Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/509

ENGLISH.] COSTUME 477 At the table in each court stand Serjeants, counsel, notaries, clerks, and officers of various ranks, all of them in their proper official costume. All of them bare-headed, some of these persons wear full-sleeved gowns reaching to their feet, of blue, green, or mustard-colour ; and their gowns, which have small black collars, are adjusted at the waist with narrow black girdles. Others, wearing similar girdles, are habited in gowns of the same fashion that are party-coloured, the division and junction of the two colours being vertical or per pale, and the colours being blue and green, blue or green and mustard-colour, green and murrey, and two tints of green. These gowns also are " rayed," or striped, either diagonally or vertically, with yellow, white, or blue. The notaries carry at their girdles their inkhorn and penner. The Serjeants alone, who appear in each one of the four pictures, are habited in long and flowing gowns, worn without any belt, all of them party-coloured blue and green and rayed, with tippets and hoods of the same colours ; these learned gentlemen, also, have on their heads coifs similar to those worn by the judges (fig. 50). The use of party -coloured garments, un doubtedly of heraldic origin, by persons of various classes and ranks, has already been noticed. In the absence of any express record of the source whence certain officers of the law derived their party- coloured gowns, it has been considered probable that these were livery gowns, presented to Serjeants and barristers by their clients of high rank, with their retaining fees. How ever this may be, it appears certain that their party- coloured robes were worn by Serjeants long before the 15th FIQ. 50. Serjeant-at-law (time of Henry VI.) century ; and, when giving his view as to their significance? in the following passage from a charge delivered to certain Serjeants then newly created, in the thirty-sixth year of Queen Elizabeth, the lord chief justice suggested these party-coloured robes having been worn by the judges : " By the party-coloured garments," said that learned person age, " being both of deep colours, and such as the judges themselves in ancient times used (for so we receive it by tradition), is signified soundness and depth of judgment, an ability to discerne of causes, what colour soever be cast over them, and under or with what vail or shadow soever they be disguised." In the 15th century Sir John Fortescue said of a judge, " Being a serjeant-at-law, he is clothed in a long priest-like robe, with a furred cape about his shoulders, and thereupon a hood with two labels (such as doctors of the law wear in certain universities with their coif) ; but, being made a justice, instead of his hood he must wear a cloak closed upon his right shoulder, all the other ornaments of a serjeant still remaining, saving that his vesture shall not be party-coloured as a Serjeant s may, and his cape furred with miniver, whereas the Serjeant s cape is ever furred with white lambskin." Whatever at various periods may have been the usage with judges, the wearing of party-coloured robes by Serjeants appears to have been discontinued about the commencement of the present century. In our own times, except on some special occasions when their robes are either purple or scarlet, Serjeants wear a black silk gown, like that of queen s counsel. The robes of the junior members of the bar, made of black stuff instead of silk, are further distinguished by certain peculfarities of form. Reminiscences of the coifs of earlier days, and of the caps with the pendants, still linger in the wigs worn by the entire learned brother hood of the law, and in certain peculiar appendages attached to their robes. The large bands also, worn at the present day, may be considered to have had their prototypes in the labels already mentioned, which appear, dependent on his breast from his hood, in the brass to Thomas Rolf, barrister, 1440, at Gosfield, Essex. Fine and character istic examples of judicial costume are preserved in various monumental effigies, some sculptured and others engraved, which include in their number the memorials of Judge Thomas Owen, 1598, and Lord Chief Justice Sir Thomas Richardson, 1634, both in Westminister Abbey ; the effigy of Judge Richard Harper, temp, Mary, at Swarthstone, Derbyshire ; and the brasses, ranging in date from 1400 to 1553, at Deerhurst, Watford, Gunby, Graveney, Latton, Dagenham, Cowthorpe, Norbury, Milton, and Narburgh. It may here be added that, in various representations of notaries of the 15th and 16th centuries, they appear in the ordinary civilian attire of their period with a pen-case ai:d inkhorn suspended from the girdle of their tunic ; there is a good example in a brass in the church of St Mary s Tower, Ipswich ; while several of these personages are introduced into the illuminations representing the courts of law described above. NAVAL AND MILITARY. Any attempt to notice in detail the naval and military uniforms in use at successive periods even in England would far exceed our present limits. At the same time, it appears desirable here to observe that the very decided distinction between " uniform." and especially military uniform, and contemporary civil costume now obtaining is of comparatively recent date. Throughout the armour era such distinction can scarcely be said to have existed, nor were the services afloat and on land distinguished by special and recognized peculiarities of dress. In the navy, the distinctive characteristics of uniform have become the cocked hat, epaulets of bullion, the crown-and-anchor button, and a by no means lavish application of gold-lace the cloth, a dark blue with facings and lining of white, except during the reign of William IV,, when the white was superseded by scarlet. Gradations of naval rank are indicated by the presence of a crown, a star or stars, and an anchor on the shoulder-strap of the epaulets, and by the size and comparative richness of the bullion ; also by the number and the breadth of distinct strips of gold-lace th;;t encircle the cuffs of coats and jackets ; all executive officers being further distinguished by a coil of the gold-lace attached to the uppermost of the cuff-circles. From the time that the stout " buff-coat " of the era of the Common wealth succeeded to what still lingered of the plate panoply and the mail of earlier times, the uniform of the British army, for a while in many essential features conforming to the prevailing characteristics of the general costume of the day, has undergone a succession of changes for the most part more remarkable for variety and often for caprice, than expressive either of true taste in the consistent adornment of a soldier s person, or of considerate adjustment to the exigencies of military service, the exceptions being the judicious innovations happily introduced early in the present century by the duke of Wellington. Scarlet obtains as the distinctive national British military colour, certain arms of the service being attired in blue or dark green ; while the recent volunteer movement has brought with it a variety of uniforms expressly adapted for use by the reserved forces. For a com prehensive, accurate, and copiously illustrated sketch

of British military costume, readers are referred to the