A safeguard or saveguard was a riding garment or overskirt worn by women in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Some safeguards were intended to protect skirts or kirtles worn beneath. [1] Mary Frith, dramatised as the character Moll Cutpurse in The Roaring Girl , wore a black safeguard over breeches. [2]
One of the earliest mentions of a safeguard is in a list of purchases made around 1546, when lace and fringes were bought "for my Mistress's gown, cloak, and safeguard". [3] In 1555, a cloak and a safeguard of broadcloth were made for Thomasine Petre, an English gentry woman, the youngest daughter of William Petre, in anticipation of travel from London to Hampshire to join the household of the Marchioness of Exeter. She ordered similar garments in 1559. [4] Margaret and Mary Kitson were bought "savegardes" of peach coloured cloth in February 1573. [5] Mary, as Countess Rivers, made bequests of clothing in 1641 including "my best cloak and safeguard laid with gold buttons" and an "old safegard laid with gold lace". [6]
Safeguards made for Elizabeth I seem have been tied to the stirrup or foot. [7] Some safeguards had pockets. In 1574, Elizabeth's tailor, Walter Fyshe worked on a safeguard of French "ashe colour Abramamasio" fabric, with laces of Venice gold, silver and silk, and added "newe pockettes" of green taffeta. [8] During a tournament and entertainment at New Hall in September 1579, the Earl of Sussex gave Elizabeth a horse, a cloak, and a safeguard "to keep her from evil weather that might hap" in the next day's hunting. [9]
Elizabeth's inventory of clothing includes safeguards matched in sets or ensembles with cloaks, and with jupes, and sets of matching cloaks, jupes, and safeguards. [10] As a New Year's Day gift for 1589, Francis Walsingham gave Elizabeth a doublet with a cloak and a safeguard of "fair coloured velvet" lined with white sarsenet, and a Mistress Dale gave a safeguard of russet satin, with buttons and loops of Venice gold and silver at the front. [11] A favourite safeguard and jupe embroidered with stars of Venice silver and gold wheat ears was repaired twice, and washed and mended by the queen's silkwoman Dorothy Speckard. [12]
In July 1590, Paul Rey, a Danish tailor working in Scotland for Anne of Denmark, made her a set of riding clothes, including a cloak and "rydding saifgard" of Spanish incarnadine coloured satin lined with taffeta of the same colour, and trimmed with silk ribbons and gold passementerie. Another safeguard was made for her in October 1594 of fine tanny London cloth with strings of orange Florence ribbon. Orange ribbon was supplied for riding clothes of London brown in October 1597. [13]
Anne of Denmark's wardrobe inventory of 1608 lists eight "saveguards", four made with white, grass-green, orange, and straw coloured satin, trimmed with silver and gold lace, and three party-coloured safeguards, one of crimson and white damask, another of deer colour and white camlet, and one of willow colour and white damask. Another had a ground of silver camlet tufted with orange silk "of small tuft", lined with sarsenet. This safeguard had gold and silver seams with long buttons and loops woven of silver and gold thread. [14]
Lady Anne Clifford bought more practical and hardwearing riding garments when she stayed at Brougham Castle in Westmorland in November 1616, a "cloak and a safeguard of cloth laced with black lace to keep me warm on my journey" to London. [15] Safeguards of cloth (broadcloth) are listed in many inventories of costume. In 1586, Margaret Grey and Mary Grey, daughters of a Newcastle miller, owned broadcloth safeguards listed with their petticoats. [16] In 1596, Elizabeth Woode of Ramsey left a russet petticoat and a russet safeguard to her daughter. [17] Bequests made by Anne Bikarstaffe of Stockport in 1599 include a "partelytt and savegard". [18]
When Arbella Stuart tried to leave England in disguise, the black hat and riding safeguard worn by one of her companions reminded a witness, John Bright, of Moll Cutpurse. [19] This was a probably a reference to the play The Roaring Girl. [20] In the play, a speech makes reference to the safeguard, an item of female clothing, transformed into a slop, a word for male breeches. [21]
A number of safeguards seem to have been provided by a tailor John Anderson for the family of Regent Arran in Scotland in the 1540s and 1550s. Described in the Scots language as wardegardes, a word sometimes interpreted as a carrying bag for clothes, [22] these may have been practical riding garments of hard-wearing buckram, fustian, and gray wool. A piece of leather was used in their construction. [23]
An inventory of the clothes of Mary, Queen of Scots, includes a vardingard of black taffeta with a satin foreskirt embroidered with gold passementerie, another of black taffeta, and a third of buckram. Possibly a source of confusion, the same inventory uses the word vardingaill for farthingale, a support undergarment to volumize a skirt. [24] One of her French inventories includes a black taffeta verdugall which likely indicates a farthingale. [25] A satirical poem describing women's riding garments in the Maitland Quarto using the form fartigard may mean a safeguard. [26]
The word "safeguard" for the women's riding garment, as in England, appears in a number of Scottish 16th- and 17th-century wills. [27]
A farthingale is one of several structures used under Western European women's clothing - especially in the 16th and 17th centuries - to support the skirts in the desired shape and to enlarge the lower half of the body. The fashion originated in Spain in the fifteenth century. Farthingales served important social and cultural functions for women in Renaissance Europe as they expressed, primarily when worn by court women, high social position and wealth.
A doublet is a man's snug-fitting jacket that is shaped and fitted to a man's body. The garment was worn in Spain, and spread to the rest of Western Europe, from the late Middle Ages up to the 17th century. Until the end of the 15th century, the doublet was usually worn under another layer of clothing such as a gown, mantle, or houppelande when in public. In the 16th century it was covered by the jerkin. Women started wearing doublets in the 16th century, and these garments later evolved as the corset and stay. The doublet was thigh length, hip length or waist length and worn over the shirt or drawers.
A visard is an oval mask of black velvet which was worn by travelling women in the 16th century to protect their skin from sunburn. The fashion of the period for wealthy women was to keep their skin pale, because a tan suggested that the bearer worked outside and was hence poor. Some types of vizard were not held in place by a fastening or ribbon ties, and instead the wearer clasped a bead attached to the interior of the mask between their teeth.
A kirtle is a garment that was worn by men and women in the Middle Ages. It eventually became a one-piece garment worn by women from the late Middle Ages into the Baroque period. The kirtle was typically worn over a chemise or smock, which acted as a slip, and under the formal outer garment, a gown or surcoat.
Costume and gold and silver plate belonging to Elizabeth I were recorded in several inventories, and other documents including rolls of New Year's Day gifts. Arthur Jefferies Collins published the Jewels and Plate of Queen Elizabeth I: The Inventory of 1574 from manuscripts in 1955. The published inventory describes jewels and silver-plate belonging to Elizabeth with detailed references to other source material. Two inventories of Elizabeth's costume and some of her jewellery were published by Janet Arnold in Queen Elizabeth's Wardrobe Unlocke'd.
A partlet was a 16th-century fashion accessory. The partlet was a sleeveless garment worn over the neck and shoulders, either worn over a dress or worn to fill in a low neckline.
Lady Audrey Walsingham was an English courtier. She served as Lady of the Bedchamber to queen Elizabeth I of England, and then as Mistress of the Robes to Anne of Denmark from 1603 until 1619.
Dorothy Speckard or Speckart or Spekarde was a courtier, milliner, silkwoman, and worker in the wardrobe of Elizabeth I of England, Anne of Denmark, Prince Henry, and Henrietta Maria. Her husband, Abraham Speckard, was an investor in the Somers Isles Company which colonised Bermuda.
Mary Radcliffe or Ratcliffe (1550-1617) was a courtier of Queen Elizabeth I of England.
Aura Soltana, also known as Ipolitan the Tartarian or Ipolita or Ippolyta, was a Tartar woman at the court of Elizabeth I after arriving from Russia to England, apparently as a slave.
The wardrobe of Mary, Queen of Scots, was described in several contemporary documents, and many records of her costume have been published.
Fremyn Alezard was a French shoemaker based in Edinburgh who worked for Mary, Queen of Scots and subsequently her political rivals.
William Cookesbury or Coksbery, or Cookisbury was a London capper, haberdasher, and supplier of feathers.
Peter Jonson or Johnson and Garret Jonson were London-based shoemakers who worked for Elizabeth I and James VI and I. The records of shoes they made for monarchs and courtiers gives an idea of changing fashions.
Peter Rannald was a Scottish tailor who worked for Anne of Denmark, the wife of James VI of Scotland.
Oes or owes were metallic O-shaped rings or eyelets sewn on to clothes and furnishing textiles for decorative effect. Made of gold, silver, or copper, they were used on clothing and furnishing fabrics and were smaller than modern sequins. They were made either from rings of wire or punched out of a sheet of metal.
A silkwoman was a woman in medieval, Tudor, and Stuart England who traded in silks and other fine fabrics. London silkwomen held some trading rights independently from their husbands and were exempted from some of the usual customs and laws of coverture. The trade and craft of the silkwoman was encouraged by a statute of Henry VI of England as a countermeasure to imports of silk thread, and a suitable occupation for "young gentlewomen and other apprentices".
The coronation of Mary I as Queen of England and Ireland took place at Westminster Abbey, London, on Sunday 1 October 1553. This was the first coronation of a queen regnant in England, a female ruler in her own right. The ceremony was therefore transformed. Ritual and costume were interlinked. Contemporary records insist the proceedings were performed "according to the precedents", but mostly these were provisions made previously for queens consort.
A chamberer was a female attendant of an English queen regnant, queen consort, or princess. There were similar positions in aristocratic households.
Walter Fyshe was a London tailor who worked for Elizabeth I until 1582. He also made some of her farthingales. Fyshe made the queen's ceremonial clothes and coronation robes, altering robes made for the coronation of Mary I of England.
