The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century (19 page)

Noblewomen’s shoes at the start of the century, like their clothes, are more or less comparable to men’s. But as male and female modes of fashion become more diverse, so too do their shoes. Women’s tunics become more like skirts and gowns but still remain long, so there is very little ostentation of footwear. Certainly there is never any call for women to wear exceptionally long shoes; they are merely an inch or so in the point. Women thus avoid the ridiculous ostentation of the Crackow.

Many of the changes in aristocratic dress are mirrored in the clothes of townsmen and townswomen—those most acutely aware of the signs of their social standing. At the start of the century the streets are full of men wearing tunics which reach down below the knee, with hose and a hood. The principal differences between their garments and those of noblemen are the length (merchants’ tunics are generally cut shorter than lordly ones) and the quality of the cloth. Much the same can be said for townswomen’s clothes in 1300: the well-dressed merchant’s wife will have her long-sleeved tunic and sideless gown, like her noble contemporary, but the fabric will be of an inferior quality. So will the furs around the cuffs and the hood. Of course, a wimple is de rigueur when outside the house for a married woman.

By the end of the century, shopkeepers, traders, and craftsmen are wearing colored hose and thigh-length cotes and doublets. Perhaps they might add a felt or beaver-fur hat, if they can afford it. Alternatively they may still have a hood. Your rich merchant is showing off as best he can with the whole houpeland and high-collar ensemble, long cuffs and all, although using a less expensive material and not having cuffs as long as a lord’s. If anyone in town is wearing a rakishly folded hood, it will be him. But the length of the toes of his shoes will not be excessive, even if he is wearing a short doublet and hose. As an
alternate to cordwainers’ shoes he may well wear boots made from ordinary tanned leather or calfskin. In the latter part of the century townsmen sometimes avoid actual shoes, preferring to have leather soles sewn onto the foot section of their hose, so that their “shoes” are the same color as their leggings.

The fur-trimmed velvet jacket, so favored by aristocratic women in the 1390s, represents a style which most townswomen can only dream of. Instead they wear plain kirtles—ground-length tunics, with tailored narrow sleeves—over their linen smocks or chemises, without a surcote over the top except when the weather demands an extra layer. The Wife of Bath wears a long scarlet gown with laced scarlet stockings, new soft shoes, “a riding skirt round her enormous hips,” a wimple under her chin, a hat, and spurs. Dressed like this she does not represent the richest sort of townswoman—as she herself admits, she weaves her own cloth—but she certainly dresses to look the equal of anyone of her own class.

The laborers will be shirtless, wearing just braies, a hood, and a simple tunic—this being pulled in with a woollen or rope belt. Some hitch up the bottom hem of the tunic and tuck it into the belt to make it easier to work. Hardly any changes in their clothing are to be noticed over the century. Otherwise, only the clergy are wearing clothing similar to their predecessors in 1300. Friars, priests, and senior members of the churches and cathedrals all wear traditional tunics or cassocks, often black, off-white, and brown in color, befitting their Order and station. Franciscan friars wear grey cassocks; Dominican friars wear black. Their reluctance to adopt the new fashions is not because they do not pay any attention to clothing; the retention of the traditional, unsexy shape of the clothes is every bit as important to them as the latest fashion is to a wealthy merchant. Friars never wear socks. Not wearing something is also a way of making a fashion statement.

You could be forgiven for thinking that the changes in dress after 1300 only affect urban social climbers and have no significant effect on the clothes of the peasantry. In the early part of the century, you would be right. Wandering along a rural lane in 1340 you will see that there
is practically no difference from the clothing worn in 1300. But when everyone wears nearly the same thing it is deemed all the more important to include a little distinctive item of clothing, especially among the better-off peasants. Countrymen do not wear the parti-colored clothing of nobles and wealthier townsmen; they do not wear pointed shoes or any unnecessary and expensive items. Nevertheless, as you watch the tenants of a manor going about their business, you will notice that no two men are wearing exactly the same form of apparel.

Take a manor in Lincolnshire in 1340, for example. Over here is a better-off villein driving a team of oxen. He wears a reddish-brown tunic which reaches just below his knees, slit a few inches up the sides. On his head is a matching reddish-brown hood, with a short pointed tip (or liripipe). He wears a good-quality leather belt, a woollen light-brown supertunic, and calf-length leather boots. He holds a long whip and scowls back at the plowman who is following, supposedly guiding the plowshare. The plowman has a reddish-brown hood too but this hangs down his back. On his head he is wearing a smart felt hat with a high front brim. He also wears an undyed buttonless tunic that hangs down to his knee, with a belt, blue-grey hose, thick gloves, and laced calf-length boots. Elsewhere in the field another villein is scattering the grain that he carries in the folded-up front of his apron. Birds swooping down to pick up the grain are picked off by a boy with a sling; he wears a short russet tunic with a linen belt, with his long hood pushed back, the liripipe hanging down well below his waist. Similar tunics of dyed cloth are worn by the lord’s servants back at the manor house but without the hood. In the kitchens some of the cooks have stripped to their braies. With the heat of the great fires and their work environment, they have no need to look their best, only to do their work.
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If you step forward in time to see these men’s grandsons in the last decades of the century, you will see brighter colors (especially red and blue cloths) and styles that have been adapted from the tunics of 1300–1340. The man driving the team of oxen now wears a leather cap and a sleeveless tabard over a long-sleeved tunic, which is short, just thigh length. As he lifts his whip arm, the edge of his tunic reveals hose which are more like trousers, held up with a rope belt. The plowman to whom he turns and scowls is wearing a buttoned short jerkin with the sleeves rolled up over his forearms and his shirtsleeves similarly rolled up. He is still wearing an old felt hat, bashed over the years, not wholly unlike
that worn by his grandfather so many years before. The boy with the sling is still bare legged but he now wears a short cote with a leather belt. The servants in the lord’s manor house are much better dressed than their predecessors: in clean linen shirts and quilted doublets, hose, folded hoods or hats, with knives hanging from their belts.
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Of course, the kitchen servants are still half naked, sweltering in the heat of the kitchens. As in all ages, progress does not affect everyone equally.

The women in the country have one important thing in common with the five-times-married Wife of Bath: they make their own clothes. They might not all spin their own wool and weave their own cloth, but most do. No one knits—knitting has yet to be invented—so some heavy-duty fabrics need to be woven to keep these countrywomen and their families warm in winter. Once these have been made, they need to be dyed. Then they need to be turned into clothes. Once you realize that a countrywoman’s role includes these spinning, weaving, dyeing, and dressmaking tasks, as well as cooking, cleaning, milking, nursing, and helping with the harvest (among other things), your admiration for her will increase immeasurably.

The clothes worn in the country are practical and plain, made of coarse woollen cloth collectively described as russet—mainly grey, green, murrey (dark brown), brown, reddish brown, and undyed. In the early part of the century a farm woman wears a full-length tunic over her linen smock, with a linen headdress and wimple all in one. She wears linen “clouts”—a female form of braies—when nature forces her to do so. Sometimes she will wear a hood instead of a headdress and stride about the farmyard with the lower part of her sleeves rolled up. Unseemly it may appear to some, but most women’s work is done in the company of other women, in the barns or in the home. If working outdoors she may well wear a thick woollen mantle and hat, as well as the wimple. The plainness and the homely nature of countrywomen’s dress brings us to the other end of the spectrum from the courtpiece- and Crackow-wearing male popinjays about court.

For most people, clothes are just one element of how they present themselves. Urban and aristocratic women might use perfume, in
which a few city merchants specialize. Musk, ambergris, cloves, nutmeg, and cardamom are used to sweeten the smell of the body. Olive oil is used to help keep beautiful hair supple. Pastes made from the ashes of vine stems, boiled for half a day in vinegar, are used to make white hair blond again. As for makeup, the perfumers’ shops may also sell whitening cosmetics, small round mirrors, combs, scissors, tweezers, and pitch. The tweezers are for young women to pluck their eyebrows. The pitch is for manual removal of unwanted or unsightly hair. Quicklime is also used for this purpose, but, as you can imagine, you need to be very careful as it is easy to burn yourself and end up looking more unsightly than before you started.
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Most people carry a knife which they use for daily tasks as well as cutting their food. If you visit a market or a town you will have a purse suspended from your belt. This might be a simple leather pouch drawn together with a cord or it may be a hinged, metal-framed purse, with sides of velvet or wool covered in silk. Pockets are only just coming into use in the 1330s, so purses are commonly associated with the need to carry coins.
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Beware that it is very easy for someone in a crowd—a “cutpurse”—to slice the cords by which your purse is suspended from your belt. You probably will not even notice it happening.

Most people of significant social standing also wear jewelry. This might take the form of a livery collar for men, as well as gold rings, badges, and clasps. Women too might wear livery necklaces as a demonstration of their political loyalties. But jewelry goes far further than political symbolism. Gemstones are widely held to have magical and medicinal properties. In the Book of Revelation, the foundations of the New Jerusalem are “garnished with all manner of precious stones, namely jasper, sapphire, chalcedony, emerald, sardonyx, sardius, chrysolyte, beryl, topaz, chrysoprasus, jacinth, and amethyst.” Thus it is no surprise to see men wearing gemstones in their rings and brooches as much as women. Rubies are the most prized of all. Sapphires come next, and then diamonds, emeralds, and balas rubies (paler, rose-red rubies). Rubies protect the wearer from poison, and emeralds protect against sickness and madness. Diamonds protect people from bad dreams and help the wearer achieve wisdom.

To get a glimpse of the richness of jewelry at the top end of society, take a look at Henry of Lancaster’s goldsmiths account for the year
1397–98. This includes thirty individual payments, including: mending his balas ruby brooch, buying a balas ruby ring, silver for several dagger sheaths, a chain for a medicinal stone to protect him against poisons, a silver chain for a hunting dog, silver to cover the scabbard of his sword, several dozen silver livery collars to be given to his retainers, gilt-silver collars for him to wear himself, pendants, jeweled belts, “seven hundred and ten golden suns with which to decorate one black velvet hanseline [an extremely short paltock] and for making the same” (at a cost of £15 9s 10d), “sixteen gilt-silver lilies for decorating one kettle-hat” (a kind of helmet), and so on. This does not even touch on the actual gems. Over the next page and a half we see listed the jewels he buys during this year. There is a golden figure of St. John the Baptist as a present for the king, a golden hind with pearls for the queen, golden tablets and brooches for other members of the royal family, a couple of golden rings with diamonds, a gold ring with a ruby, four gold rings with sapphires, dozens of other gold rings, and nine brooches for his closest (male) companions.
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As you can see, clothing is just the foundation for a noble appearance. On top of the right cut, you must also sparkle.

There is no special nighttime attire in medieval England. You should wear what is appropriate, depending on where you are and how private your accommodation. Women should either remain in the chemise they have worn during the day or replace it with a similar clean garment for bed, together with the ubiquitous nightcap (which everybody wears). Only when sleeping with a lover should you be naked. Men have more leeway, as male nudity is less taboo. Thus you might keep a shirt on at night, but equally you might choose to wear nothing but a nightcap, even when sharing a bed at a hospital or an inn.
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Chaucer refers to himself sleeping naked when in his own bed in
The Book of the Duchess.
However, men who have a sense of decency keep their braies on when staying away from home.
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Monks are always expected to sleep clothed in their dormitories—they are expected even to have baths in their braies.
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And in some circumstances it is particularly important not to get caught with your braies down. When
Edward Balliol, king of Scotland, is attacked in the night in September 1332, he only survives by riding away, bareback, in his nightshirt, all the way to Carlisle.
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Even worse, when the English knight Robert Herle is attacked at night in 1356, he and his men are found naked.
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You cannot put up much of a fight against armed soldiers in the nude.

This is not a book about medieval combat, so this is not the place to discuss arms and armor. Besides, you would be crazy to think you could engage a fourteenth-century man in combat and have a chance of surviving. Most of them are much stronger than you. From the age of six or seven the knights have been taught how to fight, first with a wooden sword, then with the genuine article. Many of them are proficient jousters by the age of sixteen. You will not be able to compete. Nor will you be able to compete with the longbow. Most northern lads learn how to shoot a bow from the age of seven; by the time they are sixteen they are able to pull the weight of the most lethal killing machine of the Middle Ages. As for guns, the few cannon that are to be found are all in the royal armories. These are not articles which you can buy.