The strictest canons of political economy do not give unrestricted scope to the rights of property. The State
their cap must be French, their dagger must be Scottish, with a Venetian tassell of silk. I speak nothing of their doublets and hoses, which for the most part are so minced, cut, and jagged, that shortly after they become torn and ragged. I leave off also to speak of the vanity of certain light-brains, which because nothing should want to the setting forth of their fondness, will rather wear a marten chain the price of eightpence than they would be unchained. What a monster and a beast of many heads is the Englishman now become! To whom may he be compared worthily but to Æsop's crow, for as the crow decked herself with the feathers of all kinds of birds to make herself beautiful, even so doth the vain Englishman for the fond apparelling of himself borrow of every nation to set himself forth gallant in the eyes of the world. He is not much unlike a monster called chimæra, which hath three heads, one like a lion, the other like a goat, the third like a dragon.'—Becon's Jewel of Joy.
Under Mary, to make the English more like human beings, a 'device' was drawn for an Act of apparel, which, however, could not be carried. It set forth 'that the ladies and their maids at Court did so exceed in apparel, that many of them went so richly arrayed on working days as the Queen's Majesty's mother did on holydays; so that it would be wished that no lady, knight, nor knight's wife, nor gentlewoman, nor gentleman under the degree of a lord, should have but one velvet gown, one damask gown, one satin gown for winter, and the like single gown for summer. Providing always that they should have for every one silk gown a gown of felt, or russet, or camlet, or worsted, and if they list, garded or welted, so that there be not above a yard and a half of velvet, and that they shall use no embroidery upon any garde, and that they shall wear some of their gowns of cloth, russet, camlet, or worsted three days every week upon pain of ten shillings a day.'A surveyor was to examine ladies' wardrobes from time to time, and report upon them, while for gentlemen there was another not less important direction.'Provided also for these monstrous breeches commonly used, none under the degree of a lord or a baron shall wear any under pain of three pounds a day; none to have any stuffing of haire, wool flocks, towe, or other ways; and no man of little stature to bare a bowe more than a yard and a half in the outer side, and the bigger men and the guards two yards, upon pain of twenty shillings a day the wearer, and forty shillings the maker of the
