannot resist the symbolic power of Osgood’s biys, resulting in a frequent rendering as beau biys, a significant stretch from the manuscript’s beauuiys, but not as radical as bleaunt of bys.22 This brief history of editorial wrangling suggests that beauuiys, like bleaunt, does not specifically indicate the style or fashion of the Pearl-Maiden’s garment. Osgood’s bleaunt of biys may be discounted both as an overly strained emendation and an anachronistic garment style. Gollancz’ suggestion of beau amice for an “upper garment” is tenable, but too vague to suggest any specific style. And the currently popular beau biys, while both symbolically potent and generally accepted, depends on Osgood’s radical emendation rather than the manuscript. In addition, although biys is used as a translation of byssino in a Wycliffite version of Revelations, the word bis was more commonly used in Middle English for a dark squirrel fur often used in trimming and lining garments.23 Thus, neither term usually cited in editorial notes on the style of garment worn by the Pearl-Maiden, bleaunt or beaumys, provides any truly significant information that we may use to identify what she is wearing.

19 �������� Osgood, Pearl, 61 n. 197. 20 ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� “Et datum est illi ut cooperiate se byssino splendenti et candido.” Wycliffite version cited by Gollancz (Pearl, 127 n. 197) renders it: “And it is ȝouun to hir, that she couere hir with whijte bijce shijnynge.” 21 ���������� Hillmann, Pearl, 83 n. 197, quoting from Herbert Thurston, “Amictus,” The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: Robert Appleton, 1907). 22 ���������� Hillmann (Pearl, 83 n. 197) and Gardner (Complete Works, 103) support the reading by Gollancz (Pearl, 127 n. 197) of beaumys or “mantle” from the Latin amictus, but Gordon (Pearl, 54 n. 197), Cawley and Anderson (Pearl, 10), Andrew and Waldron (Poems, 63), Moorman (Works, 216 n. 197), Anderson (Sir Gawain, 282–83 n. 162–228), and Watts (Pearl, 35) all provide the amalgam of beau biys. The biblical association with the byssino splendenti also influences translations as “fine linen” by Williams (The Pearl-Poet, 273), Borroff (Sir Gawain, 131), and Tolkien (Sir Gawain, 86). 23 ��������������� Elspeth Veale, The English Fur Trade in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon, 1966), 228. Middle English Dictionary, s.v. “bis” (n.(2)) and “bis” (adj. & n.).

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What Is the Pearl-Maiden Wearing? SPECIFIC FEATURES: VPON AT SYDEZ AND LAPPEZ LARGE

Since bleaunt and beaumys are insufficient to help us identify the style of garments worn by the Pearl-Maiden, we need to examine the specific features the Dreamer describes. First, in line 196, the Dreamer notes that the Pearl-Maiden’s garment is vpon at sydez [open at the sides]. This is reiterated in lines 217–18 when he describes how “vche a hemme” [each hem] is “pyȝt” [set] with pearls at the “honde” [hands], the “sydez” [sides] and the “ouerture” [neckline]. The garment is also described as having “lappez large” in line 201. These two features, like beaumys, are extensively glossed in early editions of the poem. However, the accepted editorial gloss of “open sides” does not correspond with the visual evidence of late-fourteenth-century women’s fashion, and the reading of “long sleeves” or “tippets” artificially limits the potential of the term lappez in a way that excludes the most logical “open-sided” fashion of the period, the sideless surcoat. The early consensus for the gown’s lappez large, which is repeated without question in later editions and translations, is that these words correspond to long, draping sleeves. This editorial certitude is rooted in Gollancz’ declaration that “lappez must mean sleeves,” specifically the “long hanging sleeves falling from the surcoat, a mark of fashion at this period.”24 Gollancz’ reading was expanded upon by Osgood, who glosses the lappez as “loose sleeves reaching to the elbows, whence hung tappetȝ” or “tippets,” to use the modernized spelling.25 The two literary analogues cited to support this reading include the English Morte Arthure, in which Fortune wears a surcoat with “ladily lappes the lengthe of a ȝerde” [queenly lappes the length of a yard], and Wynnere and Wastoure, which mocks the new fashion of “side slabbande sleues, sleght to þe grounde” [side dangling sleeves, pressed to the ground].26 Ignoring the fact that the second—and more commonly repeated—analogue uses the explicit term sleues rather than lappez, we must acknowledge that the sleeves described in these editorial glosses are, indeed, a common feature of fourteenth-century fashion. As Robin Netherton’s examination of the so-called “tippet” clearly shows, visual evidence for fourteenthcentury fashion reveals a series of styles in which the sleeve of the overgown was designed to fall open and drape down from the arm to reveal the lining.27 The tappetȝ [tippets] Osgood cites to define the Pearl-Maiden’s lappez large, like the more general “long hanging sleeves” described by Gollancz and mocked in Wynnere and Wastoure, are a well-documented feature of late-fourteenth-century fashion (fig. 3.3).

24 ���������� Gollancz, Pearl, 128 n. 201. The only exceptions I have encountered include Morris, Early English, 164 (discussed below); Haskell, Middle English Anthology, 289 (“folds”); and Eller, Pearl of Christian Counsel, 28 (“large laps of linen”). 25 �������� Osgood, Pearl, 63–64 n. 197. 26 ���������� Gollancz (Pearl, 128 n. 201) cites both, but Andrew and Waldron (Poems, 63 n. 197–228) cite only Wynnere and Wastoure. 27 ��������������������������������������������������������� Robin Netherton, “The Tippet: Accessory After the Fact?” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 1 (2005): 115–32.

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Fig. 3.3: A gown with “tippet” sleeves, from a French manuscript of the story of Griselda, ca. 1395 (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale MS Fr. 2203, fol. 31r). Drawing: Robin Netherton.

Unfortunately, the editorial certainty that lappez large can only signify long pendent sleeves excludes the most logical reading for vpon at sydez and leads to rather awkward leaps in editorial logic. Osgood’s gloss of the Pearl-Maiden’s garment acknowledges that the “surcoat” was “sometimes sleeveless” and “sometimes having loose sleeves” or tappetȝ. He observes that, “when sleeveless,” the surcoat “had wide openings at the sides reaching from the shoulder to the waist,” as seen in the many extant visuals of the sideless surcoat. However, he declares that “these openings can hardly be designated in 198, since, in the absence of sleeves, there could be no laps.” In this, he is partially correct. My own survey of late-fourteenth-century imagery 74

What Is the Pearl-Maiden Wearing? reveals that, while the sideless surcoat and the pendent sleeves commonly called “tippets” appear together in many extant images, they were mutually exclusive fashions.28 The sideless surcoat simply did not have sleeves that could be turned back to create the style known as a “tippet.” Osgood’s method for resolving the coexistence of “tippet” sleeves on a gown that is vpon at sydez is to redefine the placement of the “open sides.” He asserts that the “surcoat” was “sometimes cut open at the sides from the bottom toward the waist,” citing Auguste Racinet’s rather creative illustrations of two fifteenth-century French manuscript illuminations as his only evidence.29 This dubious claim is reiterated in Gordon’s note that the openings extend “from the lowest hem up towards the waist,” an explanation that is cited without further examination in later editions.30 The problem with this gloss is twofold. It is rooted in a loose illustration of a fifteenth-century—not fourteenth-century—image, and, unlike the case with pendent sleeves, there is little corroborating visual evidence that women in the late fourteenth century wore skirts slit upward from the hem to the waist. In four Italian examples by Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Bartolommeo da Bologna, and Andrea da Firenze, the few women wearing slit skirts represent either allegorical figures or performers, suggesting that the gowns are costumes rather than everyday dress.31 In a seemingly unique English example, the late-fourteenth-century funeral brass of Lady Maude Cobham includes lines indicating a border along the bottom hem of her sideless surcoat, which turn upward and continue to her hips, suggesting slit openings.32 Yet even illustrations of women in positions that should reveal hem–to-waist openings, such as the women on horseback for May and August in the early-fifteenth-century Les Très Riches Heures de Duc de Berry,33 show no evidence of the slit skirts postulated by Osgood. Rather than dismiss the possibility that the Pearl-Maiden wears a sideless surcoat because such a garment does not, by definition, have sleeves, we should, instead, reassess the editorial certainty that lappez large signifies long, draping sleeves. Morris observed that extant versions of the Promptorium Parvulorum define lappa as synonymous with skyrte [skirt].34 He therefore glossed lappez large as the “border” or “hem” of the Pearl-Maiden’s garment. This reading was cursorily dismissed by Gollancz in favor of “sleeves,” and was thereafter ignored. However, the Middle English Dictionary confirms that the term lappez is not, necessarily, restricted to sleeves, whether or 28 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ See, for example, the Marriage of King Philip III of France to Mary of Brabant in the late-fourteenthcentury manuscript Chroniques de France ou de St. Denis, London, British Library, MS Royal 20 C VII, 10r. This image is available through British Library Images Online at http://www.imagesonline. bl.uk. 29 �������� Osgood, Pearl, 63–64 n. 197 cites Auguste Racinet, Le Costume Historique (Paris: Firmin-Didot et Cie, 1888), vol. 4, plate CP. 30 �������� Gordon, Pearl, 56 n. 228. See Andrew and Waldron, Poems, 63 n. 197–228. 31 ������������������������� Seen in Milia Davenport, The Book of Costume, vol. 1 (New York: Crown, 1948), 221, plate 616; 222, plate 617; 225, plate 627; and 226, plate 629. 32 ����������� Davenport, Book of Costume, 214, plate 597. 33 �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� The calendar images from this manuscript are widely reproduced. As one example, the May and August pages appear in Jean Longnon and Raymond Cazelles, eds., The Très Riches Heures of Jean, Duke of Berry (New York: George Braziller, 1989), 5, 9. 34 �������� Morris, Early English, 164.

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Kimberly Jack not we accept Morris’ gloss of it as “hems.” The Middle English Dictionary defines a lappe as “a part of a garment that is loose enough to admit of being raised, folded, or seized,” including “(a) the lower part of a shirt, skirt, or habergeon; the front or back skirts of a divided garment; mantel …; (b) a loose sleeve, a hanging sleeve, a flap or tippet of a sleeve.” Examples include þe lappe of þe mantil [the fold of the mantle], a woman’s lappes in hire girdel [folds in her girdle], the lappes of a woman’s surkote, and the lappe of a man’s haubergeon [mail coat]. The Middle English Dictionary classes many references to people being led by their lappes as explicit references to “sleeves,” yet, as Laura Hodges noted in her discussion of Troilus and Criseyde, the lappe by which Pandarus leads Criseyde into Troilus’ “sick-room” is, presumably, “a fold of her black robe” rather than a specific reference to a loose sleeve.35 Similarly, the lappez large on the Pearl-Maiden’s garment could signify any fold of cloth “loose enough to admit of being raised, folded, or seized.” The restriction of lappez to “sleeves,” and the corresponding dismissal of the sideless surcoat as the Pearl-Maiden’s garment, are, therefore, purely editorial. OTHER DETAILS

In contrast with the gown with slit skirts editors have required to justify their reading of lappez as “sleeves,” the sideless surcoat (fig. 3.1) corresponds with both the poet’s description of the Pearl-Maiden’s garment and the visual evidence for women’s fashion of the late fourteenth through fifteenth centuries. The garment, as depicted in illuminations, funeral effigies, altar cloths, and other images, is designated a sideless surcoat by costume historians because it is, as the poet declares, vpon at sydez [open at the sides]. Furthermore, the extensive folds of cloth that form the skirt of the surcoat qualify as the lappez large of line 201 just as well as do the “loose, hanging sleeves” favored by editors. Visual representations of the sideless surcoat also reveal features that correspond to the specific details of ornamentation featured on the Pearl-Maiden’s garment. Line 197 indicates that the “vpon … sydez” [open sides] of the Pearl-Maiden’s garment are “bounden … wyth þe myryest margarys” [bound with pearls], similar to the ornamental borders seen on illuminations of the sideless surcoat.36 Similarly, the lappez large are “dubbed with double perle and dyȝt” (201–2), indicating a double row of pearls either dividing the upper portion of the gown from the skirts, or bordering the lower hem of the skirt, much as Morris suggested. The “cortel” [kirtle] visible through the open sides of the surcoat is also “vmbepyȝt” [set or decorated] with a scattering of “precios perlez” [precious pearls] (203–4).

35 ���������������������������������� Laura Hodges, “Sartorial Signs in Troilus and Criseyde,” Chaucer Review 35, no. 3 (2001): 232. 36 ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� See, for example, a fourteenth-century altarpiece of St. John the Baptist from Catalan, on which the neck and armholes of Salome’s sideless surcoat, as well as the wrists of her undergown, are ornamented with jewels. Image reproduced in Stella Mary Newton, Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 1980), 89.

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What Is the Pearl-Maiden Wearing? Finally, in lines 216–18, more “precios perlez” are set “in porfyl” along “vche a hemme / At honde, at sydez, at ouerture” [each hem, at the hands, at the sides, at the neck opening]. Although editors generally gloss porfyl as an “embroidered border,”37 reading porfyl as a visible fur border more closely corresponds with the visual evidence for the sideless surcoat. According to Veale’s study of the medieval English fur trade, “purfel” refers to the visible portion of a fur lining or trim, often “made of more expensive skins than those used for the rest” of the lining because these portions were designed to be turned back and viewed.38 The poet’s reference to pearls set in or bordering porfyl along the hems at wrists, sides, and neck opening closely matches the visual representations of fur trim around the armholes and hem of the sideless surcoat. In manuscript illuminations, the neck, arm openings, and lower hem of the surcoat are often purfelled or trimmed with fur, as depicted by the pattern of black spots on white commonly used to designate ermine.39 This fur trim is less common at the hands or wrists in extant images, but it is visible in some manuscripts.40 On a practical note, the construction of the sideless surcoat also answers the logistical question of where, precisely, the “wonder perle withouten wemme” was affixed. The poet declares that this singular perle was set “In myddez hyr breste” [in the middle of her breast] (221–22). However, the pendent-sleeve gown favored by editors of the poem does not generally include decorative features such as embroidery or gem-work on the front of the gown. Images of the sideless surcoat, though, regularly incorporate such a feature. For example, the late-fourteenth-century statue of Jeanne de Bourbon, wife of Charles V, a “classic example of the sideless surcoat of France,” includes a “wide and heavy plastron,” or central front panel, “which is able to support a strip of massive buttons down the center-front.”41 Regardless of the presence of a separate front panel, images of the sideless surcoat frequently depict a row of buttons or an ornamented band down the breast, much like the culminating detail of the Pearl-Maiden’s attire, the “perle withouten wemme.”42

37 �������� Morris (Early English, 180) glossed this as “hem, Fr. pourfiler, to work upon the edge, embroider; fil, a thread. O.E. purfle, to overlay with gems or gold.” Later editions and translations accepted this etymology and abbreviated the gloss to “embroidered border,” “embroidery,” or “border.” 38 ������� Veale, English Fur Trade, 29. A larger discussion of “purfling” may be found in the examination of the Monk’s sleeves in Laura Hodges, Chaucer and Clothing: Clerical and Academic Costume in the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2005), 121. 39 ������������������ See, for example, De mulieribus claris, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS fr. 598, 136r, 145r, and 159r, and Froissart’s Chronicles, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS fr. 2675, 27r, both accessible online at http://www.images.bnf.fr; also Bible Historiale, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS fr. 9, 159v, accessible at http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/ConsulterElementNum?O=IFN-8100028&E=JPEG&Deb=47. 40 ����������������� For example, the Grandes Chroniques de France, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS fr. 6465, 247v, 292r, 332r, and 342v, accessible online at http://www.images.bnf.fr. 41 ����������� Davenport, Book of Costume, 234, plate 657. 42 �������������������������������������������������������������������� See, for example, the altarpiece of St. John the Baptist in Newton, Black Prince, 89, or the monumental brasses of Elizabeth, wife of 2nd Lord Cobham, ca. 1380, and Margarete Brocas, ca. 1390, www. mbs-brasses.co.uk.

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Kimberly Jack CULTURAL ASSOCIATIONS AND SYMBOLISM

The garment worn by the Pearl-Maiden is not, as is so often repeated, a “simple form of the aristocratic dress of the second half of the fourteenth century.”43 Both the pendent-sleeve gown described by editors and the sideless surcoat that corresponds more closely with the poet’s description are visible in late-fourteenth-century and early-fifteenth-century images. However, unlike the gowns that display varying forms of long, draping sleeves, which were fashionable for aristocratic women in general throughout this period, the sideless surcoat remained in use as an exclusive fashion worn symbolically and for ceremonial purposes.44 In illuminations portraying a mix of dress styles, the sideless surcoat is restricted to queens, powerful noblewomen, and brides, while other women wear “simple” gowns. To understand why the poet of Pearl chose to clothe his Pearl-Maiden in a sideless surcoat, therefore, we must recognize the symbolic context for the garment evident in extant images from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. An examination of the visual evidence suggests that, although the sideless surcoat was worn by aristocratic women in the 1330s and 1340s, it was quickly restricted to a symbolic and ceremonial context.45 The Luttrell Psalter, produced ca. 1335, depicts Lady Luttrell in an unornamented sideless surcoat, while her female guests wear gowns with pendent sleeves.46 Yet in reviewing “sources that are rich in realistic depictions of women, such as Books of Hours and other illuminated manuscripts” produced in 1400 or earlier, Robin Netherton concluded that it was exceedingly rare to find the sideless surcoat depicted on anyone but royalty or royal family.47 For example, in the miniature of the marriage of King Phillip III of France to Mary of Brabant in the Chroniques de France ou de St. Denis, Mary wears both the sideless surcoat and crown to signify her elevated status as Phillip’s queen, while the women behind her wear gowns whose draping sleeves are indicated by the white bands visible across their upper arms.48 In the miniature depicting the birth of Saint Louis in the Grandes Chroniques de France, royal women in attendance are distinguished by their sideless surcoats.49 Even in later

43 �������� Gordon, Pearl, 56 n. 228. 44 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ See Netherton, “Tippet,” 121, for a concise summary of the evolution of pendent sleeves. The sideless surcoat is identified as a specifically ceremonial garment by C. Willett Cunnington and Phillis Emily Cunnington, Handbook of English Mediaeval Costume (London: Faber and Faber, 1952), 90, and Margaret Scott, A Visual History of Costume: The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (London : B. T. Batsford, 1986), 13. 45 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ Robin Netherton, “The Medieval Sideless Surcote: Real and Unreal,” (paper presentation, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 1994); Robin Netherton, “Will the Real Sideless Surcote Please Stand Up?” (lecture, Bryn Mawr College, Philadelphia, February 28, 2004). 46 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� London, British Library, Add. MS 42130, 208r. For one of many available reproductions of this image, see Janet Backhouse, The Luttrell Psalter (London: British Library, 1989), pl. 48. 47 ���������������������������������������� Netherton, “Medieval Sideless Surcote.” 48 ������������ See note 28. 49 ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS fr. 2813 (ca. 1350–80), 265r. For one of many available reproductions of this image, see Anne D. Hedeman, The Royal Image: Illustrations of the Grandes Chroniques de France, 1274–1422 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991), fig. 87.

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What Is the Pearl-Maiden Wearing? images, such as the illustration of the Bal des Ardents in Froissart’s Chroniques, only Queen Isabella and the Duchess of Berry wear sideless surcoats, while other women wear a typical fifteenth-century V-necked style.50 By the end of the fourteenth century, the sideless surcoat functions as an artistic shorthand to distinguish royalty and especially powerful noblewomen from others. By the early fifteenth century, sideless surcoats appear as one component of robes of state for royal women on ceremonial occasions, such as weddings or coronations. One mid-fifteenth-century manuscript of the Grandes Chroniques de France alone contains numerous instances of royal women depicted in sideless surcoats for ceremonial occasions, including the coronation of Louis VIII, the coronation of Marie de Brabant, the coronation of Louis X, and the wedding of Charles IV and Marie de Luxembourg.51 These images are highly consistent, portraying these royal women in sideless surcoats with ermine plastrons, hair either loose or tied loosely back, and wearing crowns or about to be crowned. Likewise, in a manuscript of Froissart’s Chroniques, for her coronation Philippa of Hainaut is shown in an ornate sideless surcoat with fur armscye, gold down the center of the plastron, and a crown.52 Other women in these scenes, where they are visible, wear current fashions, marking the combination of sideless surcoat, loose hair, and crown as ceremonial costumes or robes of state rather than daily wear. In the mid-fifteenth century, sideless surcoats appear not only as robes of state for royal weddings and coronations, but on non-royal brides, whose costume includes elements associated with queens.53 For example, in an illustration of the Roman de Girart de Roussillon, the daughter of a count, who is marrying another count, is pictured at her wedding in an ermine-trimmed sideless surcoat, loose hair, and a crown, rather than the fifteenth-century fashions she wears in other images.54 In the Histoire de Renaud de Montauban, the bride seated at the bridal banquet likewise is depicted in an ermine-trimmed sideless surcoat, an ornate crowned headdress, and loose hair, while her female companions wear fashionable V-necked gowns, with tall cone-shaped hats concealing their hair.55 Though these images do not necessarily prove what midfifteenth-century brides actually wore, they show that the combination of sideless

50 London, British Library, MS Harley 4380 (ca. 1450–80), 1r. A color reproduction appears in Susan Crane, The Performance of Self: Ritual, Clothing, and Identity During the Hundred Years War (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), plate 4, and is also accessible through British Library Images Online at http://www.imagesonline.bl.uk. 51 �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS fr. 6465 (ca. 1455–60), 247v, 292r, 326r, and 332r, accessible online at http://www.images.bnf.fr. 52 ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS fr. 2675 (second quarter of fifteenth century), 27r, accessible online at http://www.images.bnf.fr. 53 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Netherton, “Medieval Sideless Surcote.” I am grateful to Ms. Netherton for calling my attention to the following manuscript examples. 54 �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Vienna, Austrian National Library, MS 2549 (ca. 1448), 9v. Reproduced in Bryan Holme, Medieval Pageant (London: Thames and Hudson, 1987), 70–71. 55 ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS Arsenal 5073 (ca. 1468–70), 140v. Reproduced in Holme, Medieval Pageant, pp. 66–67.

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Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the image on this page please refer to the printed version of this book.

Fig. 3.4: Funerary brass commemorating Margarete Brocas, ca. 1390, Sherborne St. John, Hampshire. Photo reproduced by courtesy of H. Martin Stuchfield.

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What Is the Pearl-Maiden Wearing? surcoat, loose hair, and crown, well established as a visual signifier of queens, was also employed by artists to distinguish brides.56 The only other context in which common and noble women alike are garbed in the sideless surcoat is in tomb effigies, such as funerary sculptures and monumental brasses from the mid-fourteenth through the fifteenth centuries.57 One of the earliest examples, the effigy of an unknown widow, dated ca. 1340–50, portrays her in a plain sideless surcoat, crimped wimple covering her chin and neck, and veil.58 On the funeral brass of the unmarried Margarete Brocas, ca. 1390 (fig. 3.4), the lines of a sideless surcoat, loose hair, and crown of flowers are clearly visible.59 The effigy of one of the wives of Ralph Nevill, first earl of Westmorland, ca. 1410, includes the sideless surcoat, but the crown is not vegetative, and her hair is confined to a caul set with gems.60 By contrast, the ca. 1475 brass of Joan Kniveton, the wife of Nicholas Kniveton, Lord of Mircaston and Underwood (fig. 3.5), displays her in a sideless surcoat, loose hair, and crown, while the brass to Joan, Lady Cromwell, d. 1490, at Tattershall, Lincolnshire, shows a sideless surcoat and loose hair with a floral crown.61 In many extant effigies and brasses the hair is confined in a caul or concealed by veils, but sufficient examples, both of maidens and married women, exist to suggest that the artistic shorthand for queens of sideless surcoat, loose hair, and/or crown was well established in the late fourteenth through the fifteenth centuries. The artisans who created these memorials utilized this sartorial combination to identify their deceased subjects as Queens of Heaven, regardless of the women’s birth status. THE SIDELESS SURCOAT IN PEARL

Although the precise date of Pearl’s composition is unknown, the range corresponds with the symbolic function of the sideless surcoat in art, suggesting that the poet intentionally invoked this symbolism with his initial description of the Pearl-Maiden. The gothic minuscule script in which the manuscript is written indicates only a rough composition date of the late fourteenth century.62 Boccaccio’s Olympia, a likely source for Pearl’s narrative structure, was written in 1360,63 a period in which the sideless surcoat was used in manuscript illuminations to distinguish queens, and in funeral 56 �������������������������������������������� Robin Netherton, pers. comm., July 30, 2009. 57 ����������������������������������� Netherton, “Real Sideless Surcote.” 58 �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Stone effigy of an unknown widow, Church of St. Mary, Sprotborough, Yorkshire. Pictured in Scott, Visual History, 32, fig. 16. 59 ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Brass of Margarete Brocas, Sherborne St. John, Hampshire, England. Image available online from the Monumental Brass Society, http://www.mbs-brasses.co.uk. 60 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ Alabaster effigy of Ralph Nevill and two wives, Church of St. Mary, Staindrop, Durham, England. Reproduced in Scott, Visual History, 56, fig. 50. 61 ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Brass of Nicholas and Joan Kniveton, Mugginton, Derbyshire, England; brass of Joan, Lady Cromwell, Tattershall, Lincolnshire. Images available online from the Monumental Brass Society, http:// www.mbs-brasses.co.uk. 62 �������� Morris, Early English, 10. 63 ���������� Gollancz, Pearl, xiv; Morris, Early English, 17.

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Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the image on this page please refer to the printed version of this book.

Fig. 3.5: Rubbing of a funerary brass commemorating Joan Kniveton, wife of Nicholas Kniveton, Lord of Mircaston and Underwood, engraved ca. 1475, Mugginton, Derbyshire. Image reproduced from The Monumental Brasses of Derbyshire, by William Lack, H. Martin Stuchfield, and Philip Whittemore (London: Monumental Brass Society, 1999), by ­permission.

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What Is the Pearl-Maiden Wearing? effigies to represent Queens of Heaven. The Pearl-Maiden is not depicted in a sideless surcoat in the Cotton Nero A.x. illuminations, but these illustrations are notorious for the inaccuracy of their details. Although the illustrations were originally dismissed as “several illuminations, coarsely executed,”64 more recent scholarship reevaluates the function of the images, while acknowledging that the illustrator ignored the poems’ actual descriptions of clothing, ornamentation, and even skin color.65 For example, the “enker grene” [vibrant green] tone of the Green Knight’s skin is ignored by the illuminator, as is the low neckline of Lady Bertilak’s gown.66 While the illuminations are useless as visual documentation of the poems’ clothing descriptions, they do suggest a terminal date for the composition of the poem and the manuscript’s production. In the illuminations, the Pearl-Maiden is garbed in a style of houppelande with upstanding collar (fig. 3.6) that was briefly fashionable from 1400–15,67 a period when sideless surcoats appear almost exclusively as queens’ robes of state or in funerary art. The Pearl-poet draws on artistic conventions, more familiar to his contemporaries than to modern readers, to clearly identify the Pearl-Maiden as a Queen of Heaven from the first moments the Dreamer observes her. To a late-fourteenth-century reader, the description of the Pearl-Maiden’s open-sided gown, trimmed with fur and pearls, together with her crown, would align with the sideless surcoat and crown restricted in visual representations to terrestrial and heavenly queens. The one component of the artistic convention not easily discernible in the Pearl-Maiden’s costume is loose hair beneath her crown. However, the presence of the artistic convention might support reconsideration of editorial emendations that read the “here heke” surrounding the Pearl-Maiden’s “semblaunt” [semblance or face] in 210 as loose hair rather than “wimple” or “face-radiance.”68 Although a detailed reexamination of “here heke” is outside the scope of my current argument, the visionary costume in which the Pearl-Maiden is garbed firmly establishes her, in her initial appearance, as a Queen of Heaven—an identification the Dreamer begrudges.

64 �������������������������� Sir Frederic Madden, ed., Syr Gawayne: A Collection of Ancient Romance-Poems, By Scotish and English Authors (London: R. and J. E. Taylor, 1839), xlvii. 65 ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� See, for example, Jennifer A. Lee, “The Illuminating Critic: The Illustrator of Cotton Nero A.x.,” Studies in Iconography 3 (1977): 17–46; Paul F. Reichardt, “‘Several Illuminations, Coarsely Executed’: The Illustrations of the Pearl Manuscript,” Studies in Iconography 18 (1997) 119–42; Maidie Hilmo, Medieval Images, Icons, and Illustrated English Literary Texts (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2004). Lee (31) mistakenly claims that the illustrator correctly depicts the Pearl-Maiden in “a bleaunt (a close-fitting tunic with long sides and sleeves),” but notes that he “totally [ignores] the long, detailed description of her flowing hair, rich clothes and decoration.” 66 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, quoted from Andrew and Waldron, Poems, lines 150, 995, and 1741. 67 ����������� See Scott, Visual History, 55, fig. 48, and 57, fig. 51. Also see Boccaccio’s De Mulieribus Cleres, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS français 12420, 165r, reproduced in Walther and Wolf, Codices illustres, 292. These collars were “turned flat to the body by about 1415 under the competition for space from the headdress”; Scott, Visual History, 17. 68 ����������� See note 9.

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Kimberly Jack

Fig. 3.6: The Pearl-Maiden as depicted in the Pearl manuscript (London, British Library, MS Cotton Nero A.x., 42r). Drawing: Kimberly Jack.

The disparity between the clear sartorial significance of the Pearl-Maiden’s garments and the Dreamer’s hesitance to accept that identification—a distinction long obscured by editorial error—is essential to the poem because it provides the spark that initiates the discussion that follows. The Dreamer recognizes the artistic conventions of 84

What Is the Pearl-Maiden Wearing? the Pearl-Maiden’s appearance, as evinced by his reference to her “araye ryalle” [royal array] in line 191. But he persists in considering her as his own possession—“my perle” [my pearl] (242) or “my juel” [my jewel] (249)—rather than a Queen of Heaven as her garments indicate. He repeatedly challenges the evidence of her attire, asking for clarification of her “astate” [estate] (393), accusing her of usurping Mary’s position in heaven (423–28), and suggesting that her short life qualifies her only to be “a lady of lasse aray” [a lady of less array/status] (487–92). The heart of the poem—the PearlMaiden’s lessons on the parables, God’s grace, and New Jerusalem—are a response to the Dreamer’s persistent denial of the implications of the Pearl-Maiden’s sideless surcoat and crown, the sartorial markers of her change in status from his pearl into a Queen of Heaven.69

69 ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� See expanded discussion of the Dreamer in Kimberly Jack, “Costume Rhetoric in the Works Attributed to the Pearl-Poet” (Ph.D. diss., Loyola University Chicago, 2008).

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“Hys surcote was ouert”: The “Open Surcoat” in Late Medieval British Texts Mark Chambers

… documentary evidence raises all sorts of problems for collectors and collators of data: the substitution of the vernacular for Latin and the use of words with scant relationship to Latin, plus the borrowing of terms from one vernacular language to another. The proliferation of terminology [in the mid-fourteenth century] occurred in response to an outburst of creativity in styles of design, the advent of all sorts of new materials and the increasing significance of colour.

Statements such as this one by Françoise Piponnier and Perrine Mane point toward the fact that costume historians regularly encounter two important lexicological phenomena when dealing with the vocabulary of cloth and clothing in later medieval Britain: first, that a multitude of languages and, often, what we might now assume to be language mixing, “codeswitching,” or else borrowing occurs frequently in ­surviving documentary evidence, and second, that the fourteenth century in particular has more than its fair share of new lexical items from across the multilingual spectrum. An earlier version of this paper was presented in August 2008 at the 15th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics in Munich. It arose from lexicological research on a fourteenth-century Royal Wardrobe account (London, National Archives MS E 101/393/15).    Françoise Piponnier and Perrine Mane, Dress in the Middle Ages, trans. Caroline Beamish (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 66. ���    ���������������������������������������������������������������� To explain the distinction between codeswitching and borrowing, Joan �������������������������������� Swann and Indra Sinka paraphrase Carol Myers-Scotton: “[codeswitched] items are regarded as belonging to another language […]. Borrowed items, on the other hand, are felt to have become part of the matrix language [such as the word amateur in modern English, originally from French].” When codeswitched items are used more frequently, “they are on their way to becoming borrowings, sometimes displacing original terms. There is, therefore, a continuum operating between codeswitching and borrowing.” Swann and Sinka, “Style Shifting, Codeswitching,” in Changing English, ed. David Graddol et al. (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2007), 249; see Myers-Scotton, Duelling Languages: Grammatical Structure in Codeswitching (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993).    There is a tradition in clothing history, for example, of marking the mid-fourteenth century as the “beginning of fashion” in dress—or else the crucial epochal shift—based on the rise of form-fitting garments and an apparent influx of new cuts, cloths, and terminology. See Odile Blanc, Parades et Parures: L’invention du corps de mode à la fin du Moyen Âge (Paris: Gallimard, 1997); Blanc, “From

Mark Chambers Historians of cloth, clothing, and related material cultures frequently express the difficulty of accurately matching a name to a garment, and, generally speaking, modern terminology often proves the most efficacious, despite the misconceptions this might occasionally foster. While sticking to contemporary vocabulary may assist accuracy in our attempts to name garments, nonchalant medieval (and particularly late medieval) attitudes toward language “mixing,” the frequency of borrowing, and piecemeal preservation in the various learned tongues of wardrobe keepers can create difficulty. Often, for example, it can even prove difficult to assign a specific language to a word, as the medieval abbreviation system regularly focuses “concentration on the essential semantic, as opposed to the morphological, information on the material.” Laura Wright’s recent identification of specific noun phrases drawn from English in late medieval macaronic business writing (where Latin or French forms the base language) has cast new light on the often multilingual nature of fourteenth-century record-keeping. Monolingual dictionaries are not always able to include evidence from such mixed-language (or non-language-specific) texts, and hence our understanding of the history of a particular lexeme—especially a technical lexeme such as may be found in wardrobe accounts, etc.—can be left wanting. Battlefield to Court: The Invention of Fashion in the Fourteenth Century,” in Encountering Medieval Textiles and Dress: Objects, Texts, Images, ed. Désirée Koslin and Janet E. Snyder (Basingstoke, UK: 2002), 157–72; and James Laver, Costume and Fashion: A Concise History (London: Thames and Hudson, 1982), 62. Largely initiated by the early twentieth-century costume historian Paul Post, this tradition has been successfully questioned in recent scholarship: see Sarah-Grace Heller, Fashion in Medieval France (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2007), 48–52; cf. Paul Post’s “La naissance du costume masculin moderne au XIVe siècle,” Actes du Ier Congrès international d’histoire du costume, Venise, 31 août–7 septembre 1952 (Venice: Centro internazionale delle arti e del costume, 1955), 28–41.   �������������� Mary Houston, Medieval Costume in England and France: The 13th, 14th and 15th Centuries (1939; repr. New York: Dover, 1996), vi; Heller, Fashion in Medieval France, 48. Likewise, Piponnier and Mane note that “it remains difficult to relate the written word to the realia supplied by archaeology or the images of iconography”; Dress in the Middle Ages, 12.   For recent discussions of how assumed modern terminology can affect a proper understanding of medieval technical practices, see Robin Netherton, “The Tippet: Accessory after the Fact?” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 1 (2005): 117–18; Mark Chambers, “Weapons of Conversion: Mankind and Medieval Stage Properties,” Philological Quarterly 83, no. 1 (Winter 2004): 1–11; Chambers and Gale R. Owen-Crocker, “From Head to Hand to Arm: The Lexicological History of ‘Cuff,’” Medieval Clothing and Textiles 4 (2008): 55–67.   �������������� Laura Wright, Sources of London English: Medieval Thames Vocabulary (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), 9.   ������������ Ibid., 1–19.   For a quick example, the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary records the first attestation of the silk or silk-like material “damask” as being from Lydgate’s Storie of Thebes (ca. 1430). The Middle English Dictionary, however, provides an attestation from 1378 and another, Latin-text-based attestation from 1388 (in an inventory from Westminster Abbey), while the second edition of the Anglo-Norman Dictionary cites Anglo-Norman parliamentary rolls from the middle decades of the century. None of these uses employs any morphological variation that would mark the word specific to a single base language, nor is there any clear evidence of borrowing. Medieval technical vocabulary regularly crossed linguistic boundaries, and to examine evidence from one “language” alone would be to completely misunderstand the use of the word in the period. Oxford English Dictionary,

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The “Open Surcoat” Historical linguistics dealing with late medieval Britain is in the midst of a mixedlanguage season of late, as the study of the dynamically versatile, multilingual medieval texts continues to hold scholarly attention. Any study of an individual lexeme—of clothing or otherwise—must take into account this linguistic variation and the phenomenon of frequent multilingualism in the technical writing and record-keeping of late medieval Britain. Moreover, to understand the nature of a particular late medieval cloth, garment, or fashion appearing in a text, one must also consider its lexicological existence in the various languages current amongst those who name the item, as well as details of its recent etymology. Monolingual dictionaries are rarely capable of representing the fluid and multilingual reality of late medieval British technical usage, including that found in documents associated with wardrobes. This study focuses on a particular group of clothing words appearing in various documents, especially from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and referring to a particular type of garment: the so-called “open surcoat” or surcot ouvert, and its Middle English converse, the surcot(e) clos(e).10 As we shall see, the Anglo-Norman phrase surcot ouvert was borrowed into Middle English as a noun phrase or compounded construction (presumably used as such in adjacent Anglo-French contexts such as accounting and record-keeping), referring to a particular kind of surcoat of the fourteenth century. I intend to demonstrate why surcot ouvert should be considered a fully lexicalized noun phrase or even a compound—a hyponym of the taxonomically super-ordinate surcot—in Middle English, Anglo-Norman, and Latin texts, and that it existed alongside medieval Latin equivalents. Moreover, it seems most often to have been used in Britain to refer to a man’s garment, a fact that is missed by the popular histories of costume.

online ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000–; henceforth OED), s.v. “damask, n. and a.”; Middle English Dictionary, online ed. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001; henceforth MED), s.v. “damask, n.”; David Trotter et al., eds., Anglo-Norman Dictionary, online (2nd) ed. (London: Modern Humanities Research Association in conjunction with the Anglo-Norman Text Society, 2006–; henceforth AND), http://www.anglo-norman.net, s.v. “damaske, n.”   ������������������������ See David Trotter, ed., Multilingualism in Later Medieval Britain (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2000); Trotter, “Language Contact, Multilingualism, and the Evidence Problem,” in The Beginnings of Standardization: Language and Culture in Fourteenth-Century England, ed. Ursula Schaefer (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2006), 73–90; Laura Wright, “Code-intermediate Phenomena in Medieval Mixed-Language Business Texts,” Language Sciences 24 (2002): 471–89; and Richard �������������������� Ingham, “Mixing Languages on the Manor,” Medium Ævum 78, no. 1 (2009): 80–97������������������������������������ . Tim Machan has recently discussed some of the sociolinguistic aspects of medieval England’s “linguistic repertoire” in his English in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 74–86. 10 ����������� The terms cot(e) and surcot(e) could be rendered either masculine or feminine in the Middle Ages and display a variety of spellings. I use the spelling surcoat when referring to the modern usage of the term (either by costume historians or historical dictionaries) but surcot to refer to specific Middle English/Anglo-Norman usage. I have retained variant spellings of individual attestations when discussing them.

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Mark Chambers TAXONOMY

Each of the phrase’s elements exists in variants across the European languages, and the Middle English word surcot itself is easy to classify taxonomically. The prefix sur- from Old French, Anglo-French into Middle English is generally thought to represent Latin super.11 As such, it now regularly functions in English as a bound morpheme (a prefix) derived from an originally unbound morpheme. The substantive cot(e) appears early in many European languages, including medieval Latin as cota, cotus, etc.12 Variants are attested in all of the major Romance languages as well as in Old High German. Its Middle English and Anglo-Norman usage is thought to derive from Old French.13 As its own lexeme, surcot is a substantive found frequently in Middle English and Early Modern English, derived through Anglo-French from Old French. The Oxford English Dictionary suggests that Germanic and medieval Latin forms also come from Old French.14 Middle English and Modern English overt and Modern French ouvert are derived from Anglo-Norman and Old French usage: uvert and overt at least from the eleventh century, ouvert from the early thirteenth. The word is the past participle of AngloNorman and Old French uvrir, ovrir, to open, related to Occitan/Catalan obrir, probably from post-Classical Latin operire, itself an alteration of classical Latin aperire, to open.15 Close (Middle English/Anglo-Norman clos) has a parallel development as the past participle of Old French and Anglo-Norman clore, “to close or shut,” ultimately from Latin claudere. In these contexts, both o(u)vert and clos(e) are postmodifying, past-participles-as-adjectives.16 How, then do these phrases appear in texts from the British Isles describing items of medieval dress? What senses might these phrases carry, and how might the textual evidence augment or else challenge some of the assumptions long held by historians of costume and material culture? 11 OED, s.v. “sur-, prefix.” While there is little scope to discuss the issue here, some of the etymological data in the second edition of OED is unreliable and should be used with some caution; see William Rothwell, “OED, MED, AND: The Making of a New Dictionary of English,” Anglia 119 (2001): 527–53. 12 ������������������������������������������ R. E. Latham, D. R. Howlett et al., eds., Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, 11 fascicules to date (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975–; henceforth DMLBS), 2:507, s.v. “cota, ~us.” 13 OED, s.v. “coat, n.” DMLBS, 2:507, s.v. “cota, ~us,” tentatively suggests that the Latin form cota, cotus may also derive from the Frankish languages through Old French cote. 14 OED, s.v. “surcoat, n.” See also MED, s.v. “surcot(e, n.” OED derives the term through what it calls Old Northern French, although I am unable to support this particular distinction. Variants are found in most contemporary European languages. The medieval Latin forms sorcotium, surcotium are represented in British texts as surcotus (and the derivation supercota) at least from the late twelfth century: see the OED entry and R. E. Latham, Revised Medieval Latin Word-List from British and Irish Sources, 2nd ed. with supplement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), s.v. “supercota.” 15 OED, s.v. “overt, adj.” See also MED, s.v. “overt, adj.”; and DMLBS, 1:98, s.v. “aperire.” These language distinctions are made by OED, which further refers to a post-Classical Latin use of operire meaning “open” (an alteration of aperire) from an isolated, eighth-century gloss (Latin operire regularly meant “to cover,” etc.); this use is not attested in Britain; cf. DMLBS, 8:2029, s.v. “operire, ~iare.” 16 OED, s.v. “close, a. and adv”; AND, s.v. “clos.”

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The “Open Surcoat” THE PHRASE IN ANGLO-NORMAN

Since 2003, the University of York’s Centre for Medieval Studies has been working on a project to digitize many of the medieval Royal Petitions and Petitions to Parliament from the substantial set of “Ancient Petitions” located in the National Archives in Kew, London. Many of these petitions are in Anglo-Norman French or in Latin, although there are later examples in Middle English and Early Modern English. They are regularly petitions from named individuals to the king, to the king and council, to the chancellor, and to other officers of state. They often request the reinstatement of possessions or livery, clarification of ownership, granting of patronage, and other legal activities that necessitate lists of goods, properties, items of clothing, and other accoutrement. As a result, the documents represent a veritable gold mine of the late medieval legal and technical lexicon—in particular, lexis related to material culture. The petitions can now be accessed through the National Archives’ Web site, but there are over seventeen thousand of them, digitized as-they-are in their original manuscript form. Each is tagged only with very brief modern descriptions of persons and subject matter, so searching for specific elements can be exceptionally challenging. Most of the petitions themselves consist of short slips of a few dozen lines at most. For example, document SC 8/196/9797, from the late thirteenth century, contains a petition by a group of children in the king’s wardship complaining about a reduction in their allowance (fig. 4.1).17 The petition, written in a clear, fine script in twelve lines on a document with some signs of wear and tear, begins, “A lour liege [seign]ur le rey” [To their liege-lord the king]. It calls for the reinstatement of the children’s livery, including an allotment of beer and wine, bread, food (“quysine”), as well as items of clothing, including, for example, a “tabar e surcote de esté,” [tabard (a sleeveless overgarment) and summer surcoat]. This later, seasonal garment is unattested elsewhere in Britain before the fourteenth century.18 The petition that concerns the present discussion also contains significant clothing terminology, including what I contend to be substantial etymological evidence for the name of a particular late medieval fashion.19 This petition (fig. 4.2) concerns

17 ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� London, National Archives, MS SC 8/196/9797, available online at National Archives, Special Collections: Ancient Petitions, http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk (accessed March 16, 2007). I am grateful to Dr. Natalia Romanova, formerly of the Anglo-Norman On-line Hub project (Aberystwyth) and currently of the Online Froissart Project (Universities of Sheffield and Liverpool), for bringing these documents to my attention and for her consummate help with transcription and translation. 18 ���������������������������������������� While there are some “summer surcoats” (somersercortes) mentioned in the Latin account rolls of the Abbey of Durham for the year 1363/4 and reported in MED, only recently have the editors of AND brought the earlier British (ostensibly “Anglo-Norman”) attestation to light: AND, s.v. “surcote.” The later, 1363/4 attestation is found in J. T. Fowler, ed., Extracts from the Account Rolls of the Abbey of Durham, From the Original MSS., vol. 2, Surtees Society 100 (Durham: Andrews, 1899), 566; and noted in MED, s.v. “sorcot(e, n.” 19 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ London, National Archives, MS SC 8/4/193, available online at National Archives, Special Collections: Ancient Petitions, http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk (accessed March 16, 2007). Abbreviations have been expanded and suspensions represented with apostrophes. An edited version of this petition appears in J. Strachey, ed., Rotuli Parliamentorum, ut et petitiones, et placita in Parliamento, vol. 1 (London, 1767), 388. 91

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Fig. 4.1: A petition to King Edward I from children in the king’s wardship, complaining about a reduction in their allowance of clothing, food, drink, and other necessities; London, National Archives, MS SC 8/196/9797 (ca. 1275–1300). Photo: National Archives, by permission.

Mark Chambers

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Fig. 4.2: A petition to King Edward II and his council from Robert de Mountfort, asking for the reinstatement of his annual livery; London, National Archives, MS SC 8/4/193 (ca. 1321–22). Photo: National Archives, by permission.

The “Open Surcoat”

Mark Chambers ­ roperties associated with Castle Combe in Wiltshire in the year 1321–22. The petip tioner, a clerk named Robert de Mountfort, addresses the king and council, asking for the reinstatement of the annual livery he was to receive from the Lord Badlesmere at Castle Combe. Previously, Robert had released his rights of inheritance from his brother William to Lord Badlesmere in return for the livery. When Badlesmere’s estates were forfeited to the king, Robert’s livery had gone into arrears.20 It seems this petition was written after Badlesmere had sided with the Earl of Lancaster against Edward II, but probably before Badlesmere was captured and executed for treason in April of 1322.21 It follows that Robert’s paperwork may well have gone missing when Badlesmere, his lord, switched sides against the king. The endorsement, customarily written on the reverse of the manuscript, translates as follows: He [Robert] should show that which he has of the pension, and justices should be assigned to enquire into the truth of the matter and upon the continuation of the seisin [legal possession, ownership], etc., and the inquisition is to be returned, and let justice be done, Coram rege [in presence of the king].22

The body of the petition is addressed to the king and his council, and it asks for the reinstatement of Robert’s annual livery, including several items of clothing: la pelure pur surcot clos et pur surcot overt oveqes un chaperon de menuveyr a resceivre chescun an a Castelcombe en Wiltes’ a la feste de touz seinz […] [the pelure (prob. “fur”) for a surcot clos and for a surcot overt with a chaperon of miniver (hood made of or lined with white squirrel fur), to be received each year at Castle Combe in Wilshire at the feast of All Saints …].23

The related phrases surcot clos and surcot overt represent common French constructions, though here they are placed in such proximity as to emphasize their semantic 20 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Background information has been taken from the description accompanying the document; from G. Poulett Scrope, History of the Manor and Ancient Barony of Castle Combe in the County of Wilts; chiefly compiled from original MSS. and Chartularies at Castle Combe: With memoirs of the families of Dunstanville, Badlesmere, Tiptoft, Scrope, Fastolf, etc. (London: J. B. Nichols, 1852); from Michael Prestwich, Plantagenet England: 1225–1360 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 199–200, 418; and from W. Mark Ormrod, “The Road To Boroughbridge: The Civil War of 1321–2 in the Ancient Petitions,” in Foundations of Medieval Scholarship: Records Edited in Honour of David Crook, ed. Paul Brand and Sean Cunningham (York: Borthwick, 2008), 77–88. 21 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ Badlesmere was already supporting the Earl (Thomas) when his wife Margaret de Clare had refused to admit Queen Isabella to Leeds Castle in Kent in October 1321, provoking a siege and capture by the king. Badlesmere himself was captured and executed at Canterbury on the following April 14. See Prestwich��, Plantagenet England, 199–200, 418. 22 ����������������������������������������������������������������� The endorsement is translated in the description of the document. 23 ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� My emphasis; this and all further translations are my own unless otherwise indicated. In her influential study of the medieval English fur trade, Elspeth Veale notes that pelure (var. pellura, peluse) was used to refer to furs in general but usually indicated lamb or sheepskin, and that meniver (var. menuvair, minutus varius, etc.) referred to the white, winter belly-skins of the European squirrel, which would presumably have some grey surrounding the white (as opposed to menuvair puratus, or pured miniver, which was pure white); see Veale, The English Fur Trade in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon, 1966), 221, 228.

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The “Open Surcoat” relationship, one referring to a “closed” garment and the other to an “open.” However, when we look at the general histories of costume we may have trouble reconciling Robert de Mountfort’s garment here with what is typically described as an “open surcoat,” the phrase normally being applied to a type of woman’s garment generally associated with the fifteenth century. Moreover, the major historical dictionaries prove unable to clarify the nature of this late medieval noun phrase, as they (1) are monolingual in their approach and (2) are necessarily exclusive with many noun phrases and compounds. Only with an examination of all of the textual evidence for this apparent fashion, published and unpublished, from across the linguistic spectrum of late medieval Britain, does a clearer picture arise. SOME CONTINENTAL EVIDENCE

At first glance, the phrase surcot ouvert seems a common French construction, and it is logical to proceed by looking at the French historical dictionaries and other textual sources for evidence. Neither the Altfranzösisches Wörterbuch nor the Trésor de la Langue Française offer any sort of attestation of the phrase surcot ouvert or its variants.24 In his seminal Old French dictionnaire, however, Frédéric Godefroy includes one late-thirteenth-century attestation under his entry for surcot: “Sen sourcot ouviert, et le caperon,” from the so-called Testament De Jehan Miache (ca. 1290).25 This apparent late-thirteenth-century example is not isolated, and there is further evidence of the phrase used to describe garments among the Angevin Court in Naples. In the Angevin documents en français of 1278–80, both “open” and “closed” surcoats are described as being worn by aristocratic men and women in southern Italy. It is difficult to tell whether or not the phrases represented distinct semantic units or just ad hoc uses. The French bookkeeper at the time seems to employ them as stock phrases for garments of either sex, and he distinguishes them only by noting the presence or absence of manches (sleeves). An entry for September 20, 1278, describes garments made for a lawyer in the city of Lagopesole: very good pers (blue cloth) of two colours, suitable to him as a lord of the law, […] for a cote, for a surcot clos and for a seurcot overt with sleeves, for a French chape (cape, cloak, mantle) with sleeves and for two chaperons (hoods), […] and fur of gros var (squirrel

24 Adolf Tobler and Erhard Lommatzsch, eds., Altfranzösisches Wörterbuch (Berlin: Weidmann, and Stuttgart: Steiner, 1915–); Paul Imbs, ed., Trésor de la Langue Française: Dictionnaire de la langue du XIXe et du XXe siècle, 1789–1960, 16 vols. (Paris: Éditions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1971–96); also available online, http://atilf.atilf.fr/tlf.htm. 25 ������������������� Frédéric Godefroy, Dictionnaire de l’ancienne Langue Française, 10 vols. (Paris: F. Vieweg & E. Bouillon, 1888), 7:523–24, s.v. “sourcot”; attestation and suggested date taken directly from Godefroy.

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Mark Chambers fur) for the said sourcot clos and the said sourcot overt with sleeves and the said chape and one of the chaperons.26

In the following year (May 4, 1279), for La Tour Saint-Elme, the accounts use identical phrases to describe women’s garments: In addition, we order that you purchase/supply, for the sovereign’s daughter, [that with which] to make a cote and seurcot ouvert and seurcot clos, for the lady of la Morée to make a cote and seurcot and chape, for the mistress of Vaudemont and for the mistress of Viavoir for each of these two cotes and a seurcot only, good brown cameline tireteine (fine cloth). In addition, for Challe of Flanders, for a cote and seurcot ouvert and seurcot clos of good striped tireteine.27

Further entries for Naples (May 1, 1279, and May 23, 1280) make reference to “open” and “closed” surcoats for a “Maistre Pierre de Tournuz, […] seigneur de Loy.” The entries note that the garments should be made from a material suitable for Master Peter’s profession.28 So in these accounts from the end of the 1270s, both noblewomen and lawyers are described as owning a “seurcot ouvert” with sleeves, implying that a sleeveless version would have been standard.

26 �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� “de tres bons pers entre dues couleurs, convenable a li ainsinc comme a seigneur de Loi, […] pour cote, pour surcot clos et pour seurcot overt a mainches, pore chape fraincoises a mainches et pour dues chaperons, […] et fourrer de gros var les di sourcot clos et ledit sourcot overt a mainches et ladite chape et l’un des chaperons.” Paul Durrieu and A. de Boüard, eds., Documents en Français des Archives Angevines de Naples (Règne de Charles 1er) (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1933–), part 1, 116. Elspeth Veale (English Fur Trade, 228) says that the term grosvair for northern European squirrel fur was “used, in contrast to menuvair, of the whole squirrel skin and therefore in effect equivalent to vair and bis.” 27 ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� “Derechief, nous vous mandons que vous achetez, pour la fille l’amperaeur pour faire cote et seurcot ouvert et seurcot clos, pour la dame de la Morée a faire cote et seurcot et chape, pour la damoisele de Vaudemont et por la damoisele de Viavoir a chascune d’iceles dues cotes et seurcot tant seulement, bone tireteine cameline brune. Dere chief, pour Challe de Flandres, por cote et seurcot ouvert et seurcot clos de bone tireteine raiée,” Durrieu and De Boüard, Documents, part 1, 157. 28 ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� “Le roi mande aux tresoriers d’acheter a la requeste de mestre Pierre de Tornuz, seigneur de Loy …, de tres bon et fin camelin convenable a lui assinc comme a seigneur de Loy, … por cote, por seurcot clos et por seurcot overt a mai[n]ches, … Et faites faire et coudre icele robe et fourrer lesdiz seurcot clos et celi overt a mainches, la chape et les dues chaperons de tres bon cendal renforcié” [The king commands that the treasurers purchase at the request of master Peter of Tournuz, lord of the Law … , very good quality cameline, suitable to him as a lord of the law, … for a cote, for seurcot clos and for seurcot overt with sleeves, … And undertake to make and sew the aforesaid robe and to fur/line the said seurcot clos and that overt with sleeves, the chape and the two chaperons of very good, reinforced sendal (silken fabric)]; and: “Le roi mande aux trésoriers d’acheter a la requeste de mestre Pierre de Tournuz, seigneur de Lois, nostre familier et feal … , de bonne tritaine de Douay convenable … pour cote, seurcot clos, seurcot ouvert a manches et pour chape et deus chaperons, au meilleur marchié que vous pourroiz trouver en la … cité de Naple pour notre Court” [The king commands the treasurers to purchase at the request of master Pierre of Tournuz, lord of the law, our familiar and loyal subject … , some good tritaine of Douay, suitable … for a cote, seurcot clos, seurcot ouvert with sleeves and for a chape and two chaperons from the best market that you can find in the … city of Naples for our Court]. Durrieu and De Boüard, Documents, part 1, 158, and part 2, 105.

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The “Open Surcoat” For subsequent centuries, the Dictionnaire du Moyen Français (DMF) offers two Continental examples which are more contemporaneous with our Anglo-Norman petition. The first is found in Guillaume de Machaut’s Remède de Fortune (ca. 1341). A passage of the long musical poem describes a grand celebration at court where a number of the courtiers pause for a costume change: When all had sung heartily, Each went his way, Who had to remove his corset In order to put the seurcot ouvert on.29

Here the courtiers (les siegneurs) exchange one garment (the corset) for another (the seurcot ouvert), and then make their way to the great table. The second attestation from the DMF comes from the French Royal Accounts of 1352, roughly a decade later. It describes the construction of garments for the robe of the Dauphin, which calls for [an] ell and a half of red escarlatte (scarlet-cloth), and an ell and a half of long marbré (variegated cloth) of Brussels, given to Martin de Coussy, tailor to my lord the Dauphin, to make a seurcot ouvert for my lord the Dauphin.30

In her exemplary, largely text-supported study of fashion associated with the period of the Black Prince (ca. 1340–65), the historian Stella Mary Newton reports that the wardrobe account for the young prince Andrew of Hungary (who was part of the later Angevin court at Naples) lists a “surcottus apertus” [open surcoat] as part of his robe in 1338.31 While it would be difficult to suggest similarity in cut or design with such distance from Godefroy’s late-thirteenth-century example or the Angevin accounts of the 1270s and 1280s, these Middle French attestations supply ample evidence of the phrase applied to men’s garments in French texts in the decades surrounding its initial appearance in Robert de Mountfort’s Britain. There are other postmodifying adjectives associated with the term surcot in French accounts that may bear some relationship to the fourteenth-century “open” surcoat. Newton discusses a similar, nearly contemporary garment-phrase: the surcot ront, mentioned as a gift to the queen in French royal accounts for 1342 and likely

29 ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� “Quant on ot chanté tout attrait, / Chascuns ala a son retrait, / Qui dut son corset desvestir, / Pour le seurcot ouvert vestir.” Guillaume de Machaut, Remède de Fortune, in Œuvres de Guillaume de Machaut, ed. Ernest Hœpffner, vol. 2 (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1911), 144, lines 3943–46, my emphasis. Also see Dictionnaire du Moyen Français (1330–1500), online ed. (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 2007), http://www.atilf.fr/, s.v. “seurcot subst. masc.” and “surcot, subst. masc.” 30 ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� “aune et demie d’escarlatte sanguine, et aune et demie d’un marbré lonc de Broisselles, baillé ��à ���� Martin de Coussy, tailleur de monseigneur le Dalphin, à faire un seurcot ouvert pour monseigneur le Dauphin.” L. Douët-d’Arcq, ed., Comptes de l’argenterie des rois de France au XIVe siècle, Société de l’histoire de France (Paris: J. Renouard, 1851), 1:1352, 85, my emphasis. 31 Stella Mary Newton, Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince: A Study of the Years 1340–1365 (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 1980), 24.

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Mark Chambers representing a garment slipped over the head.32 However, while the originally French adjective ront exists in Anglo-Norman and in Middle English by 1300,33 there is little extant evidence that it was used to describe either a cote or surcoat in Britain as it was on the Continent. Nonetheless, there are frequently related postmodifying adjectives that follow the nominal surcot in records from both sides of the Channel. The earlier Angevin “seurcot clos” and Robert’s later, British “surcot clos” likely refer to various surcoats that are similarly enclosed, without substantial front or side openings (beyond the sleeves).34 There is ample parallel British evidence of similar lexical items, such as the “chape close” cited in the Anglo-Norman Dictionary under the verb clore/closer and representing some sort of “closed” chasuble.35 While discussion of semantically related, postmodifying constructions with the word surcot cannot help but be atomistic in the present discussion, it may help to put the petition’s British use in context. It is clear that related postmodifying adjectives were used both in French and Anglo-Norman records to describe the cut or drape of surcoats in the mid-fourteenth century, and there is ample Middle French evidence for the contemporaneous use of surcot ouvert on the Continent. But if this fashion-phrase was in common currency in Britain and in France by the middle of the fourteenth century (and in use on the Continent at least from the end of the thirteenth), how is it glossed in today’s popular histories of late medieval fashion and dress? How might we attempt to picture a garment such as Robert’s surcot overt? THE PHRASE IN POPULAR COSTUME HISTORIES

Within the apparent upsurge in new fashions and new fashion terminology in the fourteenth century,36 variants on the French phrase surcot ouvert are indeed current in British texts by the middle decades. However, when the phrase appears in modern glossaries of handbooks of late medieval clothing—as it often does—it is almost always associated with a particular, popular, and well-illustrated women’s garment from the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In their influential Handbook of English Mediaeval Costume, for example, C. Willett Cunnington and Phillis Cunnington discuss the sleeveless, sideless surcoat that was popular with aristocratic women in Western Europe from the latter half of 32 Ibid., 24. 33 AND, s.v. “rund”; MED, s.v. “round(e, n.” 34 �������������� Douët-d’Arcq (Comptes de l’argenterie, 400) glosses the word as follows: “Seurcot, Surcot… . il y en avait de deux sortes, le surcot clos et le surcot ouvert. Le surcot clos se mettait par-dessous. Il avait des manches, et de plus il devait descendre plus bas que le surcot ouvert; le surcot ouvert était fendu par les côtés.” [Seurcot, surcot… . there were two sorts, the surcot clos and the surcot ouvert. The surcot clos was worn underneath. It had sleeves, and moreover it hung lower than the surcot ouvert; the surcot ouvert was split down the sides.] 35 AND, s.v. “clore.” 36 ����������� See note 3.

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The “Open Surcoat” the fourteenth century, becoming ceremonial in subsequent decades.37 This garment was typically made with substantial openings for the arms and shoulders which, on occasion, reached down as far as the hips. It was usually worn in conjunction with the mantle, and it apparently constituted official or state dress for noble women at least until the reign of Henry VII.38 As well as the Cunningtons’ Handbook, studies by Mary Houston and by Piponnier and Mane all make similar associations between this particular garment and our French phrase, translating this style of women’s surcoat variously as an “open surcoat” or a “sideless gown.”39 In her Visual History of Costume: The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, Margaret Scott defines the “surcote ouverte” as a sleeveless garment worn by women, with great, scooped-out “armholes” which allowed the outline of their bodies to be seen from shoulder to hip, and it was in this form, […] that the garment [the surcoat] and its name survived into the fifteenth century.40

Likewise, in her recent publication for the British Library, Scott glosses surcot(e) ouverte as a “Woman’s sleeveless surcote, with armholes that deepened toward the hips in the middle of the fourteenth century.”41 As illustration, Scott provides detail of a miniature from the Luttrell Psalter, which depicts two female members of the Luttrell family helping to arm Sir Geoffrey Luttrell.42 This exquisite and much-referenced manuscript was produced in East Anglia between 1325 and 1340, specifically for the family. The ladies in the miniature wear what Scott describes as heraldic “open surcoats,” which bear the martlet-birds of the Luttrell family in their design. Lady Luttrell (Agnes) also wears the lion rampant of her birth family, the Suttons, and Scott suggests that the heraldic decoration on the garments serves to identify the family members in the illustration and does not necessarily represent common court practice or contemporary fashion.43 In the decades following the Luttrell Psalter illustration, such women’s sideless surcoats often appear in aristocratic funerary monuments in Britain and France—likewise not necessarily

37 C. Willett ����������������������������������� Cunnington ������������������������ and Phillis Cunnington, Handbook of English Mediaeval Costume, 2������� nd����� ed. (London: Faber, 1973), 90–93, illust. p. 124. 38 ���������������� Margaret Scott, Medieval Dress and Fashion (London: British Library, 2007), 204. 39 �������������� Mary Houston, Medieval Costume, 99, 106; Piponnier and Mane, Dress in the Middle Ages, 167. 40 ���������������� Margaret Scott��, A Visual History of Costume: The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (London: B. T. Batsford, 1986)���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� , 143. For illustration, she includes pictures of a stone effigy (ca. 1330–35) of an unknown lady in the Church of St. Mary, Bottesford, Leicester (no. 6, p. 24), and of Hugo van der Goes’ painting of Margaret of Denmark, queen of James III of Scotland (1473–78), in the National Gallery of Scotland (no. 111, p. 107). 41 ������� Scott, Medieval Dress, 204. 42 ���� The Luttrell Psalter (London, British Library, Add. MS 42130) is available for view online at http:// www.bl.uk/collections/treasures/luttrell/luttrell_broadband.htm, and a detail from the miniature at fol. 202v is reproduced in Scott, Medieval Dress, 98, no. 57. Houston (Medieval Costume, 99) also cites this one British example in illustration of the so-called “open surcote.” 43 Scott, Medieval Dress, 101. This understanding seems to contradict assumptions by earlier historians: cf. Herbert Norris, Costume & Fashion, Vol. Two: Senlac to Bosworth, 1066–1485 (London: J. M. Dent, 1927), 323; Houston, Medieval Costume, 99.

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Mark Chambers displaying a regular fashion practice, but to identify, to distinguish the nobly born from middle-class women of fashion.44 However, despite the recommendations of these and other costume historians, there is little apparent extant evidence that the vernacular phrase surcot ouvert or any of its variants were ever applied to women’s sideless surcoats such as these in Britain—at least until the early decades of the fifteenth century. By this time, Continental French evidence also begins to show regular use of the phrases surcot clos and surcot ouvert describing aristocratic women’s garments—such as those appearing in ladies’ wills during the reign of Charles VI.45 In the earlier British texts, however—and in the fourteenth-century evidence in general—variants of the phrase surcot ouvert are consistently applied to men’s garments, primarily from the period just following Robert de Mountfort’s petition. THE PHRASE IN MIDDLE ENGLISH

Most of the evidence from the major English dictionaries suggests that the phrase was probably in common use by the middle decades of the fourteenth century, although only in specific contexts. Here it seems to be a fully “lexicalized” noun phrase or even a compound, retaining the French-positioned postmodifier.46 The earliest literary example of the phrase in Middle English occurs in the romance of Sir Degaré, dating from the second or third decade of the fourteenth century and surviving in some six manuscripts.47 As the romance’s eponymous hero is searching for his lost father, he comes across a mysterious island castle. After he wanders inside and makes himself comfortable, he is confronted with four beautiful damsels and a rather elegantly dressed dwarf. The poem describes the dwarf ’s clothing in venerating terms:

44 ������� Scott, Medieval Dress, 108. 45 In a will of September 1407, for example, a “seurcot long” and “seurcot ouvert” are left to Jehannete de Brabant by her aunt, Enguerranne de Saint-Benoît; in June 1416, Marguerite de Bruyères leaves a “chappe, seurcot cloz et seurcot ouvert, fourrez de menu vair” to Marie, daughter of Jehanne de Beauvais; and in October 1420, Simonnette la Maugère leaves her niece her “surcot lonc et ouvert,” along with her “cotte simple” and furred houppelande. Alexandre Tuetey, ed., Testaments enregistrés au Parlement de Paris sous le règne de Charles VI (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1880), 220, 342, 383. 46 ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� By “lexicalized,” I mean a word or phrase that has been fully subsumed as a distinct semantic unit in common usage. Historical linguists have similarly designated “lexicalized” elements as being “institutionalized,” “idiomized,” and/or “received,” with some subtle distinctions between these designations; Laurie �������������� Bauer, English Word-formation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 1978a, e. See also Geoffrey Leech, Semantics (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1974), 226; John Lyons, Semantics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977) 2:524; Peter Hugoe Matthews, Morphology: An Introduction to the Theory of Word-Structure, Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics (London: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 193. 47 ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� For information on the text and surviving manuscripts, see the introduction to W. H. French and C. B. Hale, Middle English Metrical Romances (New York: Prentice Hall, 1930), 1–20.

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The “Open Surcoat” He was iclothed wel ariȝt, His sschon icouped as a knight; He hadde on a sorcot ouert, Iforred wiþ blaundeuer apert. [He was clothed very properly, His shoes decorated/cut as a knight; He had on a sorcot ouert, Skilfully furred with blaunner (ermine or a similar species of white fur)]48

The dwarf ’s dress is described in fashionable, courtly terms, with “icouped” or suitably fashioned shoes49 and an “open” surcoat trimmed with white fur.50 It is probable that Sir Degaré was based on a French original, and some scholars suggest it might be based on a now-lost Breton lai, the Lai d’Esgaré, although there is no consensus.51 Of course, it is possible that the end-rhymes “ouert” and “apert” may suggest a rhetorical code-switch or an attempt to replicate a now-lost French original, but the lack of further explanation of the garment in the passage seems to recommend lexicalization. Just as the dwarf ’s shoes resemble those “of [any] knight,” his “sorcot ouert” is couched in terms of a common fashion with a common name—common, at least, within the perceived lexicon of the romance’s intended audience. The same can be said for a similar Middle English romance that is partially based on Sir Degaré and that survives in manuscripts from a few decades later, in the middle of the century. In the central action of Sir Eglamour of Artois, Sir Eglamour unwittingly enters into a joust with his estranged son. Eglamour eventually wins the joust, earning the right to marry his similarly estranged wife, Cristabelle (whom he has also failed to recognize). In fact, identity—through clothing—plays a pivotal role in this Oedipal narrative’s development. During the joust, Eglamour displays an armorial decoration on his surcoat that shows an image of Cristabelle in a boat, holding their infant son. This identifying coat-of-arms records the action from earlier in Eglamour’s story, after he and his wife had been separated and she had been lost with the baby. Once Eglamour has won the fight and overcome any further Oedipal difficulties, his wife recognizes him by this image on his surcoat, and she rushes forward to greet him: To vnarme hym þe lady gase: A surcott vuerte þe knyght tase

48 Sir Degaré, in French and Hale, Middle English Metrical Romances, lines 789–92, my emphasis. 49 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ I. Marc Carlson suggests that a “couped” shoe is one with “Leather that has been decorated with slashes, cut outs, punched holes, or scalloped edges.” See his glossary in Footwear of the Middle Ages: An ongoing examination of the history and development of footwear and shoemaking techniques up to the end of the sixteenth century (2005), http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~marc-carlson/shoe/RESEARCH/GLOSSARY/bdefc.htm (accessed April 1, 2009). See also MED, s.v. “coupen, v.2” MED cites Piers Plowman’s description of Christ in Passus XVIII: “As is the kynde of a knight that cometh to be dubbed, / To geten hym gilte spores on galoches ycouped”; William Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman: A Critical Edition of the B-Text Based on Trinity College Cambridge MS B.15.17, ed. A. V. C. Schmidt, 2nd ed. (London: J. M. Dent, 1995), lines 13–14, my emphasis. 50 MED, s.v. “blaunner, adj. as n.”; OED, s.v. “blaunner.” 51 ��������������������� See French and Hale, Middle English Metrical Romances, 1–20.

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Mark Chambers To mete þan gan þay wende. [To unarm him the lady goes: A surcott vuerte the knight takes (?) To meat then they did make their way.]52

Like Sir Degaré’s “sorcot ouert,” Eglamour’s “surcott vuerte” indicates part of the knightly garb. Similarly, the Lybeaus Desconus (or story of the “Fair Unknown”) from ca. 1400 makes reference to a man’s garment, using our noun-adjective phrase, and as in Sir Degaré, it appears as part of a mysterious dwarf ’s elegant attire. In fact, the author is adapting the passage from the earlier romance, with some alteration, both of narrative and of syntax. Here the dwarf accompanies the Lady Elene, bringing a message to King Arthur’s court: Þe dwerke was clodeþ yn ynde, Be-fore and ek be-hynde: Stout he was and pert. Among alle Crystene kende Swych on ne schold no man fynde; Hys surcote was ouert. [The dwarf was clothed in indigo (fabric), In front and behind: Stately he was and dapper. Among all Christian kind Such a one should no man find; His surcote was ouert.]53

Here, of course, the adjective functions as a participle, following was. In this case, the syntax has been fully modernized and the phrase divided by the verb. In the Lybeaus Desconus, the “surcote” is still “overt,” but it is no longer couched in a stock noun phrase.54

52 ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� From Lincoln, Cathedral Library MS 91 A.5.2, transcribed and edited in F. E. Richardson, ed., Sir Eglamour of Artois, Early English Text Society, ori. ser., ��������������������������������������������� 256 (London: Oxford ������������������������� University Press��������� , 1965), 90, lines 1283–85, my emphasis. In her recent edition, Harriet Hudson seems to contradict Richardson and the MED’s definition here, suggesting that vuerte in the poem means “green” [vert(e)], although she does not offer qualification or explanation: Sir Eglamour of Artois, in Four Middle English Romances, ed. Hudson, 2nd ed. (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2006), 141 nn. 1234–37. The other three fourteenth-century manuscripts of the poem vary considerably, and London, British Library, Cotton MS Caligula A.II reads: “To vnarme hym þe knyȝt gose— / Kyrtels and surcotis and oþer close, / That dowȝty were in dede,” Richardson, Sir Eglamour of Artois, 91, lines 1282–84. 53 �������������������� Maldwyn Mills, ed., Lybeaus Desconus, Early English Text Society, ori. ser., 261 �������������������� (London: Oxford University Press������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� , 1969), 82, lines 121–26, my emphasis. The reading is from London, British Library, Cotton MS Caligula A.II, 50v; the slightly later London, Lambeth Palace MS 306, 76r reads “Hi[s] surcote was so ryche bete” (83, line 135). Thomas Chester has been suggested as a possible author. For the passage’s relationship to Sir Degaré, see Mills’ commentary, 208–9. 54 ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Note the earlier French use: “lesdiz seurcot clos et celi overt a mainches” in note 29.

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The “Open Surcoat” The earlier of these late medieval romances indicate that our Old French/AngloNorman noun phrase had become fashionable in English texts by the 1330s and 1340s. They also suggest that, by this time, the phrase surcot ouvert had become lexicalized in Middle English romance—itself a veritable magpie of new Latinate diction through its frequent association with Continental exemplars. While this does not prove common currency of the phrase in Middle English, it does strongly suggest lexicalization in the courtly register of romance. More than this, however, the English historical dictionaries cite one other late medieval use of the phrase. Recorded in Thomas Rymer’s Foedera for the year 1415, a Latin account switches into the vernacular when mentioning the garment (what we might now assume to be a codeswitch55) in order to render the specific, technical lexeme: “Robam meam de Scarleto Furratam cum Meyniuer, Surcote overt, & Collobium cum barr. de Ermyn,” [my robe/suit of scarlet furred with miniver, surcote overt, and colobium (sleeveless tunic) with band/stripe of ermine].56 Again, the phrase is used to describe a man’s garment. The “sorcot ouert” of Sir Degaré, Eglamour’s “surcott vuerte,” and the “surcote overt” mentioned in Rymer’s Foedera appear to demonstrate a recurring Middle English noun phrase, based on French usage, describing a particular garment associated with aristocratic male dress from the middle decades of the fourteenth century. Ultimately, none of the attested Middle English or Anglo-Norman uses of the phrase surcot ouvert are ever used to describe women’s garments—and this includes those popular, aristocratic, sleeveless surcoats of the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that are so often linked to the phrase in histories of costume. Moreover, these uses of the phrase seem to indicate full lexicalization in the vernaculars of later medieval Britain. At least by the 1330s, surcot ouvert had become a common, if courtly, designation for a particular garment that was both a knightly surcoat and “open” in some way. APPEARANCE OF THE “OVERT” POSTMODIFIER IN OTHER ENGLISH NOUN PHRASES

Of course, it is not uncommon to see the adjective overt acting as a postmodifier in other uses from the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The Pearl poet speaks of the Psalter’s “verse ouverte.”57 John Walton’s Middle English translation of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy mentions the “refut ouert” offered to wretches in distress,

55 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Although this would indicate a conscious switch from one language to another, which is not necessarily the case in late-medieval technical writing; see Wright, Sources of London English, 6–12. 56 ������������������� Thomas Rymer, ed., Fœdera, conventiones, literæ, et cujuscunque generis Acta publica, 2nd ed. (London: J. Tonson, 1704–32), 9:278. 57 ��������������������� “In Sauter is sayd a verce ouerte þat spekez a poynt determynable: / Þou quytez vchon as hys desserte, þou hyȝe kyng ay pretermynable” [In the Psalter is said an open verse that speaks a point incontrovertible: / Thou givest each one his desert, thou high, supreme king]. E. V. Gordon, ed., Pearl (Oxford: Clarendon, 1953), 593, my emphasis.

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Mark Chambers describing the metaphor of the “port of peace.”58 The use of overt as a postmodifier is apparently quite common in heraldic contexts, and both the Middle English Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary offer the mid-fifteenth-century description of the Arms of Oxford, which describes its “boke overt wt vij clospys gold betwyx iij crownys” [open book with seven gold clasps between three crowns].59 Earlier in Britain, similar noun phrases crop up particularly in Anglo-Norman legal documents, including the antecedent of the Modern English phrase “letters patent”: letters overtes. Interestingly enough, this expression is recorded in the Parliamentary Rolls for the same session to which Robert de Mountfort’s petition would have been made, for the years 1321–22. The Anglo-Norman Dictionary records attestations of the legal phrase as early as Magna Carta, a usage that is largely supplanted by the thirteenth century by the analogous “letters patent,” still current in legal circles.60 So there is a great deal of dictionary evidence of overt (French ouvert) and variants being used as postmodifiers in noun phrases or possibly as a compound nominal in British texts—and particularly in the Middle English and Anglo-Norman of the mid-fourteenth century—and there are far too many examples to catalog fully here. However, the frequency and relative abundance of attestations during the period recommend that the Anglo-French/Middle English noun phrase surcot ouvert should be lemmatized in historical dictionaries, databases concerned with cloth and clothing terminology or medieval material culture, and other related lexicographical resources.61 LATIN EQUIVALENTS

In British Latin, the nominal surcot is normally translated (or “calqued,” where each part of the phrase or compound is translated directly) using the equivalent supertunica.62 Stella Mary Newton points out that open and closed supertunics appear in the French royal wardrobe accounts for 1342 as part of the four to six garments making

58 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ “Here is the port of pees and restfulnesse / To þeim [them] þat stonde in stormes of desese [disease] / Refut ouert [open refuge] to wrecches in distresse / And all confort of myschief and mysese [misease].” Karl Schümmer, ed., John Waltons metrische Übersetzung der Consolatio Philosophiae, Bonner studien zur englischen philologie 6 (Bonn: P. Hanstein, 1914), 107, my emphasis. 59 ��������������������������������������������������������� Perceval Landon, “The Arms of the University of Oxford,” The Antiquary 37 (1910): 210; my emphasis. 60 AND, s.v. “ovrir”; also noted in OED, s.v. “overt, adj.” 61 ������������������������������������������ I am thinking specifically of the ongoing Lexis of Cloth and Clothing in Britain, ca. 700–ca. 1450 project, for which I currently serve as a consultant. The project is supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and based jointly at the Universities of Manchester and Westminster, from 2006 through 2011. The project’s chief investigator is Professor Gale R. Owen-Crocker (Manchester) and its co-investigators are Dr. Louise Sylvester (Westminster) and Dr. Cordelia Warr (Manchester). See http://lexisproject.arts.manchester.ac.uk. 62 �������������� R. E. Latham, Revised Medieval Latin Word-List, s.v. “supertunica.”

104

The “Open Surcoat”

Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the image on this page please refer to the printed version of this book.

Fig. 4.3: Roll of liveries by John de Neubury, keeper of the great wardrobe; London, National Archives, MS E 101/393/15 (1360–61), memb. 1 (detail). Photo: Mark Chambers, with ­permision from the National Archives.

up the princely robe, or outfit.63 Moreover, Newton reports that in the roll of liveries for the Great Wardrobe account for 1360, a courtier named John Marreys made King Edward III a gift of several garments, including a tunic, a long cloak with two hoods, and both closed and open supertunics, which were sleeved and decorated.64 The manuscript in question (fig. 4.3), names some of these later garments as unam tunic’ unam super tunic’ claus’ unam supertunic’ apert’ [one tunic, one closed supertunic, one open supertunic]65

This account is interesting in that it is one of those places in fourteenth-century British texts—besides Robert de Mountfort’s Anglo-Norman petition—where “closed” and “open” surcoats are named together, emphasizing their semantic relationship and

63 �������� Newton, Black Prince, ���������������������������������������������� 65. For a discussion of the components of the robe, see Veale, English Fur Trade, 2. 64 �������� Newton, Black Prince, 65. ��� 65 ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� London, National Archives, MS E 101/393/15, memb. 1, item 1. Abbreviations have been expanded and suspensions represented with apostrophes.

105

Mark Chambers refining our understanding of how the people who named them thought of them.66 The Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources provides further parallel evidence from medieval British Latin that attests a form of the past participle of aperire (“to open”) as an adjective modifying the plural of supertunica. A regulation from 1342, for example, describes “aperitis et patentibus supertunicis” [open and broad surcoats] worn by members of the clergy.67 Again, the syntax is such here that we cannot suggest a perfect match, but at least we have apparent contemporary evidence of semantic equivalents to our Anglo-Norman/Middle English phrase in British Latin texts. In a roll of liveries for 21 to 23 Edward III (1345–48)—a number of years before the Great Wardrobe account above—there are records of purchases for a number of “open” and “closed” super-tunics (supertunica aperta, supertunica clausa, etc.) made for members of the court.68 Of the twelve separate entries listing “open” or “closed” supertunics, five are specified for “our lord the king” (“pro eod’m domino nostro Rege”) and five are unspecified but are clearly amongst other items made for the king. In the later portion of the roll’s listing (from 1348) we find two isolated references to open supertunics made for women. Both are very much ceremonial garments, the first a robe of velvet for Queen Phillipa’s public reemergence following the death of her infant son William: Et ad fac’ vna robam de veluett’ ynde pro dicta Regina vȝ pro vigil’ relevagiorum suorum predicatiorum de .iiijor. garniam’ cont’ .j. mantill. j. capam .j. supertunicam aperta & vna tunica’ operat’ cum auibȝ de auro [And for making a robe of dark blue velvet for the aforesaid Queen, for her public “churching” vigil, of four garments comprising one mantle, one cape/cloak, one supertunica aperta and one tunic embroidered with birds of gold]69

This is quite clearly a ceremonial robe intended for a specific public presentation of the queen, with its “open” supertunic and other garments covered in elaborate embroidery and ornamentation. The second appearance of a woman’s “open” supertunic in the roll occurs in an even more elaborately ceremonial context. For her coming wedding to Peter of Castile in 1348, Edward III’s daughter Joan had a wedding dress made of more than

66 DMLBS, 2:354, s.v. “claudĕre2,” gives an attestation for supertunicas clausas from 1342: “supertunicas clausas de nigro brunetto vel bluetto” [black closed supertunic of burnet and blue (cloth)] from W. Dugdale et al., eds., Monasticon Anglicanum (London: Bohn, 1846), 6:702b. 67 DMLBS, 1:98, s.v. “aperire.” The attestation is found in David Wilkins, ed., Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae (446–1717) (London: R. Gosling, 1737), 2:703. 68 ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� London, National Archives, MS E 101/391/15, memb. 1, items 1, 5, 8, 9, 11, 12, and following. Much of this roll has been roughly transcribed by N. H. Nichols in “Observations on the Institution of the Most Noble Order of the Garter,” Archaeologia 31 (1846): 5–103; cf. also Newton’s discussion in Black Prince, 34. 69 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ Ibid., memb. 13, item 1. Abbreviations have been expanded and suspensions represented with apostrophes.

106

The “Open Surcoat” 150 meters of rakamatiz (heavy cloth of gold). This garment is only one amidst her formidably elaborate trousseau: Eidem ad faciend’ pro dicta domina sua .j. tuncam & j. mantill pro solempnitate maritagij’ de .p’. adauru’ rakematiz. Et pro .j. mantello .j. supertunica aperta . vna tunica de p. adauru’ diaspyns fortz & .j. mantello pro cena die nupciarum [Item: for making for the aforesaid lady 1 tunic & 1 mantle for the solemn marriage, of cloth-of-gold rakematiz. And for 1 mantle, 1 supertunica aperta, one tunic of reinforced cloth-of-gold diaspin and 1 mantle, for the feast-day of the nuptials]70

In all of the twelve references to “open” or “closed” supertunicas in this roll of liveries, only two are specified as being made for women. With regard to numbers of garments, of the fourteen “open” supertunics in the account, twelve are either specified as being for the king or amongst garments made for him, along with eight “closed” supertunics. Only two of the “open” supertunics were made for royal women, and both were made for specific, formal, highly ceremonial occasions. All forms referring to the garments are in abbreviated Latin. During Henry IV’s reign, in the fifteenth century, we find further evidence of the Latin phrase supertunica aperta being used to describe women’s garments in British texts. Henry himself wore an impressive “open” supertunic: In the 1407–8 accounts of William Loveney, Keeper of the Great Wardrobe, there are details of one of the king’s magnificent robes, which include ij mantell’ j tabard j supertunic’ claus’ j supertunic’ apert’ ij kyrtell’ curt’ j kyrtell’ long’ [two mantles, one tabard, one closed surcoat, one open surcoat, two short kirtles, one long kirtle]

Here again, “closed” and “open” are distinguished in proximity to each other, both parts of a larger royal outfit.71 But within a year or two of Henry’s supertunics, we also find reference to an “open” supertunic in the wedding trousseau of his youngest daughter, Princess Philippa. Hers would appear to be an early reference to this kind of garment specifically for a woman (or girl, in this case) in a British text. Philippa was only eleven or twelve in 1406, when she was married to Eric, King of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. The special wardrobe account that lists her trousseau represents a vivid picture of royal wedding accoutrement and the traveling garments-of-state in the early fifteenth century. Many of the garments are surely ceremonial, including those making up a stately blue-velvet robe:

70 ������������������������� Ibid., m���������������� emb. 19, item 1. 71 ������������������������������������������� London, National Archives, MS E 101/405/14.

107

Mark Chambers unam robam de velvet blu continentem unam tunicam, unam supertunicam apertam et unum mantellum cum trayn faciend’ et furrur’ cum minever pur’ et purfil’ cum ermyn, pro Regina erga transitum predictum. [a robe of blue velvet comprising a tunic, a supertunicam apertam and a mantle with a train made and furred with trimmed miniver and purfled with ermine, for the Queen for her aforementioned crossing.]72

Like her predecessors in the earlier roll of liveries, the princess seems to have acquired a fashion from her father’s wardrobe amongst the state dress made for her trousseau, and as the costume historians make clear, this fashion in aristocratic women’s state dress appears to continue in Europe through the fifteenth and into the sixteenth centuries.73 However, the wardrobe account is in the customary Latin, rather than French, and it comes much later than British references to the male surcot ouvert adorning knights and dwarves in the fourteenth century. In short, the younger Phillipa’s supertunica is hardly the same garment as the surcot overt of Robert de Mountfort’s petition. FINDINGS

Some of the earliest surviving Continental attestations of surcot ouvert come from the Angevin court in Naples. Dating from the late 1270s and 1280s, they are applied variously to garments of either sex. In Britain, the originally Old French and Anglo-Norman noun phrase seems to have been fully lexicalized into Middle English by ca. 1330, falling out of use by ca. 1450. Overt appears as a postmodifier in a number of Middle English noun phrases, particularly in the fields of law and heraldry. Moreover, the two-word phrase was regularly applied to men’s garments, despite its frequent identification—in the major modern histories of costume and elsewhere—with sideless women’s surcoats of the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. One can anticipate that further investigation of the Continental sources and equivalents may provide a clearer picture of the phrase’s development in a wider European context, but for the moment, the vernacular designation surcot ouvert can only be defined in British texts as a man’s garment from the early fourteenth century—which is likely related to Latin equivalents referring to women’s garments from the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries—based on the available attestations. Like some other noun phrases and compounds associated with the term surcot in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, surcot ouvert deserves to be lemmatized in the major historical dictionaries, databases of cloth and clothing terminology, and other sources of medieval technical vocabulary. It represents a distinct lexical item—a hyponym of surcot—which is attested in multiple sources. 72 ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� W. Paley Baildon, “The Trousseaux of Princess Philippa, wife of Eric, King of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden,” Archaeologia 67 (1916): 174. 73 �������������������� See notes 38 and 39.

108

The “Open Surcoat” More than this, future late medieval lexicological studies—particularly those dealing with specific technical lexicon and/or material culture—should include relevant material from the newly available medieval petitions. Of course, there are still many untapped sources of medieval vocabulary. But the late medieval petitions from the “Ancient Petitions” collection represent an unedited, yet readily available online resource, and they are in need of further investigation by legal, social, technical, and clothing historians, as well as by lexicographers.74 Finally, to contradict Piponnier and Mane’s assertion that “documentary evidence raises all sorts of problems for collectors and collators of data,” I would suggest that the documentary evidence can only help to correct, support, or refine our understanding of medieval clothing culture. Far from being problematic to the study of medieval clothing and textiles, it can help to reveal and clarify: to render those more elusive garments evident, even overt.

74 ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Louise Sylvester, Gale Owen-Crocker, and I have recently launched a three-year project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, which will investigate these and some of the other primary, unpublished sources of medieval cloth and clothing terminology. The Medieval Dress and Textile Vocabulary in Unpublished Sources Project is hosted jointly by the Universities of Westminster and Manchester; further information may be found at the project’s Web site: http://www.westminster.ac.uk/schools/ humanities/research/english/medieval-dress-and-textile-vocabulary-in-unpublished-sources­project.

109

London Merchants’ Cloth Exports, 1350–1500

Eleanor Quinton and John Oldland

English woollen cloth exports rose dramatically from the mid-fourteenth to the beginning of the sixteenth century, as did London’s share of those exports. In the year that the Black Death reached England, 1348–49, London exported only 217 cloths, 12.5 percent of the national total of 1,734 cloths. By the first decade of the fifteenth century, London’s cloth exports had grown to 13,921 annually, 42 percent of national exports of 33,158 equivalent assize broadcloths; and a century later, 49,500 cloths were shipped from London annually, 61.1 percent of the 81,037 cloths shipped nationally. (See table 5.1 for cloth exports nationally and for London from 1347, when records of denizen cloth exports began, until 1510.) Exports were to continue to surge until the mid-sixteenth century, peaking at 150,563 cloths in 1553, by which time London’s share of exports was 90 percent. London merchants competed for this trade with Hanseatic and other alien merchants, mostly Italian. The share of London’s trade held by its own merchants, although fluctuating, averaged around 40 percent for much of the fifteenth century. During this period, England changed from being a supplier of wools to the Continental cloth industry to being the leading manufacturer of woollen

This article is a version of a paper presented by Eleanor Quinton in May 2006 at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, Michigan.    �������������������������� Eleanora Carus-Wilson and Olive ��������������� Coleman, England’s Export Trade, 1275–1547 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), 75.    ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� The cloth assize regulated the width and length of standard broadcloth and striped cloths called rays. There were minor changes in the assize during this period. Accounts for smaller cloths subject to petty custom, such as dozens, straits, and kerseys, were converted into their equivalent in assize cloths for tax purposes.    John ����� Gould, ������� The Great Debasement: Currency and the Economy in Mid-Tudor England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 118.    �������������������������� The Hanse was a league of ��������������������������������������������������������������������� German towns that had negotiated preferential terms of trade and customs rates with England, and were therefore separated in the customs accounts from other alien merchants. They controlled trade to the Baltic and Prussia, as well as the traffic down the Rhine and other northern European rivers reaching to central Europe.

Table 5.1: Annual exports of English broadcloths of assize 1347–1510, nationally and at London    Years

National exports      London exports            Denizen 2,246

1351–55

1,586

1356–60

7,376

1361–65

9,099

1366–70

10,978

1371–75

0

Other aliens

Total

Denizen

Hansard

Other aliens

Total

London % share of national exports   Total

Denizen

Hansard

Other aliens

112

310

2,556

0

335

1,921

36

0

152

188

9.8

19.1

0

85.1

174

1,511

9,061

476

174

567

1,217

13.4

39.1

14.3

46.6

1,020

1,598

11,717

624

183

817

1,624

13.9

38.4

11.3

50.3

1,310

2,240

14,527

1,217

118

1,382

2,717

18.7

44.8

43.4

50.8

9,102

1,240

1,869

12,211

1,163

144

849

2,156

17.7

53.9

6.7

39.4

1376–80

9,673

1,383

2,586

13,643

1,240

265

1,485

2,990

21.9

41.5

8.9

49.6

1381–85

13,949

2,800

5,493

22,242

1386–90

17,192

3,125

5,293

25,610

1391–95

22,974

6,346

10,205

39,525

1396–00

23,318

5,646

9,811

38,775

1401–05

19,450

6,548

8,571

34,570

7,101

3,176

3,233

13,510

39.1

52.6

23.5

23.9

1406–10

12,997

6,568

12,181

31,746

4,889

3,406

5,956

14,251

44.9

34.3

23.9

41.8

1411–15

12,284

4,980

9,919

27,183

4,295

2,426

7,771

14,493

53.3

29.6

16.7

53.6

1416–20

14,051

5,722

8,205

27,977

3,869

2,862

5,967

12,698

45.4

30.5

22.5

47.0

1421–25

21,180

6,935

12,160

40,275

6,076

3,857

6,879

16,812

41.7

36.1

23.0

40.9

1426–30

20,334

5,304

14,768

40,406

4,975

3,995

8,528

17,498

43.3

28.4

22.8

48.7

1431–35

25,474

4,062

10,492

40,027

11,034

2,958

3,077

17,069

42.6

64.6

17.3

18.0

Eleanor Quinton and John Oldland

1346–50

Hansard

   22,864

9,145

15,063

47,072

6,485

5,036

6,603

18,124

38.5

35.8

27.8

36.4

1441–45

28,163

11,336

16,957

56,456

10,071

7,831

6,035

23,938

42.4

42.1

32.7

25.2

1446–50

25,286

9,301

11,259

45,847

6,356

5,721

2,152

14,229

31.0

44.7

40.2

15.1

1451–55

20,785

8,214

7,701

36,700

8,484

6,749

1,186

16,419

44.7

51.7

41.1

7.2

1456–60

18,911

10,017

7,562

36,489

7,829

7,643

690

16,162

44.3

48.4

47.3

4.3

1461–65

16,046

8,584

4,371

29,002

8,965

6,407

668

16,041

55.3

55.9

39.9

4.2

1466–70

21,255

5,807

10,386

37,447

13,789

4,357

2,642

20,788

55.5

66.3

21.0

12.7

1471–75

20,705

3,415

12,417

36,537

13,727

3,061

6,540

23,328

63.8

58.8

13.1

28.0

1476–80

32,185

8,226

10,030

50,441

19,283

7,033

8,128

34,444

68.3

56.0

20.4

23.6

1481–85

29,191

13,439

11,568

54,198

16,160

12,434

7,700

36,293

67.0

44.5

34.3

21.2

113

1486–90

25,892

13,740

10,373

50,005

14,369

12,465

8,288

35,122

70.2

40.9

35.5

23.6

1491–95

29,513

15,100

12,332

56,945

14,135

13,868

7,890

35,893

63.0

39.4

38.6

22.0

1496–00

35,668

17,175

9,740

62,583

20,047

16,282

6,417

42,746

68.3

46.9

38.1

15.0

1501–05

44,803

17,638

14,830

77,271

21,224

16,819

8,567

46,611

60.3

45.5

36.1

18.4

1506–10

46,832

16,984

20,987

84,803

27,352

16,473

8,566

52,390

61.8

52.2

31.4

16.4

Sources: Munro, “Medieval Woollens,” 1:306–7; Carus-Wilson and Coleman, Export Trade, 75–87. Notes: Years are calculated on the normal Exchequer year of Michaelmas to Michaelmas (September 29). Four straits and three kerseys were equivalent to one assize broadcloth. In 1373–74, the government did not collect the London customs itself, but farmed the task out to individuals who took on the collection for an agreed fee, meaning the government did not know the number of cloths that were taxed. From 1380–81 to 1400–01, it is impossible to compute accurate figures for London because for most years denizen and alien exports were grouped together, and only the customs revenue figures were provided. All the above figures have been taken from Carus-Wilson and Coleman, Export Trade, and then modified to more accurately fit the Exchequer year. If an account ran for 16 months, a 12-month estimate would be allocated to one year, and the remaining four months to the following year, to which would be added proportions from the following accounts.

London Merchants’ Cloth Exports

1436–40

Eleanor Quinton and John Oldland cloth in Europe. It was in the 1430s that the amount of wool exported in the form of cloth exceeded that shipped as woolsacks. This paper traces London’s trajectory in the cloth trade from the perspective of the craft affiliations of the London merchants who shipped the cloth. Growth of cloth exports was accompanied by an increased specialization in the marketing of English cloth, and the Mercers’ Company and the Drapers’ Company were the two guilds that most successfully adjusted to the needs of the market, and appear to have been the most entrepreneurial during this period. Success as a cloth merchant, therefore, came to depend on company membership. The cloth trade was influenced by a number of factors that changed over time. In the fourteenth century, leading merchants were more concerned with raw wool than cloth, and with the products they imported rather than the cloth they exported. Each merchant company tended to focus its activities on specific Continental markets that provided it with the key products of its trade. In the fifteenth century, it was the relationship of merchants with Antwerp, the ability to develop southern markets for English cloth, and the relationships with alien merchants that became the critical factors. London always had the advantages that came with being the capital, the largest city, and the principal port in the country, and with its proximity to the major Continental trade routes to the Low Countries and southern Europe. In addition, London’s success resulted in part from the structure of London’s government, which fostered an economic environment conducive to trade and enabled merchants to react rapidly to shifting opportunities. As London’s cloth trade increased, profits from international trade gave London a far deeper capital base than anywhere else in the country; London merchants purchased cloth from all over the country, while alien merchants concentrated their purchasing in London. Luxury woollen cloth was the most important manufactured product traded internationally in the late Middle Ages. The market had contracted in the early fourteenth century, as it was no longer profitable for the Flemish draperies to trade lower-priced cloths to southern markets, or even sell them in England, allowing the English cloth industry to reassert control over its own domestic luxury market in the second quarter of the century. Leading draperies in the Low Countries and at Florence restructured their cloth industries to focus on the higher-quality cloths that were dependent on the best English wools. Edward III raised the duties on the export of wool in 1338 to finance his military activities, creating a competitive advantage and export opportunity for English clothmakers. Duties on wool continued to rise to the extent that English wools eventually represented up to 65–75 percent of the pre-finished cost of the ­best   ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� The accepted conversion rate for the sixteenth century was that 4.33 broadcloths could be made from a standard sack of wool weighing 364 pounds.    John ������������ Munro, “Industrial ����������������������������������� Transformations in the North-West ����������������������������������������������� European Textile Trades, c. 1290–c. 1340: Economic Progress or Economic Crisis?” in Before the Black Death: Studies in the “Crisis” of the Early Fourteenth Century, ed. Bruce Campbell (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991), 110–48; John Munro, “The ‘Industrial Crisis’ of the English Textile Towns, 1290–1330,” in Thirteenth Century England VII, ed. Michael Prestwich, Richard Britnell, and Robin Frame (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 1999), 103–41; Edward Miller and John Hatcher, Medieval England: Towns, Commerce and Crafts 1086–1348 (London: Longman, 1995), 124–27.

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London Merchants’ Cloth Exports quality cloths from the Low Countries. Smaller, rural Flemish draperies produced less expensive but still luxury woollens, using lesser English wools, sometimes blended with Scottish and Irish wools, and produced with lower labor costs. These cloths were successful in international markets until the end of the fifteenth century. By the close of the period under discussion, the English quality advantage in wools was being challenged by improving merino wools from Spain, as the rural Flemish draperies started to replace English wools with Spanish merino wools. The English export advance therefore took place in a mature market for European luxury woollens that was stagnant or declining until toward the end of the fifteenth century. The Black Death and recurrent waves of plague depleted the European population in the second half of the fourteenth century, reducing international trade. This was followed by a generation-long depression in the mid-fifteenth century.10 The dramatic fall in English wool exports, on which the European luxury cloth market depended, was not fully offset by English cloth exports (calculated in terms of wool used), suggesting that the luxury cloth market declined until the revival of the European economy in the later fifteenth century.11 Most cloths exported from eastern English ports, including London, in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries were priced below those of even the rural Flemish draperies, and there were significant exports of narrow cloths—straits and kerseys.12 In the fifteenth century, and particularly from 1470 onward, London merchants sold a broader range of luxury cloths, and the average quality of exports from London rose.13

   ������������ John Munro, “Medieval ���������� �������������� Woollens: The ����������������� Western European ��������������������������������������� Woollen Industries and Their Struggles for International Markets, c. 1000–1500,” in The Cambridge History of Western Textiles, ed. David Jenkins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 1:281.    John ������������ Munro, “Spanish ��������� Merino Wools and the Nouvelles Draperies: An Industrial Transformation in the Late-Medieval Low Countries,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 58, no. 3 (2005): 431–84.    ��������������������������������� Robert Lopez and Harry Miskimin, “The ���������������������������������������������� Economic Depression of the Renaissance,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 14, no. 3 (1962): 420.   10 �������������� John Hatcher, ����� “The ���������������������������������������������� Great Slump of the Mid-Fifteenth Century,” in Progress and Problems in Medieval England, ed. Richard Britnell and John Hatcher (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 237–72; Pamela Nightingale, “England and the European Depression of the Mid-Fifteenth Century,” Journal of European Economic History 26, no. 3 (1997): 631–56.   11 �������������������� Lopez and Miskimin, �������������������������������������� “Economic Depression,” 408–26; Munro, “��������� ���������� Medieval Woollens���������� ������������������ ,” 304–05. �������   12 ������� Munro, ���������� “��������� Medieval ���������������������� Woollens�������������� ,” ����������� 260; H. L. ������ Gray, ���������������������������������������������� “English Foreign Trade from 1446 to 1482,” in Studies in English Trade in the Fifteenth Century, ed. Eileen Power and Michael Postan (New York, Barnes & Noble, 1966), 7, 362; Wendy Childs, “The English Export Trade in Cloth in the Fourteenth Century,” in Britnell and Hatcher, Progress and Problems, 143.   13 �������������� Wendy Childs, Anglo-Castilian Trade in the Later Middle Ages (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1978), 80–86, 94–95; John Munro, “Three Centuries of Luxury Textile Consumption in the Low Countries and England, 1330–1570: Trends and Comparisons of Real Values of Woollen Broadcloths (Then and Now),” in The Medieval Broadcloth: Changing Trends in Fashions, Manufacturing and Consumption, ed. Kathrine Vestergård Pedersen and Marie-Louise B. Nosch, Ancient Textile Series 6 (Oxford: Oxbow, 2009), 38–43.

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Eleanor Quinton and John Oldland THE ACCOUNTS

The long and relatively complete series of customs accounts enrolled at the Exchequer have made possible the trade statistics that show the growth of the cloth trade, but they provide information only on the quantities of cloth and the tax paid. In addition there have survived particular accounts that provide additional information on petty custom and subsidy;14 detailed reports on the ships, merchants, and merchandise; and sometimes the destinations and value of the goods. These accounts are not as extensive as the enrolled accounts but are sufficiently numerous for London that we can trace the expansion of merchant activity through the period. Fortunately, for London, we can often discover some biographical material on individual merchants from the city’s unrivalled extant civic, ecclesiastical, and guild records for the late medieval period, supplemented by the records of the Chancery and other departments of royal government in which Londoners feature heavily.15 The absence from the London records of local customs sources, some of which survive for ports such as Southampton and Exeter, makes the customs particulars especially valuable as a means of shedding light on the day-by-day movement of goods through the city.16 The focus of this paper is   14 ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� The ancient custom refers to the duties on wool, woolfells, and hides, first introduced in 1275. The petty custom is the duty on cloth, first introduced in 1303 for alien merchants, but extended to include denizen merchants in 1347.   15 �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� The supporting records most frequently used here to identify merchants in the particular accounts of custom are as follows: the Hustings rolls of wills and deeds housed at London Metropolitan Archives; Marc Fitch, ed., Index to Testamentary Records in the Archdeaconry Court of London, British Record Society 89 (London: British Record Society, 1979), vol. 1 [1363–1649]; Marc Fitch, ed., Index to Testamentary Records in the Commissary Court of London, British Record Society 82, 86 (London: HMSO, 1969), vol 1. [1374–1488] and vol. 2 [1489–1570]; A. H. Thomas, ed., Calendar of Early Mayor’s Court Rolls Preserved Among the Archives of the Corporation of the City of London at the Guildhall, 1298–1307 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1924); A. H. Thomas and P. E. Jones, eds., Calendar of Pleas and Memoranda Rolls of the City of London, 6 vols. [1323–1482] (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926–61), hereafter Cal. P&M; Reginald Sharpe, ed., Calendar of Letter-Books Preserved among the Archives of the Corporation of the City of London at the Guildhall, 11 vols. [1275–1509] (London: J. E. Francis, 1899–1912), hereafter Cal. LB; Helena Chew, ed., London Possessory Assizes: A Calendar, London Record Society 1 (London: London Record Society, 1965); Helena Chew and William Kellaway, eds., London Assize of Nuisance, 1301–1431, London Record Society 10 (London: London Record Society, 1973); the early wardens’ accounts of the Drapers’ Company, included in Arthur Johnson, The History of the Worshipful Company of the Drapers of London (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1914), 1:282–348, 351–56; P. Boyd, The Roll of the Drapers’ Company of London (Croydon: J. A. Gordon, 1934); L. Lyell and F. D. Watney, eds., Acts of Court of the Mercers’ Company, 1453–1527 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936); J. S. Roskell, L. Clark, and C. Rawcliffe, eds., The House of Commons 1386–1421, 4 vols. (Stroud, UK: Sutton, 1992); Stanley Bindoff, ed., The House of Commons, 1509–1558, 3 vols. (London: Secker & Warburg, 1982); Calendar of the Close Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office (London: HMSO, 1892–), Edward III, vol. 8 (1346–49), to Edward IV, vol. 1 (1461–68); Calendar of the Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office (London: Mackie & Co., 1891–), hereafter CPR, Edward III, vol. 8 (1348–50) to Henry VI, vol. 5 (1446–52); Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem and Other Analogous Documents Preserved in the Public Record Office (London: HMSO, 1904–). We are also grateful to Dr. Anne Sutton for the use of her working list of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century London mercers.   16 Carus-Wilson and Coleman, England’s Export Trade, 3.

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London Merchants’ Cloth Exports on thirteen London particular accounts of petty custom and subsidy spread over the years 1348–1503,17 from which all denizen consignments of cloth have been listed and the cloths counted to the nearest half.18 The cloth types included in these calculations follow those regarded by the customs officials as pann assiz’ (cloth of assize). These include various broadcloths, rays (striped cloths), straits, rolls of frieze, hosiery, and, from 1388 onward, kersey.19 All such goods were converted into cloth-of-assize terms by the customs officials: for example, four straits were equivalent to one cloth of assize, as were three kerseys; hosiery was usually calculated at around four dozen pairs per cloth, but sometimes at around two dozen per cloth. It is likely that as time went on, cloths were more likely to be recorded in the particular accounts simply in their converted terms and thus to have lost their true identities.20 The only breakdown of woollens in the customs accounts was between cloths of grain (those dyed with the expensive kermes dye that produced the brilliant scarlets), half-grain cloths (in which the kermes dye was used in conjunction with other dyes), and non-grain cloths. Grain and half-grain cloths constituted only a small fraction of exports. There were, however, other wool textiles which appear in the accounts but which were not calculated by the customs officials in cloth-of-assize terms. Cloth custom was evidently not levied on Pann Wall’ (cloth of Wales), which seems to feature only in the particular accounts in the hands of aliens paying petty custom.21 It is therefore omitted from the calculations. Worsteds and serge have been omitted from the present 17 �������� London, ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� National Archives, E 101/457/19, 101/457/20, 101/457/22, 122/71/16, 122/72/4, 122/73/20, 122/76/32, 122/76/48, 122/80/2, 122/161/11, 122/194/19, 122/194/25, 122/203/1. (These are the ­accounts included in the accompanying tables.) 18 The statute length of broadcloth changed, from twenty-six yards before fulling in the second half of the century, to twenty-eight yards as of 1405–06, and then to twenty-four yards after fulling in 1464–65; see Anthony Bridbury, Medieval English Clothmaking (London: Heinemann, 1982), 108– 09. In the calculations which follow, a length of 20 yards or more is treated as a whole cloth, a length between 10 and 20 yards is treated as half a cloth, and lengths of less than 10 yards have been disregarded. There is invariably some discrepancy between the calculated totals and the totals given for denizen cloths at the end of the accounts. Some of the difference is attributable to illegible entries on worn parchment; some is also, no doubt, due to the method employed in these calculations of rounding up or down to the nearest half-cloth. The discrepancy is never great enough to compromise the cloth-exporting trends identified by the calculations.   19 This observation is based on hose featuring in the account of 1432–33, London, National Archives, E 122/203/1.   20 Kersey, for example, is identified as such in the particular account of 1390–91, but rarely again until the accounts of the 1430s, then infrequently until 1471–72 and in neither of the subsequent accounts studied; London, National Archives, E 122/71/16, 122/161/11, 122/203/1 (all frequently); 122/194/19, rot. 9. Hose is identified as such in the accounts studied up to 1446; London, National Archives, E 122/73/20, rot. 32. Cloth-covered chests, tapestry cushions, and dossers containing cloth also feature more noticeably (though still in small numbers) in earlier accounts and are rendered in cloth-of-assize terms, thus also included in these calculations, e.g. in 1429–30; London, National Archives E 122/161/11, rot. 1v, 10, 11.   21 ��������������������������������������������������������������� Welsh straits, which were cheap, coarse woollens also known as �������������������������������������� “cotton russets,” were also liable to petty custom only. Harry Cobb, ed., The Overseas Trade of London: Exchequer Customs Accounts, 1480–1 (London: London Record Society, 1991), items 177–78, 469–595.

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Eleanor Quinton and John Oldland calculations for the sake of comparison with the export figures that exclude them. Worsteds were lighter, usually far less expensive, woollen cloths made from longer, coarser, straighter wools, and with little or no finishing. They were calendared to give the cloth a sheen, which contrasted with the fulling, shearing, and pressing used for heavy woollens. Therefore, the method of worsted’s production, low price, appearance, and function (which was often for bedding and wall hangings) rendered worsted cloths distinct from the heavier, more expensive woollens regarded as cloth of assize.22 The value of worsted exports, while significant in 1350, continued to decline until the late fifteenth century. Worsted was liable to its own lower rate of cloth custom from 1347, and it would seem that on the rare occasion that serge (woven with worsted warp and woollen weft threads) enters the accounts, this too commanded a lower rate.23 CarusWilson and Coleman omitted worsted from their calculations because the ambiguity of the Hanse merchants’ liability to pay custom on it made it impossible to apportion or to measure levels of its export in the fourteenth century, and because so few worsteds were exported in the fifteenth century.24 Merchants have been classified according to the leading companies to which they belonged. “Foreign” denizens—that is, those using London but not enjoying citizenship of London—have been identified a handful of times in most accounts, and are incorporated into the calculations as “other denizens” alongside the minor guildsmen of London, naturalized aliens, or aliens exporting with dispensations to be taxed at denizen rates. Unavoidably, there are denizens in all particular accounts who escape identification, or whose identity is too uncertain for attribution. It is likely that many of those who escape identification altogether were non-Londoners, whilst the denizens who are uncertainly identified include Londoners with common names or known namesakes, and men whose trade designations are otherwise ambiguous.25 All these merchants are classified as “unknown denizens.”

  22 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� It is clear from the merchants who regularly dealt in worsted and from the household accounts of their customers that it was regarded as quite distinct from drapery: The particular accounts of purchase of the Great Wardrobe, for example, almost invariably list worsteds in their mercery sections, rather than their drapery sections; see Eleanor Quinton, “The Drapers and the Drapery Trade of Late Medieval London, c. 1300–c. 1500” (Ph.D. diss., University of London, 2000), 169. For a detailed description of the production, appearance, and uses of worsted, see Anne Sutton, “The Early Linen and Worsted Industry of Norfolk and the Evolution of the London Mercers’ Company,” Norfolk Archaeology 40 (1989): 201–25.   23 ������������������������� E.g. in 1432–33, London, ���������������������������������������� National Archives, E 122/203/1, rot. 2v.   24 �������������������������� Carus-Wilson and Coleman, England’s Export Trade, appendix 5, 199–200.   25 ������������������ E.g., in 1429–30, ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� John Stele, who was a frequent exporter of cloth, could have been the vintner or the draper and, indeed, may well have been both, but he is categorized as “unknown.” On some occasions a single merchant is identified regularly by more than one trade designation, and a date of translation between guilds is known, in which case identification is treated as secure. John Gerveis, for example, translated from the ironmongers’ company to the drapers’ company in 1441, and is thus treated as an ironmonger in the 1432–33 account in which he appears, but would have been classed as a draper had he been found in accounts after 1441; London, National Archives E 122/203/1, rot. 29v.

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London Merchants’ Cloth Exports Table 5.2: Cloths exported by London denizens, 1348–1410 Companies

Number of cloths exported (% with known trade designation)* 1348–49, 1350–51, Oct. 1390–Sept. Nov. 1400–April March 27–Sept. 27, 1410 1401 1391 and 1351–52 (6 months) (6 months) (12 months) (36 months)

Vintners

87 (63.0%)

126.5 (2.7%)

27 (1.2%)

427 (14.1%)

Fishmongers

26 (18.8%)

1,413 (30.2%)

197.5 (9.0%)

678.5 (22.5%)

Grocers

15 (10.9%)

1,132 (24.2%)

861.5 (39.3%)

599 (19.8%)

Drapers

7 (5.1%)

288.5 (6.2%)

267.5 (12.2%)

169 (5.6%)

Mercers

3 (2.2%)

939 (20.1%)

306.5 (14.0%)

285 (9.5%)

Ironmongers

0

293 (6.3%)

308.5 (14.1%)

280.5 (9.3%)

Haberdashers

0

41 (0.9%)

0

0

Tailors

0

30.5 (0.7%)

59 (2.7%)

75.5 (2.5%)

Clothworkers (dyers, fullers, and shearmen)

0

21 (0.5%)

0

48 (1.6%)

Goldsmiths

0

20.5 (0.4%)

5 (0.2%)

52 (1.6%)

Leather/fell merchants

0

6.5 (0.1%)

0.5 (less than 0.1%)

85 (2.8%)

Other denizens

0

360 (7.7%)

156.5 (7.2%)

324.5 (10.7%)

138 (100.0%)

4,671.5 (100.0%)

2,189.5 (100.0%)

3,024 (100.0%)

Known denizens Unknown denizens Total cloths exported

41.5

708

230

452

179.5

5,379.5

2,419.5

3,476

Sources: London, National Archives, E 101/457/19, 101/457/20, 101/457/22, 122/71/16, 122/72/4, 122/76/32.

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Eleanor Quinton and John Oldland Wholesale merchants in London were more specialized than anywhere else in the country. They had coalesced into a few organized guilds by the middle of the fourteenth century, eventually to expand to twelve merchant companies, from which the city aldermen were selected.26 All merchants were opportunists whatever their company affiliation, and would export or import a variety of merchandise if they thought that they might make a profit. There were many mercers and grocers in the Iberian trade; there were also many drapers who were members of the Merchant Adventurers’ Company, and a few who were staplers. Nevertheless, the great London companies, which were securing incorporation from the fourteenth century, and at a faster rate in the fifteenth, were founded on the principle that it made the best business sense for people whose commercial interests converged most closely to associate together, and to benefit from a collective knowledge of their trade.27 In the case of the mercers, grocers, fishmongers, vintners, ironmongers, haberdashers, and others, these commercial interests were defined by what they chose to import; the drapers came increasingly to be defined by what they exported. THE MID-FOURTEENTH CENTURY

Cloth exports, which had been 4,423 cloths nationally in 1347–48, collapsed as the Black Death struck, declining from 1,752 cloths in 1348–49, to 1,276 in 1349–50, and 724 in 1350–51, before moving upward to 1,344 in 1351–52.28 Almost all the cloths were exported by English merchants, and directed to places where there were longstanding trading relationships. Customs particulars are available for three years: 1348–49, 1350–51, and 1351–52, but most of the exports were in 1348–49 before the Black Death severely depleted trade. They reveal that London’s cloth exports were mostly in the hands of vintners, trading primarily in Gascony, and fishmongers, trading in northern Europe (see table 5.2). Gascony was the principal market for English cloth, taking around half of all exports, but it was subject to the vagaries of the market for wine, for which cloth was exchanged.29 The London vintners were able to control the city’s cloth trade with Gascony because of their commanding position in the wine trade.30   26 �������������� George Unwin, The Gilds and Companies of London (London: Frank Cass, 1963), 76–77; Sylvia Thrupp, Merchant Class of Medieval London 1300–1500, rev. ed. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962), 6.   27 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ The practicality of this system can be seen by the translations that occurred if merchants’ interests changed.   28 �������������������������� Carus-Wilson and Coleman, England’s Export Trade, 75.   29 �������� Margery ������� James, Studies in the Medieval Wine Trade (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 168.   30 ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� The vintners were able in their 1364 charter to briefly obtain a monopoly of the denizen wine trade with Gascony, and were given a license to trade cloth equal to the value of wine imports, so that bullion would not leave the country; this effectively excluded other merchants from trading cloth to the region. Within eighteen months this monopoly was cancelled, as the 1365 statute allowed all enfranchised Londoners to trade wholesale in any commodity they wished. George Unwin, “The Estate of Merchants, 1336–1365,” in his Finance and Trade under Edward III (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1918), 251.

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London Merchants’ Cloth Exports Warfare, famine, rising prices, and finally the plague devastated the wine market by the 1350s, and accordingly lowered demand for cloth.31 The reduced Gascon wine trade was dominated by London and Bristol merchants at this time.32 These early particular accounts suggest very limited cloth exports to Flanders.33 As early as 1346–47, Bruges had confiscated English cloth, and there is no evidence that Bruges ever bought any English cloth at this time, so there may have been a ban already in place, even though the first definite proof of the exclusion of English cloth from Flanders comes from the Flemish-Hanse treaty negotiations of 1358–60.34 English woollen cloth was temporarily banned from Middelburg in 1355.35 The participation of the drapers, the city’s cloth specialists, in cloth exports continued to be marginal until the early fifteenth century; this requires explanation. The drapers’ primary interest in the early fourteenth century was the purchase of cloth, mostly imported, for the Great Wardrobe and other aristocratic patrons, balancing cloth imports with wool exports.36 In 1350 they were still selling luxury cloth from Brabant to the Great Wardrobe, although by this time they were sourcing much of their cloth domestically.37 As the demand for imported cloth waned, and as the wool trade came to be dominated by a narrow cartel of wool merchants in the 1340s, drapers were squeezed out of international trade. The inability to find a niche in the import trade was to force the drapers to focus on the internal cloth trade for several decades to come. Mercers also had an interest in cloth, but it was in worsteds, not woollens. Many of the city’s mercers had come from Norfolk, where much of the country’s worsted cloth originated. At mid-century, worsted exports were equivalent in value to around a quarter of broadcloth exports.38 Anne Sutton has suggested that London’s mercers with their associates in Norfolk may well have controlled worsted exports from Yarmouth and also sold them to Hanseatic merchants in London.39

  31 ����������������������� Eleanora Carus-Wilson, ��������������������������������� “Trends in the Export of English ���������������������������������������� Woollens in the Fourteenth Century,” in her Medieval Merchant Venturers (London: Methuen, 1954), 246–47; James, Medieval Wine Trade, 19–22.   32 ������� James, Medieval Wine Trade, 98. From Sept. 24, 1350, to Sept. 24, 1351, 3,536 tons were landed at London/Sandwich compared with 1,535 at Bristol.   33 ������������� Anne Sutton, The Mercery of London: Trade, Goods and People, 1130–1578 (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005), 144.   34 ������������ John Munro, ��������������������������������������������������������� “Industrial Protectionism in Medieval Flanders: Urban or �������������� National?” in The Medieval City, ed. H. Miskimin, D. Herlihy, and A. L. Udovitch (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977), 234–35.   35 �������� Sutton, Mercery, 148.   36 ��������� Quinton, �������������������������������� “Drapery Trade,” 172–81, 214–18.   37 �������� London, ������������������������������� National Archives, E 101/392/3.   38 �������������������������� Carus-Wilson and Coleman, England’s Export Trade, 199–200.   39 �������� Sutton, Mercery, 147.

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Eleanor Quinton and John Oldland THE TURN OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY

By the end of the fourteenth century, English cloth exports had risen dramatically, as had London’s share of the trade. Exports averaged 31,746 cloths from 1406 to 1410, and London’s share was 44.9 percent. An indication of the growing importance of cloth exports is that two-thirds of all the ships leaving London in the 1380s and 1390s were carrying English cloth.40 Kerseys and straits, which had become important to the London trade by the 1380s, were now included in the customs accounts; three kerseys or four straits were deemed equivalent to one broadcloth.41 A total of 10,665.5 kerseys were shipped from London from September 1388 to May 1389, 6,022 from May 1389 to February 1390, and 8,466 from September 1390 to September 1391.42 Hanse merchants claimed in 1390 that they were exporting 10,000 straits and kersies a year, equivalent to 12 percent to 15 percent of national cloth exports. As demand for English cloth rose, alien merchants sought to increase their participation in the trade. In 1390, half to three-quarters of the ships calling at London now came with goods from the Low Countries.43 Many involved in cross-channel trade would have been of Low Countries extraction, but Hanse merchants, too, were increasing their involvement in trade from the city, and often used Low Countries’ shipping.44 Hanse cloth exports in the 1390s, encouraged by the Anglo-Hanseatic treaty of 1388, were never below 1,500 cloths annually and frequently over 3,000.45 At the same time, the Italian presence in England was increasing as Florentine, Lucchese, Genoese, and Venetian merchants began to favor English over Flemish cloth, although this benefited Southampton more than London.46 The Venetian galleys started to visit England from 1395 onward, and Florentine companies, particularly the Alberti, were buying cloth in the 1390s.47 Merchants from the Datini firm of Prato were buying

  40 ����������������� Vanessa Harding, ���������������������������������������������������������������������������� “Cross-Channel Trade and Cultural Contacts: London and the Low Countries in the Later Fourteenth Century,” in England and the Low Countries in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Caroline Barron and Nigel Saul (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 157.   41 ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� These cheaper woollen cloths were narrower than broadcloth; kerseys were usually one yard in width by eighteen yards in length, and straits were one yard in width by twelve yards in length, compared with broadcloth assize of one and a half yards by twenty-six yards in length. Bridbury, Medieval English Clothmaking, 108–09.   42 ������� Stuart ������� Jenks, Enrolled Customs Accounts, Part 5 (Kew, UK: List and Index Society, 2005), 1216–17; W. M. Ormrod, “Finance and Trade under Richard II,” in Richard II: The Art of Kingship, ed. Anthony Goodman and James Gillespie (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 171. Terrence Lloyd, England and the German Hanse, 1157–1611 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 70.   43 ��������� Harding, ��������������������������� “Cross-Channel Trade,” 156.   44 ����������� Ibid., 157.   45 �������������������������� Carus-Wilson and Coleman, England’s Export Trade, 84–88.   46 ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� The growing Italian interest in direct trade with England in this period has been attributed to the economic and political dislocation in Flanders. This also resulted in the focus of English trade in the Low Countries shifting to Zeeland in 1384; see Alwyn Ruddock, Italian Merchants and Shipping in Southampton, 1270–1600 (Southampton: Southampton University College, 1951), 49.   47 �������������� Edmund Fryde, ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������� “The English Cloth Industry and Trade with the Mediterranean c. 1370–c. 1480,” in Produzione, Commercio e Consumo dei Panni di Lana, ed. M. Spallanzani (Florence: Olschki, 1976),

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London Merchants’ Cloth Exports ­ ssex and Guildford cloth, presumably from London merchants.48 An important role E for London merchants was now as suppliers of cloth to alien merchants. During the first decade of the fifteenth century, the denizen share declined to 42.2 percent of the export trade, while the Hanse held 23.7 percent and other aliens 34.1 percent. Meanwhile, London exports had increased from 5,546 cloths in 1384–85 to 13,510 cloths annually from 1401–02 to 1405–06.49 This dramatic improvement was primarily a result of a series of adversities that affected the Flemish cloth industry. War between France and the Flemish cloth towns from 1379 to 1385, rising English wool prices, and a German embargo on Flemish and Brabant cloths from 1388 to 1390 opened up Hanseatic markets to English cloths.50 The leading London wool merchants naturally sought to offset their reduced wool exports with cloth. The axis of cloth exports shifted northward, to the northern Low Countries, Prussia, and the Baltic, and away from Gascony. The wool and cloth staple (the place where these products were sold on the Continent) was moved from Calais to Middelburg for the years 1384 to 1388, and although it then returned to Calais, English merchants were able to negotiate access for their cloth to Middelburg, and the rest of Zeeland, Holland, Brabant, and Friesland from July 1389.51 English cloth exports moved through Middelburg and Dordrecht and, after 1407, Bergen-op-Zoom to reach Netherlandish, German, and Baltic markets.52 English merchants competed effectively with Hanse merchants in Baltic cloth markets: English merchants established a colony at Danzig and were trading cloth for herring in Skania.53 English cloth shipments to the Baltic peaked around 1402, and then declined, making the Low Countries an even more important destination for English cloth.54 2:345; George Holmes, “Florentine Merchants in England, 1346–1436,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 13, no. 2 (1960): 194–95, 204.   48 ��������������� Helen Bradley, ���������������������������������������������� “The Datini Factors in London, 1380–1410,” in Trade, Devotion and Governance, ed. Dorothy Clayton, Richard Davies, and Peter McNiven (Stroud, UK: Sutton, 1994), 60.   49 �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Carus-Wilson and Coleman’s figures are given for collection periods that do not always agree with the Exchequer year that began at Michaelmas, so it is sometimes necessary to adjust the figures to fit the year.   50 ������� Munro, “��������� ���������� Medieval ����������������������� Woollens��������������� ,” 247–48, ������������ 281.   51 �������������� Carus-Wilson, “Export ������������������� of English Woollens, ���������������� ” 259; Nelly ��������������� Kerling, Commercial Relations of Holland and Zeeland with England from the Late 13th Century to the Close of the Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill, 1954), 75; Anne Sutton, “The Merchant Adventurers of England: Their Origins and the Mercers’ Company of London,” Historical Research 75 (2002): 34; Pamela Nightingale, A Medieval Mercantile Community: The Grocers’ Company and the Politics and Trade of London 1000–1485 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 322–23. The staple briefly returned to Middelburg in 1392.   52 ������������� Ralph Davis, ���������������������������������������������������������������� “The Rise of Antwerp and its English Connection, 1406–1510,” in Trade, Government, and Economy in Pre-Industrial England: Essays Presented to F. J. Fisher, ed. Donald Coleman and A. H. John (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1976), 5.   53 ���������������� Michael Postan, “The ���������������������������������������������������������������������������� Economic and Political Relations of England and the Hanse from 1400 to 1475,” in Power and Postan, English Trade, 97, 108, 142, 146; Lloyd, England and the German Hanse, 73, 108.   54 ������� Lloyd, England and the German Hanse, 112–24; Munro, “��������� ���������� Medieval ���������������� Woollens�������� ,” ����� 284; ��������������� John H. Munro, “Hanseatic Commerce in Textiles from the Low Countries and England During the Later Middle Ages: Changing Trends in Textiles, Markets, Prices, and Values, 1290–1570,” in Von Nowgorod bis London: Studien zu Handel, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft im Mittelalterlichen Europa: Festschrift für

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Eleanor Quinton and John Oldland London’s growing position in the cloth trade must have been stimulated by unrestricted competition in cloth, as alien and provincial merchants had freedom to trade in the city for most of the period from 1351 to 1399.55 As a result, many provincial drapers set up shop in the city, bringing in cheaper provincial cloth and adversely affecting the city’s own cloth industry.56 London clothmakers paid the production subsidy, called the alnage, on 1,245 cloths in 1355–56 and 1,256 the following year.57 This rose to 1,693 in 1374–75, but fell to 1,313 in the late 1390s, making London a marginal producer in a rapidly expanding market.58 The city started to regulate its cloth markets as soon as Londoners began to claw back some of the privileges of citizenship in the late 1370s, and venues such as the Stocks, the Guildhall, and private merchants’ houses all saw service as the official depots of such cloth brought to the city for sale.59 By the 1390s, however, a more permanent solution was clearly required. The purchase by the city government of Blackwell Hall in 1396 and its establishment as London’s official cloth market is testimony to the rapid pace at which the city’s cloth trade was expanding in this period.60 Unsurprisingly, it was the merchants whose trade was concentrated in northern Europe—the fishmongers, grocers, and mercers—who became increasingly interested in trading cloth as well as wool in return for the luxuries and commodities that were their return cargoes. Almost all overseas merchants were general merchants, looking for either imports or exports to balance their principal trade goods, and opportunistically adding cloth if market conditions were favourable. Fishmongers had a significant involvement in the Baltic, as well as the Low Countries, and although their activity was dwarfed by the volume of this trade in Hanseatic hands, they were the most prominent of the London merchants who colonized ports such as Danzig in this period.61 Their interest in cloth seems to have equaled, and may have exceeded, their interest in wool, which passed through Calais.62 The Company of the Staple at Calais, managed by twenty-four wool merchants, had been established in 1363 to monitor all exports of wool. London grocers were more heavily committed to wool exports than cloth exports, and the bulk of their business centred on Bruges, where they purchased the Stuart Jenks zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Marie-Luise Heckmann and Jens Röhrkasten (Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2008), 101–2.   55 ����������������� Caroline Barron, London in the Later Middle Ages:Government and People 1200–1500 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 39.   56 ��������� Quinton, ����������������������� “Drapery Trade,” 47–49.   57 ������ H. L. ������ Gray, ������������������������������������������� “The Production and Exportation of English ������������������������������������� Woollens in the Fourteenth Century,” English Historical Review 39 (1924): 21.   58 �������� London, �������������������������������� National Archives, E 101/340/22.   59 Cal. LB, H:145, 301.   60 Cal. LB, H:449–50; CPR 1396–99, 13.   61 �������� Postan, ����������������������������� “England and the Hanse,” 152.   62 �������� London, ��������������������������������������������������������� National Archives, E 122/71/9; Carus-Wilson and Coleman, England’s Export Trade, 83–87; Harding, “Cross-Channel Trade,” 158; Sutton, “Merchant Adventurers,” 35; Sutton, Mercery, 259. In the year-long particular account of the ancient wool custom in 1384–85, fishmongers appear 49 times as wool exporters, compared with 59 times in the particular account of petty and cloth custom of 1390–91.

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London Merchants’ Cloth Exports spices and dyestuffs brought there by Italian, Castilian, and Portuguese merchants, and it was they who dominated the Company of the Staple.63 Their developing interest in the cloth trade, which by the 1390s was already becoming independent of the wool trade, has been linked to the scarcity of coinage in the 1380s, which encouraged payment in kind by the English clothworkers whom they supplied with imported dyestuffs and alum.64 The mercers, too, had a growing interest in cloth, as it complemented their trade in linens, which was stimulated by the movement of the wool staple to Middelburg from 1383 to 1388.65 Their early involvement in the distribution and export of worsted cloths and piece-goods, which was more complementary to their imports, may naturally have evolved into an interest in the woollens trade, as worsted exports had declined dramatically since the mid-fourteenth century.66 Ironmongers were clearly profiting from the gathering pace of cloth exports by the end of the fourteenth century. They may have been increasing their involvement in trade with southwestern Europe, where English cloth could be exchanged for Basque iron, on which England largely depended.67 The accounts of the ironmonger Gilbert Maghfield, sheriff of London in 1392–93, show that he was shipping food grain and cloth for iron from Bayonne and Bilbao, often bartering the cloth for woad and alum.68 The leading drapers were more interested in cloth wholesaling than developing an export market, and few exporters imported any goods. Those who exported cloth were lesser drapers. Of the twenty-six drapers in the tunnage and poundage account69 for 1384 and the petty custom account for 1390–91, only three ever served as aldermen.70 Much of the cloth that the drapers brought to London from the provinces was sold to other merchants.71 What is also clear is their failure, early on, to find a niche in the import trade: A late-fourteenth-century flirtation with linen resulted in a short-lived rise in the number of drapers also termed “linendrapers,” but the mercers’ far greater involvement in the linen trade, and their domination of linen sales to royal and other patrons, left the drapers little room for expansion.72

  63 ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� In the ancient wool custom account of 1384–85, grocers appear 198 times as wool exporters, compared with 43 times as exporters in 1390–91.   64 ������������� Nightingale, Mercantile Community, 299, 323.   65 �������� Sutton, Mercery, 148–52. In the ancient wool custom account of 1384–85, mercers appear 101 times; 18 individuals appear 26 times in the cloth account of 1390–91.   66 �������������� Ibid., 148–49.   67 �������������� Wendy Childs, ������������������������������������������������� “England’s Iron Trade in the Fifteenth Century,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 34, no. 1 (1981): 40.   68 �������� Margery ������� James, ����������������������������������������������� “A London Merchant of the Fourteenth Century,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 8, no. 3 (1956): 366–67; Pamela Nightingale, “Money and Credit in the Economy of Late Medieval England,” in Medieval Money Matters, ed. Diana Wood (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2004), 56–59.   69 ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Tunnage was the tax paid on the value of imported wine. Poundage was paid on the value of most other imported and exported merchandise, other than standard broadcloth or its equivalents, wool, woolfells, and hides.   70 ��������� Quinton, ���������������������������� “Drapery Trade,” 234 n. 108.   71 ������������� Nightingale, Mercantile Community, 323.   72 ��������� Quinton, ������������������������ “Drapery Trade,” 236–37.

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Eleanor Quinton and John Oldland Table 5.3: Cloths exported by London denizens, 1410–58 Companies

Number of cloths exported (% with known trade designation) March 27–Sept. Oct. 1429–Sept. Oct. 1432–Sept. Jan. 27–Aug. 29, Sept. 2–Oct. 20, 1458 1446 1433 1430 27, 1410 (48 days) (7 months) (12 months) (12 months) (6 months)

Fishmongers

678.5 (22.5%)

1,511 (27.3%)

1,205.5 (12.4%)

588.5 (12.4%)

54 (3.5%)

Grocers

599 (19.8%)

470.5 (8.5%)

1,598 (16.5%)

144 (3.0%)

69.5 (4.5%)

Vintners

427 (14.1%)

145 (2.6%)

136.5 (1.4%)

178 (3.8%)

101 (6.2%)

Mercers

285 (9.5%)

1,653.5 (29.9%)

3,399.5 (35.0%)

2,016 (42.6%)

593 (39.0%)

Ironmongers

280.5 (9.3%)

0

95.5 (1.0%)

19 (0.4%)

36.5 (2.4%)

Drapers

169 (5.6%)

766 (13.8%)

1,673 (17.2%)

1,133 (23.9%)

545.5 (35.5%)

Leather/fell merchants

85 (2.8%)

31 (0.6%)

55.5 (1.6%)

99.5 (2.1%)

0

Tailors

75.5 (2.5%)

101.5 (1.8%)

80.5 (0.8%)

18 (0.4%)

0

Goldsmiths

52 (1.6%)

316.5 (5.7%)

271 (2.8%)

0

22.5 (1.5%)

Clothworkers (dyers, ­fullers and ­shearmen)

48 (1.6%)

19.5 (0.4%)

57 (0.6%)

29 (0.6%)

0

0

60 (1.1%)

127.5 (1.3%)

138.5 (2.9%)

40 (2.6%)

Other ­ enizens d

324.5 (10.7%)

460 (8.3%)

1,006 (10.4%)

374 (7.9%)

74 (4.8%)

Known ­ enizens d

3,024 (100.0%)

5,534.5 (100.0%)

9,705.5 (100.0%)

4,737.5 (100.0%)

1,536 (100.0%)

452

1,126

1,588.5

697.5

300.5

3,476

6,660.5

11,294

5,435

1,836.5

Haberdashers

Unknown denizens Total cloths exported

Sources: London, National Archives, E 122/73/20, 122/76/32, 122/76/48, 122/161/11, 122/203/1.

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London Merchants’ Cloth Exports The cloth trade now became far more broadly based than the wool trade, which was handled by a few well-capitalized merchants.73 Two-thirds of the ships leaving London in the 1380s and 1390s were carrying cloth.74 In 1390–91, in addition to the trades listed in table 5.2, goldsmiths, saddlers, a brasier, a spurrier, a blader, a broderer, a woodmonger, a boatman, a barber, a horner, a chandler, a cheesemonger, a netmaker, a girdler, and a pewterer were all exporting cloth.75 THE FIRST HALF OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY

The cloth trade continued to expand from 1420 until 1450, at which time a generation-long mid-century depression reduced overseas cloth sales. On average, England exported more than 51,151 cloths a year in the 1440s, up 54 percent from the first decade, but that figure fell to 36,594 in the 1450s. In the 1440s, London’s share of this trade fell to 37.3 percent as Southampton became more important for the Italians, accounting for 19.5 percent of exports. In that decade, London merchants slightly increased their share of London exports to 43 percent, the Hanse share moved ahead dramatically to 35.5 percent, and the alien share fell to 21.5 percent. The rise of Antwerp in Brabant as the main entrepot for English cloth was certainly the most important factor promoting growth. The Brabant fairs exchanged Italian, German, and Low Countries’ goods for English cloth, and later in the century, Antwerp became the leading market for German silver and Portuguese spices. The competitive position of English cloth was enhanced by Antwerp’s quality dyeing and finishing industries, which customized English cloth to Continental merchants’ specifications. Even by 1421 there was evidently considerable trade in cloth at Antwerp, because forty-two English merchants, organized as merchant adventurers and headed by a London mercer, met in Antwerp to resolve complaints by non-London merchants over the governor’s salary.76 Antwerp gained market strength at the expense of Bruges and other Low Countries towns. As early as 1438, at least one bank operating in London, the Borromei, was conducting most of its trade in Antwerp rather than Bruges, where it had a branch office.77 English cloth sales were also helped by the rapid decline of the Flemish cloth industry, strangled by the 1429 Calais Staple Partition and Bullion Ordinances, which forced the indebted Flemish drapers to pay for their wool with

  73 ��������������������������������������������������������������� This has been analyzed for merchants trading through Hull; see ������������������ Jennifer Kermode, Medieval Merchants: York, Beverley and Hull in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 26–62.   74 ��������� Harding, ��������������������������� “Cross-Channel Trade,” 157.   75 �������� London, ������������������������������ National Archives, E 122/71/9.   76 �������� Sutton, ��������������������������� “Merchant Adventurers,” 34.   77 �������������������� J. L. Bolton and F. ������������� G. Bruscoli, ����������������������������������������������������������������� “When Did Antwerp Replace Bruges as the Commercial and Financial Centre of North-Western Europe? The Evidence of the Borromei Ledger for 1438,” Economic History Review, 61, no. 2 (2008): 368–76.

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Eleanor Quinton and John Oldland ready money.78 The result was that the traditional Flemish draperies declined more than 70 percent from 1421–25 to 1466–70. The growth of Antwerp was held back by the retaliation of the Duke of Burgundy to England’s punitive partition and bullion ordinances, which raised wool prices and restricted credit to Continental cloth merchants. Flanders had been off-limits to English cloth at least since 1360. English cloth was banned from Holland, Zeeland, and Brabant in 1428, but the ban was lifted in 1431.79 In retaliation for the Bullion Ordinances, the new Duke, Philip the Good of Burgundy, reinstated the embargo in 1435, although Zeeland refused to cooperate; but Lübeck also followed suit. The Duke lifted the ban in 1439, except in Flanders. It was re-imposed in 1447. Lübeck was able to prevent English cloth entering the Baltic in 1449. The ban was raised in 1452, but instituted again from 1464 to 1467.80 The Hanse cloth trade had been dispersed among the eastern ports, although chiefly through Boston in the late fourteenth century, but in the fifteenth century it was increasingly concentrated through the Hanse’s London headquarters at the Steelyard. The trade through Cologne to southern German markets grew, while that to the Baltic either remained at fourteenth-century levels, or may have even declined.81 Few London merchants shipped cloth from Southampton until mid-century, when the Venetians moved from London to Southampton; from 1457 to 1460, London merchants used Southampton extensively.82 Edmund Fryde expressed the opinion that most of the Italians’ cloth was purchased at Blackwell Hall or from London merchants, even though much of it had been woven in the Cotswolds.83 It seems likely that the drapers were the largest suppliers of cloth to the Italians, as they dealt in the high-quality, mostly finished and dyed cloths that many Italians exported.84 In six cases of illegal brokerage in the sale of cloth brought before the Mayor’s Court in August 1422, five were brokered between London drapers and Italian merchants.85 The ongoing importance of this role is suggested by the amount of longer-than-legal credit which drapers were extending to Italians and for which they were facing prosecution in 1459.86 Four trades—the mercers, drapers, grocers, and fishmongers—dominated cloth exports, but there were significant shifts in their relative importance: the mercers and drapers increased their share of the trade dramatically, while the grocers and fishmon  78 ������� Munro, “��������� ���������� Medieval Woollens���������� ������������������ ,” 286–88. �������   79 ������������ John Munro, Wool, Cloth, and Gold: The Struggle for Bullion in Anglo-Burgundian Trade, 1340–1478 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972), 68–69.   80 �������������� Ibid., 105–73.   81 �������� Sutton, Mercery, 278; Lloyd, England and the German Hanse, 171.   82 ��������������� Alwyn Ruddock, ������������������������������������������������������������������������������� “London Capitalists and the Decline of Southampton in the Early Tudor Period,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 2, no. 2 (1949): 140–41.   83 ������� Fryde, ������������������������������ “English Cloth Industry,” 361.   84 ���������������� Ibid., 345, 351.   85 Cal. P&M, vol. 4 (1413–37): 145–46.   86 �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� The debt registers of Styfford and Thorpe, which provided the Exchequer with some of the evidence on which its prosecution of 68 Londoners was based (25 of whom, the largest group, were drapers), suggests that drapers were easily the most frequent creditors of the Italians, accounting for 45 percent of cases in Styfford’s register; see Wendy Childs, “‘To oure losse and hindraunce’: English Credit to

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London Merchants’ Cloth Exports gers declined (see table 5.3). The mercers controlled around a third of exports, and probably half of the cloth trade with Antwerp. Their success was directly due to the rise of Antwerp, their willingness to work with craftsmen there to dye and finish their cloth, and their leadership and control of the Merchant Adventurers’ organization established in the city by 1421. Anne Sutton has estimated that three-quarters of the free men of the company were participating in overseas trade.87 The rise in drapers’ exports owed much to their relationship with the Italians, to whom they sold cloth in return for alum and dyes. In the 1440s and 1450s, some naturalized Venetians started to appear among the membership of the Drapers’ Company.88 Commercial dealings with the Italians from the 1390s may also have encouraged the drapers’ own exports of cloth to southern European destinations, and may account for the growth of their cloth exports by the 1430s. The drapers’ trade in finished woollens set them apart from the mercers and grocers, the bulk of whose cloth exports were likely to have left the country unfinished.89 Already by the 1420s, fragmentary London accounts of tunnage and poundage attest to the drapers’ growing trade with southwestern Europe, and tunnage and poundage accounts of the 1440s confirm the further establishment of their imports of southern goods, with wine being by far the most significant product.90 During the 1450s, when Burgundian and Hanseatic boycotts, the loss of Normandy and Gascony, and the acute bullion shortage threw English overseas trade into depression, the drapers’ dependence on the Genoese for the raw materials that could be exchanged for cloth by barter may have been at its height. Half of all illegal credit for cloth that was being prosecuted by the Exchequer in 1459, much of which was proffered by the drapers, involved the extension of credit to the Genoese.91 The grocers’ problem was both the decline in the wool trade that had provided much of their capital, and inroads by the Italians in the alum and dye trade. The Italians were selling their alum and dyes, landed in Southampton, to London mercers and drapers, but also to provincial merchants, dyers, and clothiers (who organized rural cloth production), bypassing London altogether.92 Some grocers were now acting as middlemen, selling cloth to the Italians in exchange for dyes and alum, but they faced fierce competition, particularly from drapers, whose cloth distribution networks were superior.93 For example, between 1439 and 1444, eleven of sixty grocers buying from Italians, who show up in the accounts of those supervising the business of foreign

Alien Merchants in the Mid-Fifteenth Century,” in Enterprise and Individuals in Fifteenth-Century England, ed. Jennifer Kermode (Stroud, UK: Sutton, 1991), 68–98.   87 �������� Sutton, Mercery, 284, 293.   88 �������� London, ������������������������������������������� National Archives, E 122/161/11, rot. 3–3v.   89 ������� Munro, Wool, Cloth, and Gold, 7; Sutton, Mercery, 148.   90 �������� London, ����������������������������������������������������� National Archives, E 122/76/13, 122/203/3, 122/73/23.   91 ��������� Quinton, ��������������������� “Drapery Trade,” 252.   92 ������������� Nightingale, Mercantile Community, 436–38.   93 ����������� Ibid., 441.

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Eleanor Quinton and John Oldland merchants in London, were also selling them cloth.94 In the 1440s, provincial dyers increasingly became debtors of the London drapers.95 Fishmongers were faced with deteriorating trading relationships with the Hanseatic Baltic towns, and the decline of the Baltic herring fishery in the fifteenth century may have lessened fishmongers’ interest in the area.96 They tried to increase their penetration of the Low Countries and join the Merchant Adventurers, but they met with fierce competition from mercers.97 Competition from the Hanse intensified, as they paid a lower customs rate on the cloth exports than denizen merchants did, and for periods were able to negotiate exemption from poundage.98 The Hanse not only purchased cloth at Blackwell Hall and the fairs, but also bought directly from rural clothiers, often offering better terms than London merchants. 99 Those merchants, such as the drapers, who at that time had little participation in the northern European trade, were happy to sell to the Hansards. The London alderman responsible for adjudicating differences between the Steelyard and London merchants was usually a draper.100 Ironmongers by the 1440s had ceased to be a factor in the cloth industry because the iron trade was almost completely in Spanish hands, and steel was imported by the Hansards.101 Of the denizen merchants trading iron with Spain, Wendy Childs identified a mercer, a grocer, and a fishmonger, but no ironmonger.102 THE END OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY

The next tunnage and poundage account, in 1471–72, reflected a cloth market still mired in depression, with cloth exports well below those of the 1430s and 1440s.103 It was not a typical year, as Edward IV had just regained his crown, the Anglo-Hanseatic war significantly interrupted trade with northern Europe, and alien trade went

  94 ��������������� Sylvia Thrupp, ����� “The Grocers ������������������������������������������������������������������������ of London, a Study of Distributive Trade,” in Power and Postan, English Trade, 264.   95 ������������� Nightingale, Mercantile Community, 444.   96 ������������� C. M. Yonge, ������������������������ “Fisheries in History,” History Today 25 (1975): 336.   97 ������������� Nightingale, Mercantile Community, 259–62.   98 ���������������������������������������������������� As of 1347, Hanse merchants paid a cloth custom of 1s 0d for a broadcloth without grain, compared with 1s 2d per cloth for denizen merchants, and 2s 9d for other aliens. This beneficial arrangement for the Hanse came about because they were specifically excluded from the additional cloth custom granted by parliament in 1347 and only had to pay the new custom granted in 1303.   99 �������������������� Philippe Dollinger, The German Hansa (London: Macmillan, 1970), 427–28; J. D. Fudge, Cargoes, Embargoes, and Emissaries: The Commercial and Political Interaction of England and the German Hanse 1450–1510 (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1995), 90; Childs, “To oure losse and hindraunce,” 81; Lyell and Watney, Acts of Court, 294–95; Sutton, Mercery, 283. 100 �������� Sutton, Mercery, 278. 101 �������� Childs, ������������������������������� “England’s Iron Trade,” 36, 44. 102 ������������� Ibid., 43–44. 103 ������ Gray, ����������������������������������������� “English Foreign Trade,” 23–30; Hatcher, ��������������������������� “Great Slump,” 240–42, 268.

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London Merchants’ Cloth Exports Table 5.4: Cloths exported by London denizens, 1471–72, 1480–81, and 1502–03 Companies

Number of cloths exported (% with known trade designation) Early Oct. 1471 to 4 Aug. 4, 1472 (10 months)

Oct. 1480–Sept. 1481 (12 months)

Oct. 1502–Sept. 1503 (12 months)

Mercers

3,611.5 (44.9%)

8,120 (38.6%)

8,932 (41.8%)

Drapers

1,249 (15.5%)

5,427 (25.8%)

5,517.5 (25.8%)

Haberdashers

778.5 (9.7%)

1,685 (8.0%)

1,458 (6.8%)

Grocers

244 (3.0%)

1,689 (8.0%)

2,486.5 (11.6%)

Clothworkers (fullers, dyers and shearmen)

187 (2.3%)

203.5 (1.0%)

228.5 (1.1%)

Fishmongers

182.5 (2.3%)

895 (4.3%)

565 (2.6%)

Leather/fell merchants

92 (1.1%)

627 (3.0%)

170.5 (0.8%)

Ironmongers

77.5 (1.0%)

85 (0.4%)

8 (less than 0.1%)

Goldsmiths

69.5 (0.9%)

225.5 (1.1%)

339.5 (1.6%)

Tailors

66 (0.8%)

404.5 (1.9%)

1,167 (5.5%)

Vintners

43 (0.5%)

58.5 (0.3%)

58 (0.3%)

Other denizens

1,451.5 (18.0%)

1,599 (7.6%)

439.5 (2.1%)

Known denizens

8,052 (100.0%)

21,019 (100.0%)

21,370 (100.0%)

558.5

1,440.5

3,495.5

8,610.5

22,459.5

24,865.5

Unknown denizens Total cloths exported

Sources: London, National Archives, E 122/194/19, 122/194/25, 122/80/2.

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Eleanor Quinton and John Oldland mostly through Southampton that year.104 Cloth exports started to rise from their long ­recession in the late 1470s, but in 1480–81, national exports still had not returned to the levels of the 1440s. Exports were to remain at these levels until they took off once more in the mid-1500s. London’s share of the trade had risen dramatically to 70 percent of national exports in the late 1480s; it had fallen slightly to 60 percent in the early 1500s, but was to rise again significantly in the first half of the sixteenth century. The Hanseatic War of 1469–74 had a long-term effect on trade patterns, as it seems that the trade with Antwerp had strengthened at the expense of Baltic towns, and London at the expense of other eastern ports.105 London emerged from the midcentury depression stronger and better capitalized than most provincial ports, and unrestricted trade with Antwerp clearly benefited London merchants.106 The denizen share of London exports had now risen to well over half of shipments, with both Hanse and other alien shares moderating. As trade revived, the mercers were able to maintain their share of London exports, in good times or bad, through their dominance of the Merchant Adventurers’ Company, and the success of Antwerp as the link between England, the Rhine, and Italy, coming at the expense of Bruges (see table 5.4).107 As many as three-quarters of the mercer freemen were still engaged in international trade.108 Mercers were able to withstand attacks on their control of the Adventurers, by the fishmongers from the 1440s, from the northern adventurers who saw themselves sidelined in 1478, and non-mercers who forced a reorganization of the London company in 1486, when it was agreed that there should be two London lieutenants, one a mercer and the other a representative of the other trades, who would jointly organize company matters in the city.109 The drapers were now clearly established as the second most important company in the cloth export trade. Most of their cloth was also moving through Antwerp, although drapers were the most active London merchants in the southern trade. We do not know for certain why the drapers were more successful than the grocers and fishmongers in Antwerp at this time. The simplest explanation is that although much of the cloth passing through Antwerp was unfinished and undyed, there was still a market for dyed and finished cloths that the drapers were best able to fill, and from this wedge they were able to develop a market for unfinished cloth as well. It is estimated that only around 30 percent of drapers’ exports went to southern markets in 1471–72, and 20

104 ����������������� Michael Mallett, The Florentine Galleys in the Fifteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), 136–37; Michael Mallett, “Anglo-Florentine Commercial Relations, 1465–1491,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 15, no. 2 (1962): 255–56. 105 �������� Postan, ������������������������������������� “England and the Hanse,” 152; Fudge, Cargoes, 167–68. 106 ������������� Nightingale, ������������������������������� “European Depression,” 646–47; ������������������ Jennifer Kermode, ������������������������������� “Medieval Indebtedness: The Regions Versus London,” in England in the Fifteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1992 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Nicholas Rogers (Stamford: Paul Watkins, 1994), 72–88. 107 ������� Davis, ������������������������ “Rise of Antwerp,” 7–10. 108 �������� Sutton, Mercery, 293. 109 �������� Sutton, ���������������������������������������������� “Merchant Adventurers,” 35–37, 42–43; Sutton, Mercery, 270–71, 321–23.

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London Merchants’ Cloth Exports percent in 1480–81.110 Their southern trade increased as the Italians replaced their sea routes by overland routes from Italy to Antwerp. These routes had become lower-cost, faster, and more productive. Growth in Continental trade, led by increased traffic in fustians, woollen cloth, silver, and copper, lowered costs. Western land routes were also unimpeded by warfare; they were more efficient as secure cartage arrangements evolved; and expanding international fairs at Frankfurt, Geneva, and Lyons along the way made these transportation routes more productive.111 This Italian departure opened up an opportunity both to capture cloth markets in the Iberian peninsula that the Genoese had previously served, and to supply Italian customers at Antwerp. In addition, a significant quantity of London’s cloth exports to southern Europe were going south via Southampton, and the drapers must have played a dominant role in this trade, much of which must have been in finished cloths.112 Another reason for the drapers’ success was that they were able to establish a return trade in raw materials for the cloth industry, exchanging cloth in southern markets for dyestuffs and mordants, soap, and oil, in addition to their wine trade. An analysis of ninety-two drapers’ Chancery petitions of a commercial nature between 1460 and 1510 show that drapers were mainly importing produce from southwestern Europe, with dyes and mordants now the most frequent goods mentioned, replacing wine.113 Chancery petitions frequently show drapers supplying cloth artisans with woad and other materials in return for cloth.114 Wendy Childs’ analysis of sixty Londoners trading with Spain between 1400 and 1485 included at least nine drapers, six grocers, two vintners, two fishmongers, a stockfishmonger, a haberdasher, an ironmonger, and a dyer or tailor.115 The 1520s ledger of the London draper Thomas Howell, trading mostly with Spain, shows him supplying alum and dyes both to provincial clothiers and a London dyer.116 By the turn of the sixteenth century, the drapers were playing a significant role in provisioning the domestic markets for raw materials for the cloth industry and victuals imported from Iberia and southwestern France. The mercers’ and drapers’ success had come to some extent at the expense of the grocers, who found their cloth trade diminishing as they lost much of their trade in alum and dyes. They had been excluded from the southern dye trade as mercers and drapers became the chief middlemen of the Italians, Castilians, and Portuguese. Their former buyers, the Midland dyers, declined as more cloth was exported in unfinished form, or dyed and finished in London. Those that survived purchased their dyes from 110 ��������� Quinton, ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� “Drapery Trade,” 272, 274. Cloth exports by Castilians accounted for 9 percent of total exports in the 1480s, and most of it was shipped from London; see Childs, Anglo-Castilian Trade, 89–90. 111 ���������� J. Munro, �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� “The Low Countries’ Export Trade in Textiles with the Mediterranean Basin, 1200–1600: A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Comparative Advantages in Overland and Maritime Trade Routes,” The International Journal of Maritime History 11 (1999): 1–30. 112 ��������� Ruddock, ����������������������������� “London Capitalists,” 141–42. 113 ��������� Quinton, ������������������������ “Drapery Trade,” 278–79. 114 �������� London, ������������������������������������������������������� National Archives, C1 15/5, 44/257, 64/179,545, 70/102. 115 �������� Childs, Anglo-Castilian Trade, 211. 116 ����������������������������������������������������������������������������� Drapers’ Hall, Thomas Howell Ledger, fols. 11, 15v, 16, 21v, 50, 54, 61, 95v.

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Eleanor Quinton and John Oldland other, better capitalized London merchants who could offer superior credit terms.117 Ironmongers and vintners now had to compete with drapers and other merchants who were exchanging cloth for wine and iron. The fishmongers found it more difficult to compete with Hanse merchants, as the Treaty of Utrecht, which ended the Anglo-Hanseatic war in 1474, left Hanseatic privileges intact in England while English merchants found it more difficult to maintain any rights in the Baltic towns.118 The Dutch were also strengthening their position in Scandinavian markets.119 The expansion of the cloth trade in the last quarter of the century, however, did broaden merchant participation, particularly by other textile guilds such as haberdashers, tailors, and clothworkers, who were prospering from the growth in the cloth and clothing trades. Haberdashers had taken over the small mercery retail trade from the mercers, which soon led the haberdashers to import small merceries in exchange for cloth.120 In 1480–81, there were eleven haberdashers shipping cloth, and five of the thirty-nine merchants who shipped over a hundred cloths were haberdashers.121 Their first alderman, Robert Billesden, was elected in 1471, becoming mayor in 1483–84. In 1502, the haberdashers absorbed the newly merged cappers and hatters to become, temporarily, the Merchant Haberdashers. Tailors had replaced the drapers as the primary suppliers of cloth to the Great Wardrobe, and their growing presence in cloth retailing and wholesaling inevitably led to overseas trade.122 They were to become the Merchant Taylors in 1503. The fullers and shearmen, who finished the drapers’ and tailors’ cloth, also sought to become merchants. For example, one shearman, William Heriot, had extensive trading interests in Spain and the Mediterranean.123 He became a draper when he was made an alderman. When he was mayor in 1482, he was feted by the king because he was “a merchaunt of wonderous aventures into many and sondry countres, by reason whereof the kyng had yerely of hym notable summes of mony for his customes.”124 The fullers and the shearmen were to merge to become the Clothworkers’ Company in 1528. In 1502–03, these upcoming cloth and clothing trades, taken together, accounted for only about half of the drapers’ cloth exports, but by the mid-sixteenth century merchant tailors, clothworkers, and haberdashers were among the leading merchant adventurers, and were as prominent as the drapers. At that time the mercers still dominated the cloth trade, while Antwerp had become an

117 ������������� Nightingale, Mercantile Community, 546–47. 118 ������� Lloyd, England and the German Hanse, 242–49. 119 ��������������� Herman van der ��������������������������� Wee (in collaboration with ������������� John Munro), ����� “The ����������������� Western European �������������� Woollen Industries, 1500–1750,” in Jenkins, Cambridge History of Western Textiles, 1:404. 120 ������������� Anne Sutton, ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������� “The Shop-Floor of the London Mercery Trade, c. 1200–c. 1500: The Marginalization of the Artisan, the Itinerant Mercer and the Shopholder,” Nottingham Medieval Studies 45 (2001): 36; Ian Archer, The History of the Haberdashers’ Company (Chichester, UK: Phillimore, 1991), 21, 23. 121 �������� Archer, Haberdashers, 20. 122 ��������� Quinton, ���������������������������������������������������������� “Drapery Trade,” 186–89; Matthew Davies and Ann Saunders, The History of the Merchant Taylors’ Company (Leeds: Maney, 2004), 62, 64–66. 123 �������� Childs, Anglo-Castilian Trade, 212. 124 ��������������� Robert Fabyan, The New Chronicles of England and France (London: F. C. & J. Rivington, 1811), 667.

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London Merchants’ Cloth Exports even more important conduit for English cloth. For example, mercers shipped 58 percent of cloth sent to the Sinxsen Mart at Antwerp in 1535.125 THE EMERGENCE OF CLOTH SPECIALISTS

The marketing of cloth became far more competitive and sophisticated over the period. In the fourteenth century, cloth was considered either as an add-on to the sale of wool, or as a convenient commodity to be exchanged for the imports that were the merchants’ primary concern. Most of the trade was in English hands in the mid-fourteenth century. By 1500, cloth had become the primary concern of the leading denizen and alien merchants, replacing wool. Antwerp had become a seamless extension of the English industry, as most of English cloth sold in Antwerp was also finished and dyed there. The importation of raw materials for the cloth industry had obviously grown with the industry, improving the availability of these materials across the country. London now sourced its cloth from all clothmaking areas of the country, and English cloth had found markets throughout Europe. In the fourteenth century, London merchants sold mostly low-priced luxury cloth produced in southeast England, such as the lower-quality Essex and Guildford cloths bought by the Datini Company and the kerseys purchased by Hanse and Italian merchants. It required little sophistication to sell such cloths, as they were sold on the basis of price rather than quality, and enjoyed a price advantage owing to the high export duties on English wools on which the Continental industry depended. The range of cloths sold by London merchants expanded dramatically in the fifteenth century, and the average quality rose. English and alien merchants were selling broadcloths at all quality levels by the end of the century, including some ultra-luxury broadcloths equal to the best made in Europe. Kerseys had become a far more important second product, also with a broader quality range. Twenty percent of the English cloths registered at the Brabant fairs in 1495–98 were kerseys.126 The market had become divided into finished and unfinished cloths. Almost all unfinished cloth went to Antwerp for expert finishing required to meet Continental merchants’ demands. The Merchant Adventurers’ Company had developed a very efficient, secure, and low-cost distribution network, with favorable trading relationships at the Brabant fairs. Finished cloth went to those markets that had no luxury cloth industry, such as Spain and Portugal, but there must have also been some continuing demand for dyed and finished cloth in Antwerp. Hanse merchants were distributing finished cloth to many “linen and flax” areas that lacked a woollens industry.127 Kerseys were usually exported dyed and finished. English merchants needed to become more skillful if they were to remain competitive with encroaching alien merchants who controlled certain import markets, 125 �������� Sutton, Mercery, 412. 126 ������� Munro, ����������������������������������������� “Industrial Transformations,” 134, n. 87. 127 �������� Postan, ����������������������������� “England and the Hanse,” 144.

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Eleanor Quinton and John Oldland enjoyed easy access to English cloth, and in the case of the Hansards paid lower customs duties. Italians owned the market for silks, alum, and some dyes and had a strong position with Iberian merchants for the wool oils that the English cloth industry required. They had no difficulty buying cloth from English middlemen, or having it finished to their standards, as there was a high-quality dyeing and finishing industry in London. Spanish merchants controlled the iron market. Hansards dominated the market for Baltic goods (timber, pitch, tar, ashes, wax, and furs) and for fustians, and shared the market for linen with London mercers. In addition, Hanse merchants paid lower customs duties and were free to trade across the country, while at the same time frequently denying access by English merchants to their own markets. London’s ironmongers were excluded from the Spanish iron market, and fishmongers from the Baltic; the vintners suffered from declines in the Gascon wine market and increased competition from Rhenish and Iberian wines, and as a consequence ceased to be significant cloth merchants.128 With the growing dominance of Antwerp, the traditional trading relationships of individual companies with specific areas became less important. In the fourteenth century, companies’ dependency on their primary imports—the fishmongers’ fish, mercers’ linen, grocers’ spices and dyes, ironmongers’ iron, vintners’ wine—gave them a geographic focus: the fishmongers on the Baltic, the mercers on Brabant and the Netherlands, the grocers on Flanders and Brabant, the ironmongers on Bilbao, and the vintners on Gascony. Their success in the cloth trade depended on the demand for cloth in these areas. English merchants were stymied by the Flemish cloth ban that denied them access to the richest market in northern Europe and also access to Continental merchants trading at Bruges, the great mart and counting house of the late Middle Ages that was the gateway to central European trade. The mercers’ great good fortune was that Middelburg, Dordrecht, and finally Antwerp were located in their principal trading area. Drapers were the odd company out as their main interest was cloth, not importing and wholesaling raw materials or luxuries. The absence of a return cargo, or experience with specific trade routes, made it difficult for drapers to compete with other merchants in the fourteenth century. It took considerable time for drapers to capitalize on their advantages—their inland distribution networks and close relationships with the fullers and shearmen who finished cloth. They gained experience as middlemen to Hansards and Italians, who relied on them for the dyed and finished cloth that was sold in southern and a few northern markets. Drapers were then able to leverage their expertise and knowledge to follow the Italians to markets in southern France and Iberia. The other factor that appears to have helped the drapers was that as English exports grew, so did imports, and this gave drapers easier access to a broader range of import markets. An analysis of draper imports in the fifteenth century shows that they were general merchants, although we see them concentrating on wine and materials 128 ����������������� Jessica Freeman, ������������������������������������������������� “Simon Seman, Citizen and Vintner of London,” in London and the Kingdom: Essays in Honour of Caroline M. Barron, ed. Matthew Davies and Andrew Prescott (Donington, UK: Shaun Tyas, 2008), 259–64.

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London Merchants’ Cloth Exports for the cloth industry from southern Europe.129 The loss of Gascony in mid-century and increased competition from Spanish merchants after 1466, when they paid only denizen cloth duties, forced more drapers to become merchant adventurers in the 1450s and 1460s, trading at Antwerp. Several drapers participated in a meeting of merchant adventurers at Mercers’ Hall in 1465.130 The progress of London’s cloth trade was inevitably influenced by government policy toward the wool trade and its steady decline. In the late fourteenth century, participation of mercers, fishmongers, and grocers in the cloth trade was closely related to their position in the wool trade. The movement of the wool staple to Middelburg from 1383 to 1389 provided an opportunity for the staplers to participate in the rapidly expanding cloth trade in Holland and Zeeland. London and national cloth exports surged in 1384–85. In that year, grocers were the leading wool exporters, followed by mercers and then fishmongers.131 Some of the profits from wool must have been invested in the cloth trade, and the example of the staplers must have encouraged their colleagues to invest in the cloth trade. The decline in the wool trade in the fifteenth century, the separate destinations for wool and cloth, and the ongoing conflict between the staplers and merchant adventurers eliminated any synergy between England’s two great late-medieval exports. An important factor for the growth of the London economy was that participation in the cloth trade was so much broader than that of the wool trade, which was in the hands of a narrow oligarchy of staplers. Success as an exporter in most cases depended on considerable success as an importer. It was the need to find an exportable commodity to pay for imports that encouraged many merchants to sell cloth in the first place. Most merchants were opportunistic general merchants, but it was important for companies to maintain control over the commodity that was their initial raison d’être. Critical to the mercers’ wealth was linen, an enormous and growing market. Linen imports are estimated to have grown tenfold from 1390 to 1530.132 In 1480–81, aliens imported 500,000 yards, and it is possible that mercers’ imports were comparable.133 In the 1390s the mercers controlled the denizen linen trade, and it must have been the expansion of linen imports that was the catalyst for their growing involvement in cloth exporting.134 In 1500 mercers still dominated the denizen import of linen and mercery goods, even though they had to share the market with Hanseatic merchants.135 Almost all imported linen came through London, and the mercers bought most of the Hanse linen, so the mercers had a stranglehold over the domestic market. Other trades were less fortunate. The grocers’ hold over the import of dyes and mordants was loosened. It was not the grocers but London mercers and drapers, as well as provincial merchants, who mostly bought the Italian dyes and 129 ��������� Quinton, ������������������������ “Drapery Trade,” 260–67. 130 ����������������������� Eleanora Carus-Wilson, ����� “The ������������������������������������������������������������������� Origins and Early Development of the Merchant Adventurers,” in her Medieval Merchant Venturers, 151–53; Childs, Anglo-Castilian Trade, 87. 131 �������� Sutton, Mercery, 144. 132 ����������� Ibid., 156. 133 ������ Cobb, Overseas Trade of London, 8. 134 �������� Sutton, Mercery, 155–57. 135 ��������������� Ibid., 296–335.

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Eleanor Quinton and John Oldland alum by the mid-fifteenth century. The vintners and ironmongers lost their hold over their chosen commodities, while the haberdashers’ growing involvement in imported small merceries encouraged their participation in the cloth trade. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of the Merchant Adventurers’ Company in developing the cloth trade for London merchants. With a monopoly from the crown, the company was in a strong position to negotiate with Antwerp and to regulate the trade to its advantage.136 The symbiotic relationship between the company, Antwerp merchants and artisans, and Hanse merchants, particularly those from Cologne, was instrumental in the diversion of the cloth trade from Bruges.137 London merchants were the chief beneficiaries of the city’s close physical proximity to this principal market for English cloth, but they also capitalized on their growing strengths. As London’s share of the national cloth trade rose, London became a stronger magnet for provincial cloth, capital became concentrated in the city, and the Merchant Adventurers’ Company in London was able to limit provincial merchants’ access to the key Antwerp market. The mercers’ great success in the cloth trade transformed the company in the fifteenth century, as Anne Sutton has so fully analyzed, from a company that had made and imported a broad line of merceries, which it distributed wholesale and sold at retail, to a specialized merchant company that exported cloth and imported mostly linens, which it then wholesaled across the country. The company eased out the artisan members and scaled down its retail operations, lost its trade in fustians, and had to share the wholesale trade in silks with other merchants.138 Haberdashers now became wholesale and overseas merchants of small merceries, and clothworkers insinuated themselves into the fustian trade as they finished all imported fustians. The mercers’ specialization served them well into the sixteenth century, but eventually their cloth trade became consolidated among just a few rich mercers, and increasingly tailors, haberdashers, and clothworkers muscled in on their cloth franchise. By the end of the fifteenth century, however, the mercers, with their control of the Merchant Adventurers, and the drapers, with their expertise in finished cloth, had become the leading companies in London’s cloth trade. Meanwhile other cloth and clothing companies, with clothmaking expertise and distribution networks comparable to the drapers, were starting to invest in overseas trade, and would become powerful competitors in the sixteenth century. The economic ascendency of the cloth trade bred political influence for its most prominent participants. As Sylvia Thrupp correctly concluded, “No one could make any conspicuous fortune except by the business of a merchant, and wealth was a prerequisite for holding high judicial office.”139 In the fifteenth century, there were forty-one mercers who became aldermen, compared with thirty-three drapers, thirty-one grocers, and only thirteen fishmongers.140 ­ Mercers 136 �������� Van der ����� Wee, ������������������ “Western European ���������������������������� Woollen Industries,” 415–18. 137 �������� Postan, ���������������������������������� “England and the Hanse,” 100, 143. 138 �������� Sutton, �������������������� “Shop-Floor,” 36–50. 139 �������� Thrupp, Merchant Class, 39. 140 �������� Postan, ����������������������������� “England and the Hanse,” 373.

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London Merchants’ Cloth Exports were elected mayor thirty-one times, drapers and grocers twenty-one times, and fishmongers or stockfishmongers nine times. The distribution of power in London was now a reflection of the economic success of the cloth trade.

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Laboreria Sete: Design and Production of Lucchese Silks in the Late Fourteenth and Early Fifteenth Centuries Christine Meek It is ironic that information on the nature of the silk fabrics produced in Lucca is comparatively sparse for the thirteenth century, when the industry was at the height of its prosperity, whereas for the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, when the industry is generally agreed to have been in difficulties, information is much more abundant. For the thirteenth century there are numerous contracts for the sale and purchase of silk and the manufacture of silk cloth in the notarial records, and Lucchese silks are listed in inventories in Italy and Northern Europe, but these do not provide much information about the fabrics themselves. For the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries much more detailed information is available about the nature of the fabrics being produced, including the various silks and dyes used, the lengths and widths of cloths, and the relative values of different types of silk and silk fabric, not to mention the conditions of trade in both raw materials and finished cloths. This article seeks to discuss Lucchese silk production in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries on the basis of sources that are not available for earlier periods. The most important of these are the Libri de’ Sensali, or brokers’ books. The function of sensals was to arrange wholesale transactions between buyers and sellers. Their records had official status and provide information that is reliable and often enormously detailed. The earliest surviving volume is for 1409, and there are five others, for 1413, 1417, 1423/4, 1453–68, and 1475–82. This article will concentrate on the volume for 1409, partly because it is the earliest, but partly because it is the only one that coincides with an extant volume of the Gabella Maggiore, or customs

I would like to thank Professor Gale Owen-Crocker for encouraging me to write this article, which forms part of a more extended study of Lucchese commerce and banking in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries.    ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� They form nos. 94–99 of the series Corte de’ Mercanti. Citations to Corte de’ Mercanti 94 are all from 1409; full dates are given for citations to other volumes. These and all other documents cited are in the Archivio di Stato in Lucca.

Christine Meek accounts. It can also be read in conjunction with the declarations of companies, partnerships, and employees of 1407. However, the most useful volume of the Court of Merchants, apart from the Libri de’ Sensali, is the Statute of the Court authorised in 1376, with some later additions. This lays out the regulations for the operation of the Court and the various trades that came under its supervision and, most important in the present context, the requirements that had to be met for the manufacture of various types of silk cloth. It is particularly illuminating to compare the cloths listed in 1381 with those being manufactured and traded in the Libri de’ Sensali some thirty and forty years later. RAW MATERIALS

The Lucchese silk industry depended heavily on the city’s participation in international commerce, since the vast majority of the raw materials had to be imported and the finished product was geared largely to the international export market. The Gabella Maggiore accounts reveal that imports of silk in the early fifteenth century fluctuated from 9,497 libbre in 1400 to 23,909 libbre in 1402, and totalled 18,815 libbre in 1409 and 14,103 libbre in 1410. This silk is usually referred to simply as silk or raw silk (seta, seta cruda, siricum crudum, etc.) with rarely any indication of any specific type of silk or place of origin, but the Libro de’ Sensali for 1409 provides much fuller information. It records 137 transactions involving silk, forty-eight of them raw silk and eighty-one silk yarn, mostly testoio or weft thread. Twenty-eight of the forty-eight sales of raw silk and twenty-seven of seventy-eight sales of testoio are specified to be Spanish silk. In terms of quantity, this was 2,593 libbre of raw silk and 1,753 libbre of testoio (to the nearest libbra). But seta leggi or leggibanti from the Caspian Sea accounted for 2,274 libbre of raw silk, though for only seven transactions, and for thirty-four transactions amounting to 2,922 libbre of testoio, with smaller quantities of testoio talani and testoio    ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� There are some forty volumes of customs accounts from 1339 onwards, including a number of complete years in the last two decades of the fourteenth century and first decade of the fifteenth (nos. 10–50 in the series Gabella Maggiore), but they unfortunately do not go beyond 1410.    ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� There are five volumes of these declarations extant, for the years 1371, 1372, 1381, 1407, and 1488. These constitute nos. 82–86 of the series Corte de’ Mercanti.    ������������������������������ Published as Augusto Mancini, Umberto ����������������������������������������������� Dorini, and Eugenio Lazzareschi, eds., Lo Statuto della Corte de’ Mercanti in Lucca del MCCCLXXVI (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1927); henceforth Statuto.    ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Gabella Maggiore 37 (ii), 2r–111v, for the first semester of 1400; Gabella Maggiore 49, unfoliated, 717–814, 875–943 in the later pagination, for the second semester. The year 1400 saw a serious outbreak of plague, and no imports of silk at all are recorded for August and only 16 libbre for July that year. The Lucchese libbra was the equivalent of 334 grammes and was divided into 12 uncie, each uncia being further divided into four quarre; Salvatore Bongi, Inventario del Archivio di Stato in Lucca (1876; repr. Lucca: Istituto Storico Lucchese, 1999), 2:71.    ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Gabella Maggiore 39 (i), 5v–50r, for the first semester of 1402; Gabella Maggiore 39 (ii), 3r–80r, for the second semester.    ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Gabella Maggiore 44, 3r–177v. ���������������������������������������������������������������� Imports and exports were also disrupted by plague in 1408, with repercussions on the succeeding year.    ����������������������������� Gabella Maggiore 45, 5v–181r.

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Lucchese Silks mordecascio, also from the Caspian Sea, and even smaller quantities of silk produced in Lucchese territory or elsewhere in Northern Italy. Silk was commonly priced in florins and sold in coppie (pairs), that is units of two libbre, though it was occasionally sold by the libbra. Spanish silk commanded the highest prices, commonly ranging from 6½ florins to 7¼ florins per coppia. Seta leggi sold for 4 florins 15s. to 5 florins 5s. 6d. a oro per coppia, seta talani at 3½ to 4 florins per coppia.10 The best Lucchese and other North Italian silk, which was sold by the libbra, compared quite favourably with all but the highest quality imported silk and sold at the equivalent of 5½ to 6½ florins per coppia. The quantities, however, were small. The prices of testoio varied according to those of the silk from which it was made. The fact that testoio was sold in buoni per uncia makes the prices look very different, but at 12 uncie to the libbra and 58s. buoni to the florin, 19s. 4d. buoni per uncia was the equivalent of 4 florins per libbra, and 14s. 6d. buoni the equivalent of 3 florins per libbra. Spanish testoio typically sold for 19s. to 20s. buoni per uncia, testoio leggi for 14s. to 17s., testoio talani for 13s. to 14s. 10d., with no recorded sales of locally produced silk in the form of testoio (fig. 6.1).11 With prices at these levels, both raw silk and testoio were expensive commodities, and individual shipments could have a high value. The Gabella Maggiore accounts show merchants importing quantities such as 152 libbre valued at 456 florins or 320 libbre valued at 960 florins.12 Even more modestly priced silk, such as the 575 libbre valued at 800 florins or the 396 libbre valued at 295 florins, could represent a large investment for the merchant or silk manufacturer concerned.13    Seta leggi took its name from Lahidjan in the Ghilan district, talani from Talich in Azerbaijan on the south coast of the Caspian Sea, and mordecascia or merdecascia from Merv Chajdan in the region of Sogdiana (Turkestan); David Jacoby, “Genoa, Silk Trade and Silk Manufacture in the Mediterranean Region (ca. 1100–1300),” in his Commercial Exchange Across the Mediterranean: Byzantium, the Crusader Levant, Egypt and Italy (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005), 26–28; Florence Edler de Roover, “Andrea Banchi, Florentine Silk Manufacturer and Merchant in the Fifteenth Century,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 3 (1966): 223–85, esp. 237–40; and Ignazio del Punta, Mercanti e Banchieri Lucchesi nel Duecento (Pisa: Pisa University Press, Edizioni Plus, 2004), 62, with a helpful, though slightly over-detailed, map of the region on p. 332. Silks, their various qualities, and relative prices are listed in an anonymous fifteenth-century treatise published by Girolamo Gargiolli, L’Arte della Seta in Firenze: Trattato del Secolo XV (Florence: G. Barbèra, 1868), 76, 102–9; and Regula Schorta, “Il Trattato dell’Arte della Seta: A Florentine Fifteenth-Century Treatise on Silk Manufacturing,” Bulletin de Liaison du Centre International d’Études des Textiles Anciens 69 (1991): 57–83. Some of these silks are still recognizable in the list in the glossary of Luca Molà, The Silk Industry of Renaissance Venice (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 406–7, although this relates to a much later period.   10 ������������������������������������� There are only two recorded sales of seta talani, Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 24v, 176v. Soldi (s.) and denari (d.) a oro were money of account, under which the florin, which was an actual coin, was regarded the equivalent of a libbra or pound with subdivisions of 20 soldi, each of 12 denari, which did not correspond to actual coins.   11 �������������������������������� Prices in Corte de’ Mercanti 94.   12 ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Gabella Maggiore 38(ii), 79r, Gabella Maggiore 39(ii), 78v. These ��������������������������������������� figures are for 1401 and 1402 respectively. The Gabella Maggiore accounts do not normally give values, and no figures are available for 1409.   13 ���������������������������������� Gabella Maggiore 38(ii), 76v, 91v.

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Fig. 6.1: Entries from one of the Libri de’ Sensali showing sales of various types of silk and silk thread, 1409 (Lucca, Archivio di Stato, Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 5v–6r). Photo: Christine Meek, with permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali, Prot. 0004504. Further duplication or reproduction prohibited.

Christine Meek

Lucchese Silks Silk was not the only costly raw material required for the manufacture of Lucchese silk fabrics; expensive dyestuffs and gold thread were employed in considerable quantities. By far the most costly dyestuff was kermes (cremisi in modern Italian, but usually given in the form cremosi in the Libri de’ Sensali) and its use raised the price of any silk dyed with it far beyond that of comparable silks dyed with other dyestuffs.14 It was sold by the libbra, whereas other dyes were sold in units of 100 libbre or, in the case of woad, even of 1,000 libbre. Kermes sold for 1¾ to 2½ florins per libbra and was the subject of careful arrangements that sometimes led to disputes.15 Other dyes were less expensive, though still not cheap. Saffron, though grown locally, cost 2 florins per libbra, brazil (verzino) 70 to 75 florins per cento or hundred libbre, grain (grana) from Spain or Provence 64 to 70 florins per cento, and indigo 45 to 60 florins per cento, while woad cost only 20 to 31½ florins per migliaio or 1,000 libbre, but was traded in multiples of five or ten migliaia, so might still constitute an appreciable investment.16 Another expensive material used was gold, and to a lesser extent silver. The Libro de’ Sensali for 1409 records thirty-three transactions involving sales of gold or silver, most of them gold thread, “fine gold,” or gold of Bruges, Genoa, or Lucca, all categories that are mentioned in connection with silk fabrics. Thread of fine gold or fine spun gold (oro fino filato) was sold by the libbra at prices that ranged from 10 to 10½ florins per libbra,17 with silver fetching only slightly lower prices at 9 florins 5s.

  14 ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� It is not entirely easy to find examples where the price is not perhaps distorted by other considerations, but 64¾ braccia of voided satin velvet dyed with kermes (“zettani aveglutato di cremosi”) sold for 4¾ florins per braccio, a total of 307 florins 11s. 3d. a oro, on July 26 (Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 23v), while 15 braccia of crimson brocaded with fine gold (“cremosi brocato doro fino”) sold for a total of 116⅔ florins, or slightly over 7¾ florins per braccio, on July 4 (to be paid for in fine gold of Genoa; 23r). In contrast, 40½ braccia of voided satin velvet dyed with grain and kermes (“zettani aveglutato grana et cremosi”) sold for a total of 116 florins or rather over 2 florins 17s. a oro per braccio (178v); two cloths of damask dyed purple red with grain (“due teli di domaschino morelli di grana”), measuring 26 and 24¾ braccia respectively, sold for 110 florins between them, or slightly over 2 florins 3s. a oro per braccio (180r); 26 braccia of velvet dyed with grain (“vegluto di grana”) sold for 52 florins or 2 florins per braccio (191v); and 26 braccia of damask dyed purple red with grain (“domaschino morato di grana”) sold for 47 florins or some 1 florin 16s. a oro per braccio (73r).   15 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 123r (two sales), 198v; Corte de’ Mercanti 95, 8v–9r (July 20, 1413). The cremosi sold in Lucca may have been produced from the porphyrophora polonica insect from Central and Eastern Europe, an interpretation that is supported by the fact that in two cases the seller was a German, Michele della Magna or Micaele di Orenisborg della Magna (certainly the same person, and the sales were on Nov. 22 and 23, 1409). In one case (198v) payment was to be in Hungarian florins. See Dominique Cardon, Natural Dyes: Sources, Tradition, Technology and Science (London: Archetype, 2007), 635–52, esp. 641–45; also Molà, Silk Industry, 109–12, 405. For grana from the insect kermes vermilio, Cardon, Natural Dyes, 609–19. I would like to thank Lisa Monnas for drawing my attention to this work.   16 �������������������������������������������������������������� Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 131r (200 florins), 30r (312 florins).   17 ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� E.g., Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 3v, 11r, 100r. Gold of Lucca and of Bruges also sold by the cento at prices varying from slightly under 13 florins to 15 florins 15s. a oro the cento, though it is not clear what the weight of a cento of gold was; 11r, 12v, 24r, 71r.

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Christine Meek a oro per libbra.18 Merchants are recorded as paying tens of florins (and in a number of cases over 100 florins) for gold thread, and it must have added significantly to the cost of any fabric for which it was employed. FINISHED SILK FABRICS

There is much information on the export of silk fabrics in the Gabella Maggiore records. They were indeed among the most important and valuable items exported, and the duty on them was one of the most lucrative elements of the Gabella Maggiore. Duty was charged by weight, so the quantity of laboreria sete (works of silk) exported was carefully recorded. Exports fluctuated from 21,936 libbre in 1403 to 10,237 libbre in 1409 and totalled 11,432 libbre in 1410.19 The Gabella Maggiore records show that the destinations most frequently mentioned for large-scale export of silks were Paris, France, or “Ultra Montes” (Northern Europe), and within Italy, Genoa and Pisa, and to a lesser extent Lombardy and Bologna, perhaps as initial destinations for goods that would be redistributed. It is noteworthy that neither Bruges nor England is mentioned as a destination, given that other evidence demonstrates that Lucchese silks did find an outlet in those places, but almost certainly Lucchese correspondents in Paris saw to the marketing of these silks in other Northern courts. Since the Gabella Maggiore records refer to silk cloths almost invariably as laboreria sete, a Latin version of the lavori di seta of the Libri de’ Sensali and other vernacular records, and since duty was assessed by weight without distinction of the type of cloth, these records tell the historian almost nothing about the types of cloth exported. The Libri de’ Sensali can, to a considerable extent, provide such information, although it has to be remembered that the sensals recorded sales of goods wholesale within Lucca, and not their production or export. Detailed technical regulations for a number of the most important types of silk cloth manufactured in Lucca appear in the Statute of the Court of Merchants of 1376, with some modifications over the next few years. These have been studied and admirably clarified for English-speaking readers

  18 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 118r, 196v. For prices of gold and silver thread and dyestuffs in Florence at a later date, de Roover, “Andrea Banchi,” 240, 243–44, and for an attempt to estimate their effect on the price of gold brocades, Rembrandt Duits, “Figured Riches: The Value of Gold Brocades in FifteenthCentury Florentine Painting,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 62 (1999): 60–92, esp. 61–65.   19 ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� The figures have been extracted from Gabella Maggiore 36–45 and 49, the same volumes that provided the figures for silk imports, since imports and exports were treated together.

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Lucchese Silks by Donald King in a much-quoted article.20 He distinguished the silk fabrics listed in the Statute’s libro IV, capitoli xvi–xxxvi, into four groups with regulations about such matters as minimum width, the type of silk to be used, the number of dents per reed, and the number of warp threads for each dent.21 The first group (cap. xvi–xix) begins with multicoloured baudekins (baldachini accolorati), cloths of gold and silver (drappi d’oro e d’ariento), divided baudekins (baldachini rifessi), and narrow baudekins (baldachini strecti), all of them figured textiles of lampas type, woven on a draw loom with a harness which produced the pattern over the basic structure and which had a binding warp (ristagno) in addition to a main warp (tela). The first two were to be 2 Lucchese braccia wide including the selvages, which—since the Lucchese braccio measured 59 centimetres—meant 118 centimetres, and their length was to be either 7½ or 5¼ braccia, that is, 4.43 or 3.10 metres. Cloths of gold and silver were silk cloths woven to the same measurements and reed counts as baudekins, but with significant amounts of gold or silver thread woven in, which had to be of the high-quality gold of Lucca, Cologne, or Bruges. Minimum weights as well as minimum measurements were laid down: a baudekin of 7½ braccia was to weigh at least 26 uncie, and cloth of gold or silver of the same length was to weigh 4 libbre 10 uncie (at 12 uncie to the libbra, this would be 58 uncie). Baudekins could also be woven to a width of 1 braccio excluding the selvages (baldachini strecti), in which case they were to be at least 7½ braccia long and weigh at least 15 uncie. Baldachini rifessi seem to have been similar, though the Statute provides for them to be made in the 5¼-braccia length as well as 7½ braccia.22 Also in the first group are the fabrics covered in capitoli xx–xxiv, which comprise camacas (camucha or camuca) of one and of two silks (camucha di una et di du sete, which appears to mean two colours of silk, not two types of silk), diaspini, cigattoni, diaspinecti, and camacas of two threads per dent in one silk (camucha di du fila in dente in una seta), without making by any means clear their precise nature nor how they differed from one another. Merchants were permitted to have camacas of one and of two silks woven on the looms of camuca acolorati and to the same technical   20 ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Donald King (with Monique King), “Silk Weaves of Lucca in 1376,” originally published in Opera Textilia Variorum Temporum: To Honour Agnes Geijer on Her Ninetieth Birthday 26th October 1988, ed. Inger Estham and Margareta Nockert (Stockholm: Statens Historiska Museum, 1988), 67–76, and reprinted in Donald King, Collected Textile Studies, ed. Anna Muthesius and Monique King (London: Pindar, 2004), 93–106; further page references to this article refer to the latter publication. These silk types are summarised and set out in table form by Anna Muthesius, “Silk in the Medieval World,” in The Cambridge History of Western Textiles, ed. David Jenkins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) 1:325–54, at 347–48, tables 6.1 and 6.2. There is also much technical detail in Gargiolli, L’Arte della Seta, though this dates from the mid-fifteenth century.   21 ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� The reed on a loom serves several purposes, including holding the warp threads in order and helping beat the weft threads into place. The warp threads pass through uniformly spaced openings in the reed called dents. The number of dents across the width of the cloth and the number of warp threads in each dent governed the density of the warp and thus the fineness of the fabric.   22 ������������������������������������������� King, “Silk Weaves of Lucca,” 94, speaks of baldachini rifessi being woven in pairs and subsequently divided. Rifessi does appear to mean divided (see Statuto glossary, 223, and the references given there), but cap. xviii does not make it clear that this was done, let alone how.

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Christine Meek standards, but nothing is said about what these looms were like, and it sounds as though they are being equated with those for baudekins, the only looms for which any technical details had been specified up to that point. Diaspini, cigattoni, and diaspinecti were also to be woven on the same looms of the same materials, and to be at least 5¼ braccia in length, but were apparently of a single colour, though they could include gold or silver. For diaspinecti, the use of raw—as opposed to boiled or cooked (cotta)—silk was not confined to the binding warp, but could be used for the main warp as well. Camacas of two threads per dent in one silk had a lower warp count, and it was forbidden to brocade it, but it was to be woven to a length of 13 braccia (7.68 metres) and weigh 32 uncie.23 There was a category of silks that were clearly of lesser quality: polpore, cigattoni, and sciamiti could be made with a warp of non-silk or low-grade silk (accia, filo, or filugello), though these had to be boiled, the weft had to be boiled silk, and the cloths had to be at least 5¼ braccia in length and 2 braccia wide, including the selvages.24 Velvets (velliuti or vegliuti), which constitute King’s second group, were dealt with in a single capitolo (cap. xxvi), though at some length. There were, however, two types, fine velvets and less-than-fine velvets (vegliuti fini and vegliuti meno che fini), the main difference being that fine velvets had more dents per reed and a higher number of pile threads. Fine velvets were to measure at least 13 braccia (7.68 metres) and less-than-fine velvets 12½ braccia (7.38 metres), with a width of at least 1 braccio (59 centimetres), excluding the selvages. Both types were required to have warp of pure boiled silk with at least three main warp threads and one pile thread per dent, and the pile threads were to be double and twisted (doppio et torto). For fine velvets, weft threads could be of non-silk or lower-grade silk, all of which were to be boiled (“accia pura et cotta o filugello o cocollo puro et cocto vel seta pura et cotta”), though it was not permitted to vary the fibre in any one piece, and non-silk (accia) was not permitted for fine velvets dyed in grain. For less-than-fine velvets, wefts were to be of pure boiled accia. It was not envisaged that velvets would be purely plain, and permitted types of gold and silver, accia, and silk could be used for transverse bands in less-than-fine velvets, and gold, silver, and silk for banding and also for brocading and figuring in fine velvets. A revision of April 22, 1381, allowed for figured velvets with three colours of pile (vegliuti affigurati a tre peli), which were exempted from all these regulations except the one regarding width. A further revision of June 25, 1382, covered chequered velvets (vegliuti a scachetti), which had to conform to these

  23 ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� On camacas and related figured silks, see Lisa Monnas, “The Price of Camacas Purchased for the English Court during the Fourteenth Century,” in La Seta in Europa, Sec. XIII–XX, ed. Simonetta Cavaciocchi (Florence: Le Monnier, 1993), 741–53.   24 Statuto, cap. xxv. See King, “Silk Weaves of Lucca,” 95–98, on the technical problems relating to these various types of silk cloth and the identification of some surviving textiles as belonging to them (figs. 1–4).

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Lucchese Silks r­ egulations with regard to size and thread count, but were to have two main warp threads and two pile warp threads per dent.25 There were also two types of satins, heavy satins and light satins (zectani forti, zectani legieri), which were dealt with in capitoli xxvii and xxviii and constitute King’s third group. In both cases they were to be 13 braccia (7.68 metres) long and at least 1 braccio (59 centimetres) wide excluding the selvages. They were to be woven evenly for the whole of their length, so that the middle was no different from the more visible parts. Both warp and weft were to be of pure boiled silk, and the warp threads must all be either single or double, not a mixture of the two. The main differences between heavy and light satins lay in their weight and thread count. Heavy satins were to weigh at least 18 uncie and be woven with a reed of at least 800 dents, whereas light satins weighed 12 to 14 uncie and were to be woven with a reed of at least 720 dents.26 The final eight capitoli regulating silk manufacture, forming King’s last group, dealt with a number of different types of cloth, most of them very briefly: taffeta (taffecta), torugini, dyed sendals and narrow white sendals (sendadini tinti et sendada strecte bianche), tersanelli, broad sendals (sendada larghe), catrasciamiti, saracinati o occhiellati, and actabi. Taffeta could be made either in three or in two sendals (“in tre o in du sendadi”), which appears to relate to width, since those in three were to be at least 2 braccia (118 centimetres) wide and those in two were to be at least 1⅓ braccia (79 centimetres) wide. In each case the length was to be 18 braccia (10.63 metres). Taffecta in tre sendadi was to have both warp and weft of pure boiled silk, although there was provision also for gold and silver to be used for bands. Catrasciamiti was to be made of pure boiled silk in the same widths and warp count as taffeta, but nothing is said of its length. Saracinati and occhiellati are assumed to be familiar types, since “and suchlike” (“et simili”) is added after their names, and the regulations simply provide for them to be of the same widths as catrasciamiti, of pure boiled silk with gold or silver for bands. Regulations about torugini, sendadini tinti, sendada strecte bianche, and tersanelli are mainly limited to defining their width and requiring both warp and weft to be of pure boiled silk, though torugini could also be banded in gold or silver, and a dressing of millet flour and pure water could be used for both broad and narrow sendals, as had long been customary. Actabi (tabby) was to be at least 1 braccio wide (59 centimetres) and 13 braccia (7.68 metres) in length.27 These statutory regulations were, of course, a generation before the earliest of the Libri de’ Sensali, and they were probably backward-looking rather than forward-looking even at the time they were issued, since they aimed at restoring the good reputation of Lucchese products.28 They were always intended as minimum standards, and it was   25 Statuto, 178, 193; King, “Silk Weaves of Lucca,” 98–99, quoting also Lisa Monnas, “Developments in Figured Velvet Weaving in Italy During the Fourteenth Century,” Bulletin de Liaison du Centre International d’Études des Textiles Anciens, nos. 63–64 (1986): 63–100.   26 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������� King, “Silk Weaves of Lucca,” 99–100. I have followed King’s interpretation of capitoli xxvii and xx– viii.   27 ��������������������������������������� King, “Silk Weaves of Lucca,” 100, 105.   28 ������� “acciò che ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� si rinvegna nella prima buona fama nell’ arte de lavori infrascripti” (so that Lucca’s previous good reputation in the production of these silks may be restored), Statuto, lib. IV, cap. xv.

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Christine Meek specifically permitted for merchants to have silks made to higher standards of length, width, weight, or thread count, with the exception of less-than-fine velvets and light satins, which were not to exceed the standards laid down, and all silks could include gold and silver, except for camuca di du fila.29 Subsequent revisions perhaps represented concessions to practices then current: capitoli that stipulated a width of 2 braccia were not to be applicable to cloths that were divided (“quelli che si rifendeno”), which could be made to a width of 1⅞ braccia not including the selvages; there were modifications in the colours to be used for selvages; vegliuti affigurati a tre peli were exempted from the regulations laid down for velvets except for those relating to width.30 A series of revisions dated June 25, 1382, appears to represent a general relaxation of some of the requirements of the Statute, particularly with regard to minimum weights, widths, and the use of raw as opposed to boiled fibres, but it also introduces a number of types of cloth not previously mentioned, which may or may not be identical to those covered by the earlier regulations. Baudekins of more than two silks (baldachini di piue di du sete), which are presumably the baldachini acolorati of capitolo xvi, were to be made to the dimensions and reed count laid down, but need now only weigh 22 uncie per piece 7½ braccia long, not the 26 uncie of the Statute. There were similar regulations for baudekins of one and two silks (baldachini di una et di due sete), which had not been mentioned as such in the Statute itself, but which now had to weigh at least 19 uncie per piece. Merchants were allowed to have brocading done on these silks with gold and silver not prohibited under the Statute. The next two provisions relate to raccamati (embroideries) and imperiali (imperials), in terms that make it clear that these were types of silk fabrics, rather than special effects that might be added to other silks. Merchants were allowed to commission raccamati or imperiali of fine gold and silver or gold and silver of Cologne or Lucca, and they were to weigh 30 uncie for a piece measuring 5¼ braccia for raccamati and 4 libbre 2 uncie (that is, 50 uncie) for a piece measuring 7½ braccia for imperiali. Raccamati seem to be the silks referred to in the Statute as drappi d’oro e d’ariento, which were also called raccamato at one point, though they were there required to weigh 35 uncie for a length of 5¼ braccia, while imperiali appear to be the drappi d’oro e d’ariento that had a length of 7½ braccia and were required under the Statute to weigh 4 libbre 10 uncie (that is, 58 uncie). The main difference between raccamati and imperiali would therefore be their length. The required weights for baldachini rifessi, baldachini strecti, diaspini broccati, and satins were also reduced, while for sciamiti it was permitted to use unboiled fibre for the warp and binding warp and non-silk fibres of accia or filo for the weft. Taffeta, saracinati, occhiellati, sendadi, sendadini, and soriani (the latter not mentioned in the Statute, but presumably included under “et simili”) could be made with a raw warp and reduced widths of 1¾ braccia for taffeta, 1⅓ for saracinati, occhiellati, and soriani, and 1¾ for catrasciamiti. It was also specifically permitted for merchants to make any kind   29 Statuto, lib. IV, cap. xxxvii. Brocading had been forbidden for camuca di du fila, cap. xxiv. The limitations with regard to less-than-fine velvets and light satins were presumably to maintain the distinction between them and fine velvets and heavy satins.   30 Statuto, 177–78.

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Lucchese Silks of fabrics, whether of gold, silver, or silk, in any length they chose above a minimum of 5¼ braccia the piece, providing they were of the appropriate weight pro rata; any silks less than 5¼ braccia in length were to be regarded as samples rather than cloths, but incurred no penalty whatever their weight.31 SALES AND VALUES OF SILK FABRICS

A comparison of the statutory provisions regarding silk cloths and the descriptions of silks in the Libri de’ Sensali makes it possible to see whether the same cloths were still being manufactured, and if so whether the same standards were being observed, at least with regard to length. The Libri de’ Sensali can also provide information not found in the statutory provisions on prices and the conditions under which silk cloths were sold. The sensals were mainly concerned with recording obligations of the parties under the contract, that is, to indicate delivery dates, the total sum to be paid, and whether the transaction was for cash, on credit terms, or, as many of them were, part exchange for other commodities. They would normally indicate what kind of silk cloth was involved and the total cost, but would not necessarily state the unit cost, that is the price per braccio or per libbra, and might describe the cloth as a piece (una peza) without indicating its length or its weight, though this can sometimes be worked out from the other information given. Where several silks were sold on a single occasion, there might be only a global price for the whole transaction without any indication of the price of each separate piece. The historian does not therefore have all the information that might be desired. Nevertheless the Libri de’ Sensali go a long way towards providing a picture of the trade in silk fabrics in early-fifteenthcentury Lucca (fig. 6.2). The Libro de’ Sensali for 1409 contains a relatively limited number of sales of silks compared with the volumes for subsequent years, but it nevertheless records some fifty-two transactions, many of them multiple sales of several different silk cloths.32 A number of types of cloth covered by the statutory provisions appear among the sales recorded by the sensals, including satin, taffeta, velvet, raccamati, imperiali, and baldachino, but the silks mentioned most frequently are domaschini (damasks) and zettani aveglutato (or avellutato). Twenty of the fifty-two transactions involve domaschini, a number of them sales of more than one piece. Domaschini came in two widths, broad (larghi) and narrow (stretti),33 but unfortunately in most transactions it is not stated which was involved, and it is by no means easy to deduce this, since they are often priced by weight. Thus three pieces of black damask (“domaschini neri”) that are stated   31 Statuto, 190–97.   32 ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Corte de’ Mercanti 94. These figures do not include three sales of silk garments and one sale of bedcovers, which are said to have been “afighurato” but were secondhand and may or may not have been silk; 82r (June 8). Spellings vary. This article will adopt standard spelling, except in the case of direct quotations, which will reproduce the spelling given in the text.   33 ����������������������� Corte de’ Mercanti 94. Larghi, 4v (March 14), 172v (Jan. 30); stretti, 13r (Nov. 28), 180r (April 11), 187v (July 29).

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Fig. 6.2: Entries from one of the Libri de’ Sensali showing sales of various types of silk fabric offset against a purchase of silk, 1409 (Lucca, Archivio di Stato, Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 179v). Photo: Christine Meek, with permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali, Prot. 0004504. Further duplication or reproduction prohibited.

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Lucchese Silks to be larghi weighed a total of 20 libbre 3¾ uncie, while three pieces of black damask stated to be stretti weighed 21 libbre, and both categories were priced at 6 florins per libbra and came to totals of 122 florins 12s. 6d. a oro and 126 florins respectively.34 These examples suggest a weight of 6 to 7 libbre for a piece of black damask, and this is confirmed by a number of other examples, two pieces that weighed 13 libbre or two pieces that weighed 13 libbre 3 uncie,35 but there are examples of pieces that weighed more, in one case much more. On July 29, 1409, there was a sale of a piece of black damask that weighed 11 libbre.36 All these examples relate to black damask, which may in fact have weighed more than other colours. The amendments to the Statute of the Court of Merchants of June 25, 1382, had provided that all black silk fabrics had to weigh 3 uncie per libbra, that is 25 percent, more than other colours.37 In most transactions in the Libro de’ Sensali for 1409 it is not possible to calculate the weight of other colours of damask, but where weight is indicated, it is less than for black damask. A piece of white damask sold on May 7 weighed 5½ libbre; another piece of white damask, specified as largho, sold on January 30, weighed 6 libbre 1 uncia 1 quarra; and a piece of blue damask (“domaschino alessandrino”) sold on July 29 weighed 5 libbre 3 uncie.38 There was also a price differential, black damask consistently costing less than other colours. This is made particularly clear when the price was according to weight and different colours were sold in the same transaction. On May 7, 1409, two pieces of black damask were sold at 6½ florins per libbra and one piece of white at 8½ florins per libbra,39 while on July 29 a piece of black damask was priced at 6¼ florins per libbra and a piece of blue (“alessandrino”) at 8¼ florins per libbra.40 It might be expected that damasks dyed with cremisi or grana would fetch the highest prices, since these, especially cremisi, were the most costly dyestuffs, and this was probably the case; a piece of “domaschino di grana et cremosi,” whose weight was given as 6 libbre 4 uncie, fetched the highest recorded price of 60 florins for a cash sale, almost 9½ florins per libbra, but a piece of “domaschino morato di grana” (violet damask dyed with grain) 26 braccia long fetched only 47 florins.41 Two teli (cloths) of “domaschino morelli di grana” (violet damask dyed with grain), respectively 26 braccia and 24⅔ braccia long, were sold for a total of 110 florins, but three pieces of black damask were sold for 152½   34 ���������������������������������������������������� Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 4v (March 14), 13r (Nov. 28).   35 �������������������������������������������������� Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 13r (Nov. 28), 21v (May 7).   36 ��������������������������������������� Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 187v (July 29).   37 ����������������������������������������������������������������� “Et ogni pessa di drappo nero tucto si intenda dovere pesare più �������������������������������������� che li altri colori a ogni libra once tre più,” Statuto, 197. For black fabrics as heavier than other colours, Gargiolli, L’Arte della Seta, 80.   38 ������������������������������������������������������������������� Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 21v (May 7), 172v (Jan. 30), 187v (July 29).   39 ���������������������������������������� Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 21v (May 7). For domaschini bianchi at 8¼ florins per libbra, 25v (Oct. 31); for 8⅓ florins per libbra, 172v (Jan. 30). For comparative prices of various silk cloths in Florence, Gargiolli, L’Arte della Seta, 98–102; de Roover, “Andrea Banchi,” 255, 266–68; and Philip Jacks and William Caferro, The Spinelli of Florence: Fortunes of a Renaissance Merchant Family (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), 86–87.   40 ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 187v (July 29); another example, 24v (Sept. 12). But 26r (Nov. 29), a sale of three pieces of damask, one of them black, gave no indication that their prices varied.   41 ������������������������������������������������������ Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 186v (July 12), 73r (Dec. 30).

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Christine Meek florins between them, an average of nearly 51 florins each.42 Comparisons are made difficult by the fact that widths are often unstated, and sales are sometimes by weight and sometimes by length, and occasionally by the piece with no further details, quite apart from factors such as design and quality, not to mention bargaining, which may have affected the price. Presumably there were differences in the length when wide and narrow black damasks weighed much the same, but length is not indicated when sales were by weight. However, some sales of damask were priced by the braccio, and length often is then indicated. These cloths varied in length, but could be quite surprisingly long, bearing in mind the lengths laid down for cloths in the Statute. A piece of green damask (“domaschino verde”) 24 braccia long was sold on March 7 for 2 florins per braccio, a total of 48 florins, while another piece the same length and colour was sold on April 29 at 2 1/12 florins per braccio, a total of 50 florins.43 But there were also much longer ones. On July 29 a piece of black damask and a piece of “domaschino cienerogno” of the narrow width (“delli stretti”) were sold for an agreed total of 117 florins, the length being given as 38 braccia in each case.44 Zettani avellutati, literally velveted satin, were the silks normally called voided satin velvets by textile historians. They were understood by contemporaries to be velvets rather than satins: Iacopo Salviati, one of the two Florentines sent to represent their city at the wedding of Paolo Guinigi, signore of Lucca, to Piagentina da Varano in 1407, describes in his chronicle how they were given gifts of velvets to mark the occasion, his being “velluto figurato,” also called “zetani vellutato.”45 The Libro de’ Sensali for 1409 includes 15 transactions that certainly refer to sales of zettani avellutati, and two others that may do so. Unlike damasks, which were often sold by weight, zettani avellutati were normally sold by length, and the number of braccia is usually indicated even when this kind of silk cloth was sold by the piece. It is not easy to estimate the length of a piece, because it is more usual for the number of braccia to be indicated without stating that it is one piece. A piece of “zettani aveglutato netta” sold on April 26, 1409, was 32½ braccia long, and “zettani aveglutato biancho” costing a total of 78 florins 2s. a oro, at 2 florins 7s. 4d. a oro, sold on February 7 would be about 33 braccia.46 There are a number of other examples of zettani aveglutato with lengths of 32¼ braccia, 32½ braccia, 33¾ braccia, 34 braccia, and 34⅓ braccia, but there are also examples of both shorter and longer lengths: 28 braccia, 38¾ braccia, 40½ braccia, even 64¾ braccia,

  42 ������������������������������������������������������� Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 180r (April 11), 174v (Feb. 7).   43 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 175v (March 7), 21v (April 29); similar lengths, 26r (Nov. 29), 173r (Jan. 31), 180r (April 11), 173r (Jan. 31).   44 ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 187v (July 29). “Cienerogno” is presumably the colour given as “ceneragnolo” and listed under beiges (colori bigi) in Gargiolli, L’Arte della Seta, 334. See also Jacoby, “Genoa,” 26 n. 86, for cinericeus as meaning ash grey.   45 ������������������������������������������������ “velluto figurato tinto in cremesi, et chiamasi ����������������� zetani vellutato ������������������������������������ …” “Cronica di Iacopo Salviati,” in Delizie degli Eruditi Toscani, vol. 18 (Florence: Gaetano Cambiagi, 1784), 264.   46 ������������������������������������������������������ Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 181r (April 26), 20v (Feb. 7).

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Lucchese Silks although that was almost certainly more than a single piece.47 The highest price recorded was 4¾ florins per braccio for “zettani aveglutato di cremosi,” that is, voided satin velvet dyed with the costly kermes dye. The large quantity of 64¾ braccia amounted to no less than 307 florins 11s. 3d. a oro.48 A piece of voided satin velvet dyed with a combination of grain and kermes (“zettani aveglutato grana et cremisi”) fetched the much lower price of somewhat under 3 florins per braccio.49 A piece of “zectani aveglutato argientato” measuring about 34 braccia sold for 2¾ florins per braccio, a price probably partly explained by the inclusion of silver thread or brocading.50 Apart from these, prices ranged from 2 florins to 2 florins 10s. a oro per braccio. As with damask, black fetched some of the lowest prices, for example, a total of 69 florins 10s. a oro for 33¾ braccia on July 27, and 2 florins per braccio for 32¼ braccia on September 4,51 but there were also sales of black voided satin velvet for higher prices: 76 braccia at 2 florins 10s. a oro per braccio on November 30, and 4½ braccia for 2⅓ florins per braccio on May 10.52 The picture is far from clear. Both black and white voided satin velvet perhaps speckled with contrasting thread (“zettani nero aveglutato apicciolata,” “zettani biancho aveglutato picciolato”) were priced at 2¼ florins per braccio in a sale agreed on September 4,53 while a piece of white voided velvet (“zettani aveglutato biancho”) sold for 2 florins 7s. 4d. a oro per braccio on February 7, and another for 2¼ florins per braccio on July 29.54 Quite apart from zettani aveglutato, there were silks described as satin (zettani) or velvet or plain velvet (velluto, velluto piano). Sales of satin are not numerous enough for it to be possible to get a clear idea of the range of types and prices. They might be light   47 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 24v (Sept. 4), 170v (Jan. 7), 3r (Jan. 29), 187v (July 29), 71r (April 19), 24v (Sept. 4), 178v (April 15), 23v (July 26). There was one sale of what must have been more or less a sample of “zettani veglutato nero” of 4½ braccia, Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 22r (May 10). In one case a sale on February 7 (20v) of “zettani aveglutato biancho” described as a piece (“una peza”) involved delivery of 30 braccia on December 22 and another 3 braccia on January 29, so it must have been in at least two sections unless the delivery was purely symbolic. It is not clear whether or not these 33 braccia represented the full length.   48 ��������������������������������������������������������������������������� Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 23v (July 26). This was on six months’ credit terms.   49 �������������������������������������������������� An agreed total price of 116 florins cash for 40½ braccia. Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 178v (April 15).   50 �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 3r (Jan. 29). As the length is only given approximately and the sale was part of an exchange transaction, the total price cannot be worked out.   51 ������������������������������������������������ Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 117v, 24v. A sale of 32½ braccia at 2 florins per braccio on April 26 may also have been black (“nera”), though the entry clearly reads “zettani veglutato netta,” which would have meant something like plain or perhaps narrow voided satin velvet; 181r.   52 ���������������������������������������������� Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 12v, 22r. A sale of 33 braccia of “zettani neri aveglutato” for 2⅓ florins per libbra on July 27 may be an error for per braccio, 117v.   53 ������������������������������������������� Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 24v. The meaning of apicciolato is not entirely clear. Zetanino apizolato is translated as brocaded satin by Molà, Silk Industry, 164, but a Lucchese document of 1397 lists a “coppia vellutorum figuratorum in tribus pelis in campo nigro cum laccio de cremesi et cum picciolis viridibus et albis,” with “picciolis” apparently meaning details. Telesforo Bini, I Lucchesi a Venezia: Alcuni Studi Sopra i Secoli XIII e XIV (Lucca: Tipografia di Felice Bertini, 1853), 70, and Monnas, “Developments,” 79 n. 61. Lisa Monnas gives “polychrome velvet” for “velluto appicciolato”; Monnas, Merchants, Princes and Painters: Silk Fabrics in Italian and Northern Paintings, 1300–1550 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 303.   54 ��������������������������������������� Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 71r, 20v, 187v.

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Christine Meek or heavier (forte), though this is not always stated. They might have a varying number of licci (shafts).55 The minimum number of licci for satin was five, and the most usual number to be stated was either five or ten. Satin might be sold either by weight or by the piece, making comparisons difficult. Thus 5 libbre 3 uncie of “zettani nero forte” was sold on February 27, 1409, for 6⅓ florins per libbra, a total of 33 florins 5s. a oro, while on March 9, two pieces of “zettani neri” were sold by the piece at a total of 26¾ florins.56 Two sales of satin in July 1409 are stated to be the higher quality “zettani in 10 licci” (ten-shaft satin). One was described as “uno telo di zettani nero in 10 licci di libbre 13 uncie 4,” and at 6¼ florins per libbra, sold for 88 florins 6s. 8d. a oro. The other consisted of 9 libbre 5 uncie of “zettani neri in 10 licci” at the same price, and although it was sold together with 33 braccia of “zettani neri aveglutato” with only the total price of 135 florins 17s. 1d. a oro given, the plain satin presumably accounted for almost 57 florins of this total.57 Since all these satins were black, a fact that may in itself be significant, there is no possibility of determining whether black was less costly than other colours, though on analogy with other types of silk cloth it may have been. Velvet is not mentioned very frequently in the Libro de’ Sensali for 1409, but there was one sale of four different items of plain velvet on April 17: a piece of plain silk velvet dyed in grain (“vegluti di grana in seta piano”) measuring 33 braccia, one of plain black silk velvet (“vegluto nero in seta piano”) measuring 38½ braccia, one of plain green silk velvet (“vegluto verde in seta piano”) measuring 42⅓ braccia, and a piece of plain blue velvet (“vegluto alessandrino piano”) measuring 35¼ braccia. The sale included several other silks with only the total price of 590 florins 17s. 6d. a oro given, so there is no possibility of working out the price of any particular item.58 Individual prices are available for a few other sales of velvet: 26 braccia of velvet dyed in grain (“vegluto di grana”) for a total of 52 florins, or 2 florins per braccia, on August 22, and 33¾ braccia of black silk velvet (“vegluto nero in seta”) at 1¾ florins per braccia, a total of 59 florins, on May 30.59 The reason that many of these velvets were specified as being silk is that there were velvets that were not pure silk. A pair of black velvets with long pile in accia (“1 coppia vegluto nero apellungho in accia”) measuring 32¾ braccia was sold on May 25 for 31¾ florins, or slightly under a florin per braccio, while a virtually identical sale of a pair of long-pile black velvets (“una coppia vegluto nero al pelo lungho”) measuring 33¾ braccia on 15 October at 1 florin per braccio was probably also in accia given

  55 Licci made possible the staggered binding points of the weft threads, which produced the satin’s smooth, glossy surface. See Monnas, Merchants, Princes and Painters, 296 and 300, diagram 5, where the grouping of warp threads in the licci is illustrated. Also Monnas, “Developments,” 71.   56 ���������������������������������������������������� Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 4v (Feb. 27), 20v (March 9).   57 ������������������������������������������������������������������� Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 165v (July 10), 117v (July 27). A sale of 7 libbre 9 uncie of “zettani neri” in 10 licci at 6 florins per libbra was listed as totalling 46 florins 10s. a oro, although it was sold together with several other silks, 170v (Jan. 7).   58 ��������������������������������������� Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 179v (April 17).   59 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 191v (Aug. 22), 183r (May 30). In the first case the buyer was Paolo Guinigi’s household treasurer, Simone Simoni, buying on behalf of the signore, but it seems to have been an ordinary commercial transaction.

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Lucchese Silks its price, although the fibre is not ­specified.60 A pair of green velvets in accia (“copia una di vegluti verdi in accia”) sold for 20 florins the pair on January 2, and two pairs of velvets in accia, one checked with gold and the other blue (“coppie due vegluti in accia cioe una schacata doro et una azura”), sold for 19½ florins the pair on January 30, although in none of these cases is the length specified.61 Apart from these there are two sales of taffeta, both with interesting details. Ten pieces of taffeta were sold on April 22. Four of them, totalling 79½ braccia in length and 10 libbre 10 uncie 2 quarre in weight, were black. Six were coloured, two of them vermilion, two green, one blue (alessandrino), and one turquoise (turchino), with a total length of 120 braccia and weight of 13 libbre 11 uncie. As with many other silks, there was a price differential, the black costing 6 florins per libbra and the colours 7 florins 10s. a oro per libbra, so that the black totalled 72 florins 5s. and the colours 104 florins 7s. 6d.62 In the other sale the taffeta is specifically stated to be “di Bologna” and since it is also said to be “in gabella,” this apparently meant that it had indeed been imported from Bologna and had not yet cleared customs, rather than that it was a Lucchese imitation of a Bolognese product, although both the buyer and the seller were Lucchese merchants. In this case the sale involved eleven pieces of taffeta at 5 florins the piece, a total of 55 florins, so they must have been very different from the much more costly Lucchese taffeta sold on April 22.63 The Libro de’ Sensali for 1409 also records a number of sales of brocades, imperiali, raccamati, and other luxury silks that appear in the Statute of the Court of Merchants for 1376 and subsequent additions. Fifteen braccia of crimson brocaded with fine gold (“cremosi brocato doro fino”) were sold for a total price of 116⅔ florins on July 4, 1409. The fact that this combined the costly crimson dye with fine gold brocading presumably explains the price of more than 7¾ florins per braccio.64 On August 3, an unnamed bishop purchased four pieces of raccamati, two pieces of “brocati doro fino,” and one piece of imperiali for a total of 99⅓ florins.65 There is no indication of their dimensions and no way of distinguishing the prices of the individual pieces, but there were similar sales of raccamati for 10 florins the piece on January 2, 9 florins the piece on October 25, and three pieces for 25 florins on November 5. These were the sort of elaborate borders or trims where three pieces formed a capella and were relatively expensive for their dimensions. It is significant that most of these sales were of groups of three pieces, and in the case of the sale on November 5 the quantity is specifically referred to as a capella.66 No other transaction in this volume involved imperiali, but there were several sales of baldachino: one with a green design on a black ground (“peza una baldachino   60 ����������������������������������������������������� Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 183r (May 25), 196r (Oct. 15).   61 ����������������������������������������������������� Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 30r (Jan. 2), 172v (Jan. 30).   62 ���������������������������������������� Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 181r (April 22).   63 ������������������������������������� Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 12v (Nov. 7).   64 �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 23r (July 4). The dimensions are not indicated. Payment was to be made not in cash but in the form of 11 libbre 8 uncie of gold.   65 ������������������������������������� Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 24r (Aug. 3).   66 �������������������������������������������������������������������� Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 30r (Jan. 2), 131r (Oct. 25), 131v (Nov. 5).

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Christine Meek campo nero laccio verde”) and two of white baldachino brocaded with fine gold (“peze 2 di baldachino biancho brocato doro fino”).67 Both sales included several other silks, so there is no possibility of working out the price of individual items, but on January 7, four pieces of coloured vermilion baudekin (“baldachini vermigli acolorati peze 4”) sold for 36 florins, or 9 florins the piece, and on August 22, a piece of coloured baudekin (“baldachino a colorato petia una”) was purchased by Paolo Guinigi’s household treasurer, buying for the signore, for 10 florins.68 SILK DESIGNS AND DESIGNERS

Since many of these silks were patterned, it is natural to ask how the designs were produced. There were certainly recognised designers of patterns for silk (dipintore d’opre di lavorio di seta), and they were one of the categories of silk workers named in an addition to the Statute of the Court of Merchants on April 22, 1381, as forbidden to leave Lucca to work elsewhere at anything connected with the silk industry.69 Individual designatores opere are mentioned in documents: Iacopo di Andruccio, listed as a goldsmith in 1371, was described as a designator of silk cloths in 1378, as was Michele di Baldinotto Celondi, a Lucchese citizen from a recognisable family,70 and Adriano Nicolai, designator and Lucchese citizen, recorded 1377–99, who became involved in a criminal case when he accused Martino di Andrea, a Lucchese court messenger, of attacking his tartar slave Marta and threatening to throw her down a well.71 Sometimes, however, the information available is rather more plentiful, and it becomes possible to follow the career of an individual designer. This is the case with Benedetto di Giovanni, known as Besso, who was of Sienese origin but was granted Lucchese citizenship on August 10, 1376, and was active in Lucca for over thirty years. He had arrived as a young man around 1366–67 and on March 9, 1371, contracted with the Lucchese weaver Andrea di Giovanni to supply him each year for four years with twelve painted tavole (patterns) “suitable for working and making cloths for the art of weaving” (“actas ad laborandum et faciendum laboreria ad dictam artem

  67 ��������������������������������������� Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 32v (April 16).   68 ������������������������������������������������������ Corte de’ Mercanti 94, 170v (Jan. 7), 191v (Aug. 22).   69 Statuto, 176–77, 179. Donata Devoti has stressed the importance of pattern designers as the motive force behind long–term style changes in silk fabrics, given that technical changes were relatively limited; Devoti, “Le stoffe lucchesi del Trecento,” Critica d’ Arte 12 (1966): 28–29, 31–32. Otto von Falke discussed one Lucchese designer to whom a number of patterns can be attributed, but could not put a name to him; von Falke, “Ein Luccheser Musterzeichner,” Pantheon 11 (1933): 146–50. See also Anne E. Wardwell, “The stylistic development of 14th- and 15th-century Italian silk design,” Aachener Kunstblätter 47 (1976/7), 177–226, at 200.   70 ������������������������������������������������������������ Graziano Concioni, Claudio Ferri, and Giuseppe Ghilarducci, Arte e Pittura nel Medioevo Lucchese (Lucca: Matteoni, 1994), 309–10, another designator, 364. De Roover (“Andrea Banchi,” 256) mentions two designers employed by Andrea Banchi.   71 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ Sentenze e Bandi 65, unfoliated (Sept. 11, 1382); Concioni, Ferri, and Ghilarducci, Arte e Pittura, 318.

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Lucchese Silks tessiture”) for a payment of 2 florins per tavola.72 This contract may never have been fully effective, since on June 16, 1371, Benedetto made a similar agreement with the prominent Lucchese painter, Pauluccio Lazzarini, without any indication of resentment on Andrea’s part. Benedetto undertook to live and work with Pauluccio for two years, “painting designs for cloths and other things connected with this” (“pingendi operas drapporum et alia a predictis dependentibus”) and not to work or supply designs for anyone else during that time.73 This was by no means Pauluccio’s first involvement in silk manufacture, since he had been designing cloths and also involved in production with his own looms and workers since 1366. On March 9 that year, he and Buondi di Falcone had been summoned to the Court of Merchants by Graziano di Ciucco, who demanded that they deliver a tavola for painting woven cloths (“a pingendo operis textorum”).74 Pauluccio was perhaps in need of an assistant, since he was heavily involved in public commissions for such things as banners and coats of arms in the early 1370s, when Lucca had only recently regained its independence, and his relative seniority and Benedetto’s relative youth are reflected in the fact that, although under the terms of their contract Benedetto was to have half the profits from his own designs, Pauluccio was also “to provide him with instruction in the said craft and art of painting” (“ipsum docere in dicto ministerio et arte pingendi”). But this agreement too was cancelled after only a short period, and on January 21, 1376, Benedetto contracted with a leading silk merchant, Lando di Dino Moriconi, to work exclusively for him as a designer of tavole for silk cloths for three years at a salary of 100 florins per year plus board and lodging.75 Thus over the course of barely five years, Benedetto di Giovanni had entered into agreements with a weaver, a painter, and a silk merchant to provide designs for silk fabrics on various terms. In 1391 he formed an association with a Florentine, Fortino di Amadore, and Vanne di Giovanni for three years “in and for the art of painting figures and panels and in making and painting coffers and chests” (“in arte et super arte pingendi fighuras et tabulas et faciendi et pingendi cofanos et scrineas”). Although this seems to have been a less specialised operation than his earlier partnerships in silk design, he was by this time the senior partner and put up all the capital of 150 florins, the profits to be shared equally after the repayment

  72 ���������������������������� Archivio de’ Notari, parte 1a, 181, notary ser Conte Puccini, 32r (March 9, 1376); citizenship Consiglio Generale 6, Riformagioni Pubbliche, 35r. Also Concioni, Ferri, and Ghilarducci, Arte e Pittura, 304.   73 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Notarial contract of ser Bernardo Lanfredi, preserved among the records of the Augustinian house of S. Frediano, Raccolte Speciali, S. Frediano 242, 171v–172r (June 17, 1374).   74 �������������������������������������������������������������������� Corte de’ Mercanti 136, 66r, 14v; Concioni, Ferri, and Ghilarducci, Arte e Pittura, 277.   75 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ Cancellation of the contract with Pauluccio; contract of ser Bernardo Lanfredi, Raccolte Speciali, S. Frediano 242, 171r (May 7, 1372). Agreement with Dino Moriconi, Archivio de’ Notari, parte 1a, 217, notary ser Iacopo Turchi, 39v (Jan. 21, 1376).

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Christine Meek of this capital and deduction of expenses.76 The designator mentioned most frequently in early-fifteenth-century documents is Francesco di Iacobo Minutoli, though his name appears in several slightly different forms. On November 24, 1419, he bought a house from the Hospital of the Misericordia, for which he was prepared to pay 140 florins, because it was useful for his business, despite the fact that its windows and part of the front were missing and the back was falling into ruin. Its usefulness seems to have consisted in the fact that it was in the parish of S. Cristoforo in the heart of the business district of Lucca and much frequented.77 As Francesco Iacobi designator drapporum, he took part in the government of the city as a member of the College of Anziani in January and February 1432,78 but also engaged in some slightly improbable business activities. In 1429, although still described as designator drapporum, he entered into a contract with Domenico di Giovanni of Stazzema, a village in the vicariate of Pietrasanta, to sell him certain quantities of iron ore that Francesco would import to Pietrasanta from the island of Elba, and in 1451 he was appointed to the post of superstes carcerum, or warder of the Lucchese prison.79 It seems likely that Baldo, son of the late Iacobo Francisci and also a designator operarum, was his brother.80 Baldo, however, spent many years living and working in Genoa. Described as “magister picturarum operis pannorum sete,” he was living there (“nunc habitator Janue”) in 1424, when he contracted to supply designs for brocades

  76 ���������������������������� Archivio de’ Notari, parte 1a, 252, notary ser Simone Alberti, 67v, printed in Concioni, Ferri, and Ghilarducci, Arte e Pittura, 304, 306; Monnas, Merchants, Princes and Painters, 54–55, and the source she quotes. As Benedetto Johannis de Senis, known as Besso and described as designatore drapporum, he witnessed a number of documents around 1400, after which he disappears from the records; Archivio de’ Notari, parte 1a, 286(v), notary ser Domenico Lupardi, 10r–11r (Oct. 2, 1399), 15r–15v (Dec. 4, 1399), and subsequently. The Benedetto del fu Iacobo di maestro Giovanni, designatore drapporum, for whom Gherardo, described as “discipulus in arte et de arte designando drappos sete” (apprentice in the art of designing silk cloths) and son of Nicolao del fu Bectori, silk weaver, undertook to work in 1410 may have been a relative given the similarity of names, though these names were not uncommon; Archivio de’ Notari, parte 1a, 259(i), notary ser Simone Alberti, 178r–178v (unfinished and therefore undated but between documents of Nov. 3 and Nov. 21, 1410).   77 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ “cum sit in loco pro exercitione sue artis sepe frequentato,” Archivio de’ Notari, parte 1a, 290(ii), notary ser Domenico Lupardi, 87r–88r (Nov. 24, 1419).   78 ����������������������������������������� Consiglio Generale 14, 9r (Jan. 1, 1432).   79 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� He died in office by April 21, 1451, and was succeeded by his son, Paulinus Francisci; Consiglio Generale 17, appointment p. 252 (Dec. 30, 1450, or 1451 Lucchese style, where the year began on Dec. 25), death, p. 278. He may have fallen on hard times in his later years, for another son Iacopo, who was studying canon law in Bologna, petitioned the commune for financial assistance to enable him to complete his course; Consiglio Generale 17, 415 (Aug. 22, 1452).   80 ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� On September 9, 1438, Baldo received 200 florins as the dowry of his wife, Clara or Chiaretta, daughter of Iacopo Anguilla of Lucca. Archivio de’ Notari, parte 1a, 467(ii), notary ser Michele di Giovanni Pieri, 46r–46v.

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Lucchese Silks and other silks to a number of manufacturers in Genoa.81 On April 1, 1435, he entered into an agreement with another Lucchese, Dado Bettini, both of them described as “magistri operarum pro pannis sete,” to form a company to work together in Genoa for three years, dividing the profits.82 Baldo not only supplied designs, but was involved much more closely in the actual production of silks. He made agreements with silk manufacturers to supply exclusive designs on tavole and was involved in the delicate business of setting up looms for complex designs, the operations described as “pingere et levare et transemplare” (paint and raise and transfer) the tavola, and even perhaps the actual weaving process. He had himself owned a loom at one point and was the owner of his own designs, in a position to form companies with other practitioners to exploit their skills and to contract with silk manufacturers to supply designs and production expertise. He continued to be active in Genoa until at least 1444.83 There are also references to designs for silk fabrics that show that such designs were valuable property and might be the subject of dispute. They could be owned by merchants. The inventory of the inheritance of Simetto di Gabriele Tegrimi in 1417 included a tabula for painting silk designs or silk cloths (“una tabula pro pingendo operas sirici”),84 and three books containing designs for silk cloths (“tres libri continentes designa pro drappis sirici”) featured in the inventory of the estate of the silk merchant Giovanni di Nese Franchi in 1420.85 The Lucchese merchant Castruccio di Poggio contracted to purchase the designs of the late Bernardo Rugerio from his brother for 70 florins around 1430, only to find that the best designs had already been sold and that what he received were designs discarded by other silk manufacturers.86 But weavers were also interested in property as valuable as silks and silk designs. In the mid-fourteenth century, the Lucchese weaver Nicolo, known as Riccio, was accused of stealing a silk design with parrots and other works (“unam operam drapporum cum pappagallis et aliis laboreriis”), which had been handed over to him in February 1356 by the painter Pauluccio Lazzarii, on behalf of Meuccio de Capannoli, a Pisan citizen. Riccio had sold this design (“ipsam operam”) to two other Lucchese   81 ������������������������������������������������������������������������ Maurizia Migliorini, “Regesti di documenti su tessuti e arti minori tra ������� XIII e �������������������� XVI secolo negli appunti manoscritti di Marcello Staglieno,” in Tessuti, Oreficerie, Miniature in Liguria XIII–XV Secolo: Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi Genova-Bordighera, 22–25 maggio 1997, ed. Anna Rosa Calderoni Masetti, Clario Di Fabio, and Mario Marcenaro (Bordighera, Italy: Istituto Internazionale di Studi Liguri, 1999), 321–47, esp. 323–24, 333.   82 ���������������������������������������������������������������������������� Giovanna Petti Balbi, “La presenza lucchese a Genova in età medioevale,” in Lucca e l’Europa degli Affari, Secoli XV–XVII, ed. Rita Mazzei and Tommaso Fanfani (Lucca: M. Pacini Fazzi, 1990), 37 n. 63. The partnership was renewed for another three years on May 27, 1437; Migliorini, “Regesti,” 333.   83 ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Migliorini, “Regesti,” 324–27, and calendar of documents (333–35), with full text of some of them in an appendix (343–47). On the importance of the “setting up” of designs, see Lisa Monnas, “The Artists and the Weavers: The Design of Woven Silks in Italy 1350–1550,” Apollo, n.s. 125, no. 304 (June 1987), 416–24, at 416–17, and now her Merchants, Princes and Painters, 43–44, 52–54. Bartolomeo da Tassignano, a Lucchese pictor operum sete, was working in Venice in the 1390s; Luca Molà, La Comunità dei Lucchesi a Venezia: Immigrazione e Industria della Seta nel Tardo Medioevo (Venice: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 1994), 60, 188.   84 ���������������������������� Archivio de’ Notari, parte 1a, 289(iii), notary ser Domenico Lupardi, 30r–35v (Dec. 2, 1417).   85 ���������������������������� Archivio de’ Notari, parte 1a, 290(iii), notary ser Domenico Lupardi, 6v–9r (Feb. 13, 1420).   86 ������ Molà, La Comunità dei Lucchesi, 189.

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Christine Meek weavers, the brothers Giovanni and Gregorio, sons of the late Ciucco, for £6 piccioli. This sale had been in March, and in May, Meuccio, as the owner of the designs, made a formal complaint against him.87 It seems clear from the terms of the accusation that what Riccio had stolen was the design rather than a finished silk cloth, and the case is interesting as further evidence of the involvement of one of the most prominent Lucchese artists in silk design and of the fact that weavers might have an interest in buying such designs, perhaps without asking too many questions. In 1377, two Lucchese, Opizo di Mainardo Lazari and Taddeo di Coluccino Busdraghi, formed a silk design company (“sotietatem et compagniam in dicta eorum arte pingendi huiusmodi tabulas drapporum”) to last for two years. They both undertook to work conscientiously, all the designs (picturas) they made and all the money they earned to be put in common. Although both of them were apparently qualified and this was not an apprenticeship contract, it seems to be a partnership between a young man and a more experienced practitioner; Opizo was described as “pictore drapporum” when he witnessed a document on May 11, 1377, whereas Taddeo was said to be only twenty years of age on September 22, 1377. This probably explains why the profits of the company were to be divided on the basis of two-thirds to Opizo and one-third to Taddeo for the first year, but were to be shared equally in the second year.88 Silk design was clearly an activity in which quite prominent Lucchese might engage. Taddeo was a member of the Busdraghi family, merchants who regularly held political office, while Opizo was probably a member of the Lazari family, another Lucchese merchant family. It is noteworthy too that this contract only applied to work the two men did in Lucca and its territory, which implies that, despite statutory prohibitions on working outside Lucchese territory, they envisaged operating separately elsewhere. An early-fifteenth-century suit for breach of contract shows two Lucchese doing exactly that, and also reveals much about the conditions under which silk pattern designers operated and the value of such designs. In December 1406, Giovanni, son of the late Francesco Sandri of Lucca, had contracted to work for another Lucchese, Daniele, son of the late Filippo Lupardi, for two years at the art of painting and designing (“ad exercendum artem pingendi et designandi”). Again, this was a contract between a young man and a more experienced practitioner; Giovanni’s age was given as still only 26 in 1413, while Daniele was certainly a much older man. The contract was drawn up in Florence by a Florentine notary, and Giovanni was to work in Florence or elsewhere as Daniele wished. His duties included “painting and designing on paper, in books, or on panels, coloured or not coloured, any works and designs and inventions that Daniele wished and desired” (“pingere et designare in carta seu libris aut in tabulis accoloratis et non coloratis omnia opera et designamenta et inventuras   87 ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Sentenze e Bandi 17, unfoliated; the sentence was dated June 18, 1356. The sale to Giovanni and Gregorio took place in the house of Giusto Comi, a vintner, which probably means a wine shop. Riccio failed to appear to answer the charge and was fined £12 buoni and ordered to restore the stolen goods. The pappagalli of the design may in fact have been eagles; Wardwell, “Stylistic development,” 180.   88 ���������������������������� Archivio de’ Notari, parte 1a, 269(iii), notary ser Giovanni Terii, 30v–31r (June 1, 1377), 26r (May 11, 1377), 54r (Sept. 22, 1377).

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Lucchese Silks de quibus dicto Danielli videbitur et placebit”). He undertook not to reserve any painting, invention, or design for himself, presumably meaning his own designs, and not to paint, indicate, or show any of Daniele’s designs to anyone, or even to speak of them in a way that would provide information about what they looked like, on pain of 100 florins. These slightly paranoid stipulations show the importance attached to silk designs and the fear that some other designer might copy patterns the inventor wished to keep exclusive, but Daniele had perhaps reason to be cautious. While there is no indication that Giovanni ever revealed any secret designs, he failed to keep to the terms of the contract, leaving after less than a month of the two years to which he had committed himself.89 It is by no means easy to link surviving examples of silk fabrics that are regarded as Lucchese with descriptions of silks in contemporary documents (figs. 6.3 and 6.4).90 No illustrations of designs have yet come to light in Lucchese documents, such as the marginal drawings in an order sent from Avignon to Francesco di Marco Datini in Florence in 1408.91 However, there is the interesting possibility that the silk designs in the sketchbook of Jacopo Bellini in Venice (fig. 6.5) in fact belong to a rather earlier period and may have come to him through his marriage to Anna Rinversi, who was from a Lucchese family connected to the silk industry.92 There are also occasional references in documentary sources that give some indication of what Lucchese silks may have been like at particular periods. The description of the silk design with parrots and other works (“unam operam drapporum cum pappagallis et aliis laboreriis”) stolen in 1356 suggests that it was the kind of pattern with small animals, birds, vines, and other plants that has been described as characteristic of designs for camacas in the fourteenth century.93 A Pisan inventory of 1369 indicates as specifically Lucchese a number of silk cloths: an altar frontal in marbled white of Lucca worked with griffins and peacocks;94 an altar frontal of green and vermilion gigatone worked with vineleaves

  89 ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Potestà di Lucca (Civile), 888, 20r–21r (June 5, 1413); 893, 32r–34r (July 18–29, 1413). Daniele was the brother of the prominent Lucchese notary Domenico Lupardi, but had had a somewhat chequered career. Giovanni di Francesco Sandri is presumably the same person as Johanne Francisci Sandori designatore, who witnessed a document with another designer, Francesco Jacobi, on August 17, 1410; Archivio de’ Notari, parte 1a, 259(i), notary ser Simone Alberti, fol. 200r.   90 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� On this problem, Donata Devoti, “Stoffe lucchesi,” 27–28, 34; Wardwell, “Stylistic development,” 217.   91 �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Rosalia Bonito Fanelli, “The Pomegranate Motif in Italian Renaissance Silks: a Semiological Interpretation of Pattern and Color,” in Cavaciocchi, La Seta in Europa, 507–30. The Datini document is reproduced as fig. 12, p. 524.   92 ������� Monnas, Merchants, Princes and Painters, 51 and 43–55 on the connection of artists with silk design more generally; Molà, La Comunità dei Lucchesi, 188–89; Wardwell, “Stylistic development,” 214.   93 ���������������������������������� Donald King, “Types of Silk Cloth �������������������������������������������� Used in England 1200–1500,” in Cavaciocchi, La Seta in Europa, 457–64, at 462; Wardwell, “Stylistic development,” 186. Florence Edler de Roover, “Lucchese silks,” Ciba Review 80 (1950): 2902–30, esp. 2924–30, discusses Lucchese silk designs in some detail with a number of illustrations.   94 �������������������������������������������������������������� “palium unum album marmatum laboratum ad grifones et grifones ���������������������������������� [corrected to “et pavones” in the notes on the basis of another manuscript] de Luca”; Riccardo Barsotti, ed., Gli Antichi Inventari della Cattedrale di Pisa (Pisa: Istituto di Storia dell’ Arte, Università di Pisa, 1959), 45.

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Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the image on this page please refer to the printed version of this book.

Fig. 6.3: Italian textile fragment of silk and gilded membrane-wrapped linen thread in ­compound weave (lampas), fourteenth century, 30 by 31 cm (Museum of Fine Arts, ­Boston, Denman Waldo Ross Collection, 31.13). Photo: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, by ­permission.

and grapes;95 another of Lucchese diaspino bladicto worked with peacocks, parrots, and camels in gold;96 another of camaca of Lucca worked with green and red leaves and gold coronets.97 Other design elements on Lucchese silks included gold parrots   95 �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� “palium unum de gigatone viride et vermilium ad vites et pampinas de Luca”; ibid., 46.   96 ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� “palium unum de draspido de Luca quasi bladicto laboratum ad pavones papagallos et camellos de auro”; ibid., 46. “Bladicto” was a pale colour, probably blue.   97 ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� “palium unum de camuca de Luca laboratum foliis viridibus et virmiliis cum coronetis de auro”; ibid., 46. This and other Lucchese fabrics found in this inventory are discussed in Monnas, “Camacas,” 744 nn. 17–18.

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Lucchese Silks

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Fig. 6.4: Fragment of Italian silk cloth in lampas weave with gold thread, last third of the fourteenth century, 15.2 cm by 22.3 cm (Cleveland Museum of Art, purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund, 1950.5). The design of plumed hats and palmettes corresponds closely to an item described in the inventory of Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy, in 1404. Photo: Cleveland Museum of Art, by permission.

with red and white heads, dragons, cockerels, lions, dogs, and several with patterns of trees or leaves.98 However, these fabrics were part of the treasury of Pisa cathedral, and

  98 ���������� Barsotti, Antichi Inventari, 46–48.

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Fig. 6.5: Textile design from the sketchbook of Jacopo Bellini (Paris, Musée du Louvre, Département des Arts Graphiques, inv. no. R.F. 1556, 88v). Photo: Réunion des musées nationaux, by permission.

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Lucchese Silks were not necessarily up to date even in 1369. The inventory also included silks from Romania, that is, Eastern Europe or the Byzantine Empire, and others for which no geographical origin is indicated but which included long-established design elements such as black eagles, gold dragons and lions’ heads, large circles with lions and elephants within them, or griffins and birds contained within circles.99 Several of the Lucchese fabrics were, indeed, specifically stated to be old, such as “a vermilion altar frontal of purpura with peacocks joined together with another altar frontal of Lucca with lions, old”100 or “two cushion covers, one of Lucchese diaspino worked with dragons and lions in gold which belonged to lord Francesco Scarsi … one of Lucchese diaspino with white leaves and birds and dogs in gold.”101 It is worth noting that a number of the Lucchese silks are said to be cigattone, diaspino, camaca, or porpora, fabrics which were covered by the regulations of the Statute of the Court of Merchants of 1376, but are not mentioned in the Libro de’ Sensali of 1409.102 This contrast applies not only to some of the types of silks that have proved difficult to define, such as diaspini, diaspinecti, cigattoni, torugini, tersanelli, catrasciamiti, saracinati, and occhiellati, but also to some of those mentioned most frequently in fourteenth-century records inside and outside Italy, such as camacas (camucha) and sendal (sendada, sendadini). No fabric designated by any of these names was traded in the Libri de’ Sensali in 1409, and this continued to be the case in the subsequent years for which sensals’ books survive. There is not space in this article to cover the books for 1413, 1417, and 1423/4 in detail, but it can be said in general that, though there are some variations in relative prices and in the frequencies with which particular types and colours of silks are mentioned, very much the same range of fabrics appears as in the Libro de’ Sensali for 1409. Damasks, voided satin velvets, plain velvets, and satins predominate, but there are occasional sales of fabrics not mentioned in 1409:   99 ���������� Ibid., 46. 100 ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� “palium unum vermilium de purpura cum pavonibus convinctum cum quodam alio palio de Luca laborato cum leonibus, vetus”; ibid., 47. A set of vestments of white Lucchese diaspro (“de draspido albo lucensi”) was said to have belonged to Simone, archbishop of Pisa from 1323 to 1341; ibid., 51. “pluvinar unum de draspido lucensi laboratum ad dracones et leones aureos quod fuit domini Fran101 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ cisci Scarsi … unum de draspido lucensi cum foliis albis et avibus et canibus aureis”; ibid., 48. Neither is specifically stated to be old, but the first one was covered with another cloth (“est copertum alio drapo”) and the second “est reversum,” which appears to mean turned inside out. There are similar descriptions of diaspri in early-fourteenth-century inventories; Wardwell, “Stylistic development,” 182. 102 ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� The lists of vestments include one set of green and red Lucchese camacas (“de camuca de Luca viride et vermilio”) and one set of Lucchese baudekin (“de bandachino lucchesescho”), both said to be made in 1373. Other sets are said to be “of white Lucchese gigattone … of white Lucchese diaspro, of pale green Lucchese catrasciamito, of reddish Lucchese camacas brocaded with gold [or reddish camacas brocaded with Lucchese gold]” (“de gigattone albo lucensi … de draspido albo lucensi, de catrasciamito viridi lucensi pallido, de camuca sanguineo broccato auro lucensi”), without any indication of their age; Barsotti, Antichi Inventari, 51, 53–54. There are also a number of sets of vestments that had Lucchese gold borders, including figured gold borders (“cum frigio lucensi,” “cum frigio auri lucani,” “cum frigio auri lucani ad figuras”), 55–56. Donata Devoti (“Stoffe lucchesi,” 26) notes the subsequent disappearance of the term diaspro, which she defines with regard to a particular style of design and colour rather than a type of weave.

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Christine Meek shot taffeta in December 1413,103 velvet with two heights of pile which was also dyed in kermes and brocaded with fine gold in March 1417.104 In the Libro de’ Sensali for 1417, there begin to be mentions of voided satin velvets in two or more gricce (that is, asymmetrically composed patterns involving repeats of floral and vegetable forms, that are variously described as pomegranates, pinecones, or artichokes, interspersed with designs of ribbons undulating towards the selvages105), and such references become common by 1423/4.106 There are descriptions of damasks “a cammino,” that is, woven in “point repeats,” which produced symmetrical patterns,107 and velvets that combined two heights of pile with a design in two gricce or gold brocading.108 Although these later accounts still mention plainer and cheaper fabrics, such as velvet in accia, plain dyed taffeta, and checkered velvet,109 the trend seems to be in the direction of the more elaborate and luxurious patterning or brocading which Lucchese silk weavers were increasingly capable of producing and which begin to appear more frequently in the household accounts of Northern European courts.110 While to some extent there may have been changes in terminology, with names like taffeta or tabby being used for the type of plain silk cloth in tabby weave that had previously been called sendal or cendal, and more specialised terms such as baldachino surviving, while camacas dropped out of use, there seems also to have been a change in demand to the new and more spectacular kinds of silks that weavers and designers were now able to produce.111

103 ����������������������������������������������� “taffeta cagiante,” Corte de’ Mercanti 95, 58v. 104 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������ “vegluto alto e basso cremosi brocato doro fino,” Corte de’ Mercanti 96, 34v. “zettani aveglutato nero in tre gricci,” Corte de’ Mercanti 96, 113r (Nov. 10, 1417). 105 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 106 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ Corte de’ Mercanti 97. In 1423: “2 gricce,” 2v; “tre gricce,” 6r, 60v; “4 gricce,” 60v. In 1424: “due gricce,” 10v; “3 gricce,” 14v, 89r, 89v, 96r, 96v. Fabrics woven “a griccia” involved a large number of lashes attached to the warps and pulled by a drawboy, and were thus complex and costly to produce; Monnas, Merchants, Princes and Painters, 23. For a fifteenth-century definition of griccie, Gargiolli, L’Arte della Seta, 90–91, 314. Also Schorta, “Trattato,” 64 and 81 n. 100 on the technicalities of weaving such designs. 107 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Corte de’ Mercanti 97, 96r (Nov. 22, 1424), a piece of “dom. di grana strict in 2 camini,” which weighed 7 libbre 2 uncie and sold for 71 florins 13s. 4d. a oro. Fabrics woven “a cammino” involved only half the number of lashes of those woven “a griccia,” because for the second half of the pattern the lashes were pulled in reverse order; Monnas, Merchants, Princes and Painters, 23. See also Gargiolli, L’Arte della Seta, 90–94, 304; Schorta, “Il Trattato della Seta,” 64 and 81 n. 100. 108 ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� “alto e basso allexandrino in due gricce,” Corte de’ Mercanti 97, 89v (Feb. 10, 1424); “alto e basso nero brocato doro fino filato di Genova,” 97r (Dec. 5, 1424). 109 ���������������������������������������������� Corte de’ Mercanti 96, 67r, 68v, 71r–71v, 81v. 110 �������������������������������������������������������������� Lisa Monnas, “Developments”; Devoti, “Stoffe lucchesi,” 34–35. 111 ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� For this interpretation and the use of the word “spectacular,” see Donald King, “Types of silk cloth used in England 1200–1500,” in Cavaciocchi, La Seta in Europa, esp. 459, 464.

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Recent Books of Interest

Brueghel’s Heavy Dancers: Transgressive Clothing, Class, and Culture in the Late Middle Ages, by John Block Friedman (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2010). ISBN 978-0815632153. 361 pages, 21 black-and-white illustrations. Brueghel’s Heavy Dancers examines references to rustic dress and behavior in poetic literature of the Middle Ages, particularly cases where these literary references deviate from the “stereotypical” norm of the rustic peasant. Each chapter focuses on a particular poetic genre, exploring how clothing and other cultural constructions are used to signal conformation to and transgression of societal norms. The context and audience for the literature is also considered in depth, as the author discusses just how this literature—and the sartorial references it contains—would be “read” by contemporaries. The first two chapters address references to clothing of peasants, shepherdesses, and nobility in the pastourelle and bergerie genres of thirteenth- and fourteenth-­century France. The author gives a concise overview of contemporary fashion, providing context and background for the large number of quotations and translations from source material he analyzes in these chapters. The third and fourth chapters, on fourteenthcentury Spanish serranilla poetry and German mock pastourelles, concentrate more on sexual and class-based social transgression. References to clothing are fewer and more superficial. However, in the fifth and sixth chapters, which examine transgressive aspects of dress in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the focus shifts solidly back to clothing. Much of the discussion assimilates and elaborates upon others’ work in the area of Chaucer and dress, but the material is well-presented, and the reader comes away with a much greater understanding of the context in which one should “read” references to costume in Chaucer. It isn’t until the last chapter, on fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century German anti-peasant satire, that the author turns to Brueghel and his peasant dancers. Even so, although Brueghel is mentioned, the focus in this chapter remains literary rather than artistic, and also shifts away from clothing and back to other methods of social transgression. In Brueghel’s Heavy Dancers, clothing is used as a lens through which to analyze both medieval literature and the society it reflects. For those interested in the material culture of clothing, the extensive quotes from original sources will be useful. This book’s greatest strength, however, is in its ability to convey a better understanding of the context needed to interpret references to clothing and dress in medieval literature. — Drea Leed, Springfield, Ohio

Recent Books of Interest Dressing for Heaven: Religious Clothing in Italy, 1215–1545, by Cordelia Warr (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010). ISBN 978-0719079832. 284 pages, 97 illustrations (17 in color). Cordelia Warr has tackled the challenge of relating the clothing worn by religious, male and female, to the dress of the saved in heaven. The result is a book with many intriguing parts but one structural problem. The opening discussion of clothing and the religious experience is only loosely related to the very fine sections on religious clothing of men and women. The section on women’s religious habits ties the majority of the book to the concluding section on “dressing for eternity,” which addresses the clothing of the saved most directly. In pursuit of the answer to the question of what will be worn in the hereafter, Warr makes use of texts and images. She also describes surviving garments, mostly liturgical vestments. The opening chapter discusses these sources, including a treatment of contact relics—clothing of Christ, the Virgin, and the saints that picked up power through contact with the hallowed body. The following section, on the cult of the Virgin at Prato, illustrates this transfer of power via contagion, but it makes for an uncomfortable transition to issues of clothing for religious. The well-presented middle sections illustrate a more terrestrial issue. The thirteenth century saw the origination of the mendicant orders, which developed distinctive habits to affirm the identity of each community. Creating these habits involved very real problems of achieving uniformity in garments made of materials available in different parts of Europe. Striped habits were particularly problematic, since they required cloth made with threads of various colors, and both male and female orders moved away from using them. Since religious habits tend not to survive, Warr makes good use of artistic depictions of religious, including where they differ in showing the garb of an order. Since the mendicant orders were new to a society that held novelty suspect, the orders had to establish a claim to approval from heavenly powers. The Dominicans claimed the Virgin had revealed the habit to Reginald of Orléans as he lay ill. More than one religious family claimed that St. Augustine was the first to wear its habit. The Franciscans claimed to imitate the poor clothing of their founder. Clothing with a religious habit had a legal meaning, doing as much as taking vows to make a man or woman a full member of an order. The discussion of nuns’ habits opens into a discussion of clothing in women’s visions. Both Clare of Assisi and Catherine of Siena saw themselves being granted rich apparel in Paradise. Francesca Romana was depicted in art as being covered with a cloak by the Virgin herself. These pictures contrast with the condemnation of the rich garb worldly women wore on earth; Francesca saw a vision of these vain women punished in hell. This discussion leads easily to visions of heaven. Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment” was controversial for showing the saved, even the saints, as nude. Most artists, however, saw the saints as well clothed in heaven, although they often wore poor garments on earth. This contrasts with the nakedness of the damned and even of the souls in 170

Recent Books of Interest Purgatory. As Warr shows, clothing mattered in the Christian imagination, whether in its earthly realities or its possible presence—or absence—in the afterlife. — Thomas M. Izbicki, Rutgers University Iconography of Liturgical Textiles in the Middle Ages, edited by Evelin Wetter (­Riggisberg, Switzerland: Abegg-Stiftung, 2008). ISBN 978-3905014433. 212 pages, 128 illustrations (103 in color). The main aim of this handsomely produced book (based on papers presented at a conference at the Abegg-Stiftung in 2007), outlined in an informative introduction by Evelin Wetter, is to analyze the role of figural representations on medieval liturgical vestments and textile furnishings—given that such textiles could function perfectly without figural decoration, or indeed without decoration at all apart from the costly materials of which many were made. The introduction provides a useful summary of earlier work in the field, and of the problems associated with the transmission of medieval vestments, which rarely survive unchanged from their original condition. A subsidiary aim is to develop an interdisciplinary approach to the study of iconography that provides space for new approaches to iconographical study (using historical sources, art history, and liturgical and theological history) and gives due consideration both to the original contexts in which these items were made and first used, and the later contexts for which they were changed in various ways. Although iconography is the focus, information about materials, techniques, and circumstances of production are provided as part of the contextual study. The volume is divided into four sections, consistent with the outlined aims. The first, “Approaches to the Use of Liturgical Textiles in Time and Space,” looks for example at specific centers (Halberstadt, Gdańsk) or textile types (frontals) over periods during which considerable changes in liturgy took place. The second, “Pictorial Transformations of Sacrifice and Service at the Altar,” examines aspects of belief and liturgical practice and their reflections in textile and other related visual media. The third, “Propaganda, Self-definition, and Memoria,” considers political and social contexts. This section contains the book’s only discussion of non-liturgical garments, the Coronation Robes of the Holy Roman Empire, as well as a study of a connected series of episcopal miters decorated with scenes of martyrdom, several with that of Thomas Becket, and all dating from close to the period of his murder. The final section, “Iconography of Liturgical Vestments from Donors’ Wishes to Serial Production,” looks at the effect of late medieval serial production on iconographical development, for example, on embroidered orphreys in England. The material covers a wide geographical range, from Sweden in the north of Europe to Poland in the east, and is a major contribution to the study of vestments and church furnishings, and of specific techniques, in this broad context. — Elizabeth Coatsworth, Manchester Metropolitan University

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Recent Books of Interest “Intelligible Beauty”: Recent Research on Byzantine Jewellery, edited by Chris ­Entwistle and Noël Adams (London: British Museum Press, 2010). ISBN 9780861591787. 236 pages, 419 illustrations (393 in color). This compilation contains twenty-one papers covering recent scholarship in Byzantine jewelry originally presented at a 2008 conference at the British Museum. According to the essays here, the state of research on Byzantine jewelry is concentrated outside of the empire, with fourteen essays focusing on the relationship between Byzantine jewelry and/or that of contemporary cultures. Neil Christie’s essay deserves special mention for the critical examination of the labels “Lombard,” “Goth,” and “Byzantine.” Ádám Bollók’s critique of “Slavic” is astute and extremely useful. Christoph Eger’s work on material from North Africa deserves mention in this regard too. These essays remind us that jewelry does not carry an ethnicity, nor can taste or quality be associated with one particular group. Current research is not only overturning old categories, largely based on style, but also sharpening new approaches, expanding what we learn from material culture. The result often complicates, in the best sense of the word, what we know of a particular culture. For example, among the most notable essays in the volume is Noël Adams’ reinterpretation of the Sutton Hoo material and its connection to Roman imperial armor. Concentration on technique often proves informative. Bálint László Toth’s essay on pierced jewelry distinguishes between tools used and how various cuts were made. Excellent photography and diagrams support the author’s description of jewelers’ techniques. The attention to historical documents is another strength. Maria Parani, in her study of Byzantine legal documents (part of a larger study still in progress on realia in Byzantine legal documents), demonstrates how much information can be derived from the literary record, as does Yvonne Stolz’ chapter on jewelry production in early Constantinople, which relies fruitfully on texts to distinguish the sites of production within the capital. A couple of essays disappointed for lack of analysis, simply listing objects, such as bracelets. Generally speaking, however, the volume is enlightening. — Jennifer Ball, Brooklyn College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York Materials, Methods, and Masterpieces of Medieval Art, by Janetta Rebold Benton (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2009). ISBN 978-027599418. 303 pages, 72 illustrations (26 in color). In this compendium of materials and methods used in the production of medieval arts and apparel, Janetta Benton takes on the daunting task of analyzing the media available to the medieval artist and artisan. The book is divided into chapters by art type or medium, such as “Mosaic: Sparkling Surfaces” and “Secular Clothing: Fit for a King and Queen.” Within each, there are subsections that detail the forms and materials used. For example, the chapter “Enamel: Cloisonné and Champlevé” offers short but coherent explanations of enamel processes, including jewelry. 172

Recent Books of Interest At first glance, it might appear that only four of the chapters would be useful to a clothing or textile historian (those on tapestry and other textiles, secular clothing, ecclesiastical vestments, and armor), constituting about a third of the book’s pages. However, other chapters dealing with the fine and decorative arts include significant information that can be applied to dress and textiles. In particular, the chapter on ivory carving, like the one on enamel, presents cogent explanations of techniques used for clothing accessories. Additionally, the chapter on metal, wood, and stone can be applied to jewelry. The bibliography, also divided by chapter after a section of general “suggested readings,” simplifies finding sources. This is particularly helpful, as there are no footnotes. Considering the visual nature of the subject, more illustrations, and more in color, would have been useful. Those used are not always the most significant or representative, and many of the descriptions apply to objects that are not pictured. The writing itself reads more like a medium-quality translation, and does not flow cleanly. On the whole, however, Benton’s attempt at a comprehensive survey of media and form succeeds, and will form a significant part of a reference library, despite the hefty price tag (around $150). — M. A. Nordtorp-Madson, University of St. Thomas Medieval Garments Reconstructed: Norse Clothing Patterns, by Lilli Fransen, Anna Nørgaard, and Else Østergård (Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 2011). ISBN 978-8779342989. 143 pages, 118 illustrations (60 in color) plus 46 pages of pattern diagrams. The collection of medieval garments excavated by Paul Nørlund from the churchyard at Herjolfsnes, Greenland, in the early twentieth century remains an invaluable contribution to the study of everyday clothing of the era. After Nørlund’s 1924 publication, there was no extensive and systematic reanalysis of the finds until Else Østergård’s 2004 book Woven into the Earth. Medieval Garments Reconstructed: Norse Clothing Patterns is a companion volume to Woven into the Earth explicitly aimed at those who wish to make reconstructions of the garments for educational, reenactment, or artistic purposes. The first quarter of the book provides a synopsis of the history of the finds (both their original historic context and their discovery, conservation, and study) and a concise description of textile techniques involved in the garments’ production, summarized from the more extensive discussion in Woven into the Earth. The remainder of the book—and the part that covers information not contained in the earlier volume—is a detailed presentation of the physical specifications for nineteen of the best preserved and most complete of the garments, including gowns, hoods, hats, and stockings. For each garment there are color photos of the conserved original and a modern reconstruction. One-fifth-size scale diagrams are laid out on a grid for all pieces of the garment, combining an indication of the original surviving textile with a “cleaned up” version that eliminates repairs and patches, removes much of the distortion from wear and damage, and adjusts the symmetry of the lines to better reflect the original

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Recent Books of Interest cut. These diagrams are given in three graded sizes—small, medium, and large—with “small” corresponding to the original. The intended audience for this book is expected to be familiar with Woven into the Earth, or at least with the more detailed historic context of the garments it contains. The target reader will also have high-intermediate or better sewing and patterning skills, but given those, there is sufficient information in the book to create highly accurate reproductions of the garments. With that understanding, the faults of the book are minor: some infelicities of translation, surprising omissions in the otherwise useful suggested references for textile techniques (e.g., the absence of pointers to works on fingerloop braiding), and an odd inconsistency in tone between the introductory material, which assumes relatively strict reconstruction goals, and the sample garment reconstructions, which rely on several modern shortcuts. (Two other sample garments included in the first part of the book are strict reproductions all the way from spinning to hand-sewing.) — Heather Rose Jones, Oakland, California Silk Gold Crimson: Secrets and Technology at the Visconti and Sforza Courts, edited by Chiara Buss (Milan: Silvana, 2009). ISBN 978-8836614929. 190 pages, more than 200 illustrations (most in color). The catalog of a 2009–10 exhibition at the Poldi Pezzoli Museum in Milan displaying the gold-and-silk textiles associated with the Visconti and Sforza courts, 1392–1535, Silk Crimson Gold is also the first volley of the PSL Project (Produzione Serica Lombarda), an interdisciplinary inquiry into the silks produced in Lombardy from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries. Beginning with brief chapters written by a variety of experts who discuss the organization of the Sforza court and silk production, fifteenth-century fashion at the Sforza court, the female workforce in the silk industry, and aspects of dyeing, and ending with a technical analysis of the weaving techniques, dyes, and metal components of the exhibition’s textiles, as well as a brief glossary, the bulk of this book is given over to an examination of the perception of and roles played by the textiles themselves in their time. Silk is a subject on which Chiara Buss has written extensively, and the PSL Project is her concept. She is in her element here. The two main sections, “Fabric” and “Embroidery,” comprise short essays (written for the most part by Buss) that each use one or more pieces to examine a theme or point, including motifs, techniques, dyes and color, the purposes of various pieces (including the proposal that two fragments, long thought to have formed a woman’s girdle, were actually borders on a set of bed curtains), and origins (“Why These Velvets Were Not Made in Venice,” by Doretta Davanzo Poli). Each textile is analyzed by specialists for weave, structure, and dye. The overview this book provides manages to convey to the modern reader the place these textiles held in their time: the respect afforded them, their precious nature, the messages many of them conveyed. In addition to the depth of research of its text, Silk Crimson Gold is lavishly illustrated with high-quality color images of the textiles,

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Recent Books of Interest including detail and microscopic images in the analysis chapters, as well as works of art that depict similar textiles in use. The publisher promises that this title is “the first in the series Silk in Lombardy: Six Centuries of Production and Design.” One can only hope. — Tawny Sherrill, California State University, Long Beach ALSO PUBLISHED

The Bayeux Tapestry: New Approaches, edited by Michael J. Lewis, Gale R. OwenCrocker, and Dan Terkla (Oxford: Oxbow, 2011). ISBN 978-1842179765. 196 pages, 100 illustrations (many in color) plus a full black-and-white facsimile of the Tapestry. Weaving Narrative: Clothing in Twelfth-Century French Romance, by Monica L. Wright (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009). ISBN 9780271035659 (cloth); 978-0271035666 (paper). 192 pages.

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Contents of Previous Volumes

Vol. 1 (2005)

Elizabeth Coatsworth Stitches in Time: Establishing a History of Anglo-­Saxon   Embroidery Maren Clegg Hyer Textiles and Textile Imagery in the Exeter Book Gale R. Owen-Crocker Pomp, Piety, and Keeping the Woman in Her Place: The   Dress of Cnut and Ælfgifu-Emma Sandra Ballif Straubhaar Wrapped in a Blue Mantle: Fashions for Icelandic   Slayers? John Muendel The Orientation of Strikers in Medieval Fulling Mills:   The Role of the “French” Gualchiera Susan M. Carroll-Clark Bad Habits: Clothing and Textile References in the   Register of Eudes Rigaud, Archbishop of Rouen Thomas M. Izbicki Forbidden Colors in the Regulation of Clerical Dress   from the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) to the Time   of Nicholas of Cusa (d. 1464) Robin Netherton The Tippet: Accessory after the Fact? Kristen M. Burkholder Threads Bared: Dress and Textiles in Late Medieval   English Wills Carla Tilghman Giovanna Cenami’s Veil: A Neglected Detail Vol. 2 (2006)

Niamh Whitfield Dress and Accessories in the Early Irish Tale “The   Wooing Of Becfhola” Gale R. Owen-Crocker The Embroidered Word: Text in the Bayeux Tapestry Monica L. Wright “De Fil d’Or et de Soie”: Making Textiles in Twelfth   Century French Romance Sharon Farmer Biffes, Tiretaines, and Aumonières: The Role of Paris in   the International Textile Markets of the Thirteenth   and Fourteenth Centuries Margaret Rose Jaster “Clothing Themselves in Acres”: Apparel and ­   Impoverishment in Medieval and Early Modern ­   England

Contents of Previous Volumes Drea Leed “Ye Shall Have It Cleane”: Textile Cleaning Techniques   in Renaissance Europe Tawny Sherrill Fleas, Fur, and Fashion: Zibellini as Luxury Accessories   of the Renaissance Danielle Nunn-Weinberg The Matron Goes to the Masque: The Dual Identity of   the English Embroidered Jacket Vol. 3 (2007)

Elizabeth Coatsworth Cushioning Medieval Life: Domestic Textiles in Anglo   Saxon England Sarah Larratt Keefer A Matter of Style: Clerical Vestments in the Anglo   Saxon Church Susan Leibacher Ward Saints in Split Stitch: Representations of Saints in Opus   Anglicanum Vestments John H. Munro The Anti-Red Shift—To the Dark Side: Colour Changes   in Flemish Luxury Woollens, 1300–1550 John Oldland The Finishing of English Woollens, 1300–1550 Lesley K. Twomey Poverty and Richly Decorated Garments: A   Re-Evaluation of Their Significance in the Vita Christi   of Isabel de Villena Elizabeth Benns “Set on Yowre Hondys”: Fifteenth-Century Instructions   for Fingerloop Braiding Lois Swales and Tiny Textiles Hidden In Books: Toward a Categorization Heather Blatt   of Multiple-Strand Bookmarkers Melanie Schuessler “She Hath Over Grown All that Ever She Hath”:   Children’s Clothing in the Lisle Letters, 1533–40 Vol. 4 (2008)

Heidi M. Sherman From Flax to Linen in the Medieval Rus Lands Anna Zanchi “Melius Abundare Quam Deficere”: Scarlet Clothing in   Laxdæla Saga and Njáls Saga Lucia Sinisi The Wandering Wimple Mark Chambers and From Head to Hand to Arm: The Lexicological History Gale R. Owen-Crocker   of “Cuff ” Lena Hammarlund, Visual Textiles: A Study of Appearance and Visual Heini Kirjavainen,   Impression in Archaeological Textiles Kathrine Vestergård Pedersen, and Marianne Vedeler 178

Contents of Previous Volumes Camilla Luise Dahl and The Cap of St. Birgitta Isis Sturtewagen Robin Netherton The View from Herjolfsnes: Greenland’s Translation of   the European Fitted Fashion John Block Friedman The Art of the Exotic: Robinet Testard’s Turbans and   Turban-like Coiffure Lisa Evans “The Same Counterpoincte Beinge Olde and Worene”:   The Mystery of Henry VIII’s Green Quilt Vol. 5 (2009)

Kate D’Ettore Clothing and Conflict in the Icelandic Family Sagas:   Literary Convention and the Discourse of Power Sarah-Grace Heller Obscure Lands and Obscured Hands: Fairy Embroidery   and the Ambiguous Vocabulary of Medieval Textile   Decoration Thomas M. Izbicki Failed Censures: Ecclesiastical Regulation of Women’s   Clothing in Late Medieval Italy Paula Mae Carns Cutting a Fine Figure: Costume on French Gothic   Ivories Sarah Randles One Quilt or Two? A Reassessment of the Guicciardini   Quilts Melanie Schuessler French Hoods: Development of a Sixteenth-Century   Court Fashion Tawny Sherrill Who Was Cesare Vecellio? Placing Habiti Antichi in   Context Vol. 6 (2010)

Hilary Davidson and Archaeological Dress and Textiles in Latvia from the Ieva Pīgozne   Seventh to Thirteenth Centuries: Research, Results,   and Reconstructions Valerie L. Garver Weaving Words in Silk: Women and Inscribed Bands in   the Carolingian World Christine Sciacca Stitches, Sutures, and Seams: “Embroidered” Parchment   Repairs in Medieval Manuscripts Sarah L. Higley Dressing Up the Nuns: The Lingua Ignota and Hildegard   of Bingen’s Clothing William Sayers Flax and Linen in Walter of Bibbesworth’s Thirteenth   Century French Treatise for English Housewives Roger A. Ladd The London Mercers’ Company, London Textual   Culture, and John Gower’s Mirour de l’Omme 179

Contents of Previous Volumes Fripperers and the Used Clothing Trade in Late Kate Kelsey Staples   Medieval London Charlotte A. Stanford Donations from the Body for the Soul: Apparel,   Devotion, and Status in Late Medieval Strasbourg

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Medieval Clothing and Textiles 7

The Empress’s New Clothes: A Rotulus Pannorum of Isabella, Sister of King Henry III, Bride of Emperor Frederick II

BENJAMIN L. WILD

Unveiling Social Fashion Patterns: A Case Study of Frilled Veils in the Low Countries (1200 –1500)

ISIS STURTEWAGEN

KIMBERLY JACK MARK CHAMBERS

What Is the Pearl-Maiden Wearing, and Why?

“Hys surcote was ouert”: The “Open Surcoat” in Late Medieval British Texts

ELEANOR QUINTON and JOHN OLDLAND

London Merchants’ Cloth Exports, 1350 –1500

Laboreria Sete: Design and Production of Lucchese Silks in the Late Fourteenth and Early Fifteenth Centuries

CHRISTINE MEEK

is a professional editor and a researcher/lecturer on the interpretation of medieval European dress. Gale R. Owen-Crocker is Professor of Anglo-Saxon Culture at The University of Manchester. Robin Netherton

Cover: Detail from the tomb of Hendrik II van Withem and Jacoba van Glymen in Sint Lambertus Church in Beersel, Belgium, dated ca.1460. Photo: Isis Sturtewagen.

MEDIEVAL CLOTHING AND TEXTILES

Contents

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Editors Netherton & Owen-Crocker

An imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge IP12 3BL (GB) and 668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620-2731 (US) www.boydellandbrewer.com

MEDIEVAL CLOTHING AND TEXTILES

         ·7· Edited by Robin Netherton and Gale R. Owen-Crocker