willed them to wash and die their ruffs well; and this starch they make of divers colours and hues—white, red, blue, purple, and the like; which, being dry, will then stand stiff and inflexible about their necks." In Middleton's The World Tost at Tennis we find the following stage direction: "Music striking up a light, fantastic air, the five starches. White, Blue, Yellow, Green, and Red ... come dancing in." There was a great revival in the popularity of yellow starch in 1615 due to the fact that an infamous woman, a Mrs. Turner, wore bands so starched at her execution at Tyburn. A long and interesting note on this occasion is found in Hazlitt's Dodsley, Albumazar (ii. 1). After having been washed, the ruff was got up with a hot iron and a "poking stick" till it stood out a marvel to behold.
What made the ruff so conspicuous was its size. When first introduced it was modest and unpretentious; but nothing upon which fashion in those days once took a fair hold could remain "confined within the modest limits of order." We hear of ruffs that contained eighteen or nineteen yards of linen. The fashionable depth was one-fourth of a yard. Sometimes they were as much as one-third of a yard deep. Imagine the head of a man or woman, like the hub of a cartwheel, firmly gripped in the midst of a mass of
