  CAPS AND BEAVERS IN COLONIAL DAYSAny student of English history and letters would know that caps would positively be part of the outfit of every emigrating Englishman. A cap was, for centuries, both the enforced and desired headwear of English folk of quiet lives.
City Flat-cap worn by "Bilious" Bale.Belgic Britons, Welshmen, Irish, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, and Normans all had worn caps, as well as ancient Greeks and Romans. These English caps had been of divers colors and manifold forms, some being grotesque indeed. When we reach the reign of Henry VIII we are made familiar in the paintings of Holbein with a certain flat-cap which sometimes had a small jewel or leather or a double fold, but never varied greatly. This was known as the city flat-cap. It is shown also in the Holbein portrait of Adam Winthrop, grandfather of Governor John Winthrop; he was a man of dignity, Master of the Cloth Workers' Guild. The muffin-cap of the boys of Christ's Hospital is a form of this cap. This was at first and ever a Londoner's cap. A poet wrote in 1630:--
Winthrop also wears the city gown. This flat-cap was often of gay colors, scarlet being a favorite hue.
These lines were written for the character "Pride," in the Interlude of Nature, before the year 1500. A statute was passed in 1571, "If any person above six years of age (except maidens, ladies, gentlemen, nobles, knights, gentlemen of twenty marks by year in lands, and their heirs, and such as have born office of worship) have not worn upon the Sunday or holyday (except it be in the time of his travell out of the city, town or hamlet where he dwelleth) one cap of wool, knit, thicked and dressed in England, and only dressed and furnished by some of the trade of cappers, shall be fined £;3 4d. for each day's transgression." The caps thus worn were called Statute caps. This was, of course, to encourage wool-workers in the pride of the nation. Winthrop, master of a guild whose existence depended on wool, would, of course, wear a woollen cap had he not been a Londoner. It was a plain head-covering, but it was also the one worn by King Edward VI. There was a formal coif or cap worn by men of dignity; always worn, I think, by judges and elderly lawyers, ere the assumption of the formal wig. This coif may be seen on the head of the venerable Dr. Dee, and also on the head of Lord Burleigh, and of Thomas Cecil, surmounted with the citizen's flat-cap. One of these caps in heavy black lustring lingered by chance in my home--worn by some forgotten ancestor. It had a curious loop, as may be seen on Dr. Dee. This was not a narrow string for tying the coif on the head; it was a loop. And if there was any need of fastening the cap on the head, a narrow ribbon or ferret, a lacing, was put through both loops. In the inventory of the apparel of the first settlers which I have given in the early pages of this book, we find that each colonist to the Massachusetts Bay settlement had one Monmouth cap and five red milled caps. All the lists of necessary clothing for the planters have as an item, caps; but a well-made, well-lined hat was also supplied. Monmouth caps were in general wear in England. Thomas Fuller said, "Caps were the most ancient, general, warm, and profitable coverings of men's heads in this Island." In making them thousands of people were employed, especially before the invention of fulling-mills, when caps were wrought, beaten, and thickened by the hands and feet of men. Cap-making afforded occupation to fifteen different callings: carders, spinners, knitters, parters of wool, forcers, thickers, dressers, walkers, dyers, battellers, shearers, pressers, edgers, liners, and band-makers.
King James I of England.The Monmouth caps were worth two shillings each, which were furnished to the Massachusetts colonists. These were much affected by seafaring men. We read, in A Satyr on Sea Officers, "With Monmouth cap and cutlass at my side, striding at least a yard at every stride." "The Ballad of the Caps," 1656, gives a wonderful list of caps. Among them are:
We seldom have in manuscript or print, in America, titles or names given to caps or hats, but one occasionally seen is the term "montero-cap," spelled also mountero, montiro, montearo; and Washington Irving tells of "the cedar bird with a little mon-teiro-cap of feathers." Montero-caps were frequently recommended to emigrants, and useful dress they were, being a horseman's or huntsman's cap with a simple round crown, and a flap which went around the sides and back of the cap and which could be worn turned up or brought down over the back of the neck, the ears and temples, thus making a most protecting head-covering. They were, in general, dark colored, of substantial woollen stuff, but Sterne writes in Tristram Shandy of a montero-cap which he describes as of superfine Spanish cloth, dyed scarlet in the grain, mounted all round with fur, except four inches in front, which was faced with light blue lightly embroidered. It is a montero-cap which is seen on the head of Bamfylde Moore Carew, the "King of the Mumpers," a most genial English rogue, sneak-thief, and cheat of the eighteenth century, who spent some of his ill-filled years in the American colonies, whither he was brought after being trepanned, and where he had to bear the ignominy of wearing an iron collar welded around his neck. A montero-cap seems to have been the favorite dress of rogues. In Head's English Rogue we read, "Beware of him that rides in a montero-cap and of him that whispers oft." The picaro Guzman wore one; and as montero is the Spanish word for huntsman, Head may have obtained the word from that special scamp, Guzman, whose life was published in 1633. It is a very ancient name, being given in Cotgrave as a hood, or as the horseman's helmet. It is worn still by Arctic travellers and Alpine climbers. Sets of knitted montero-caps were presented by the Empress Eugenie to the Arctic expedition of 1875, and the Jackies dubbed them "Eugenie Wigs." Another and widely different class of men wore likewise the montero-cap, the English and American Quakers. Thomas Ellwood, in the early days of his Quaker belief, suffered much for his hat, both from his fellow Quakers and his father, a Church of England man. The Quakers thought his "large Mountier cap of black velvet, the skirt of which being turned up in Folds looked somewhat above the common Garb of a Quaker." A young priest at another time snatched this montero-cap off because he wore it in the presence of magistrates, and then Ellwood's father fell upon it in this wise:--
Finally the father refused to let him wear his "Hive," as he called the hat, at the table while eating, and thereafter Ellwood ate with his father's servants. The vogue of beaver hats was an important factor in the settlement of America. The first Spanish, Dutch, English, and French colonists all came to America to seek for gold and furs. The Spaniards found gold, the Dutch and French found furs, but the English who found fish found the greatest wealth of all, for food is ever more than raiment. Of the furs the most important and most valuable was beaver. The English sent some beaver back to Europe; the very first ship to return from Plymouth carried back two hogsheads. Winslow sent twenty hogsheads as early as 1634, and Bradford shows that the trade was deemed important. But the wild creatures speedily retreated. Johnson declares that as early as 1645 the beaver trade had left the frontier post of Springfield, on the Connecticut River. From the earliest days both the French and English crown had treated the fishing and fur industries with unusual discretion, giving a monopoly to the fur trade and leaving the fisheries free, so the latter constantly increased, while in New England the fur trade passed over to the Dutch, distinctly to the advantage of the English, for the lazy trader at a post was neither a good savage nor a good citizen, while the hardy fishermen and bold sailors of New England brought wealth to every town. For some years the Dutch appeared to have the best of it, for they received ten to fifteen thousand beaver skins annually from New England; and they had trading-posts on Narragansett and Buzzards Bay. Still the trade drew the Dutch away from agriculture, and the real success of New Netherland did not come with furs, but with corn.
The fur trade was certainly an interesting factor in the growth of the Dutch settlement. Fort Orange, or Albany, called the Fuyck, was the natural topographical fuyck or trap-net to catch this trade, and in the very first season of its settlement fifteen hundred beaver and five hundred otter skins were despatched to Holland. In 1657 Johannes Dyckman asserted that 40,900 beaver and otter skins were sent that year from Fort Orange to Fort Amsterdam (New York City). As these skins were valued at from eight to ten guilders apiece (about $3.50 and with a purchasing value equal to $20 to-day), it can readily be seen what a source of wealth seemed opened. The authorities at Fort Orange, the patroons of Renssalaerwyck and Beverwyck, were not to be permitted to absorb all this wondrous gain in undisturbed peace. The increment of the India Company was diverted and hindered in various ways. Unscrupulous and crafty citizens of Fort Orange (independent handaelers or handlers) and their thrifty, penny-turning vrouws decoyed the Indian trappers and hunters into their peaceful, honest kitchens under pretence of kindly Christian welcome to the peltry-bearing braves; and they filled the guileless savages with Dutch schnapps, or Barbadoes "kill-devil," until the befuddled or half-crazed Indians parted with their precious stores of hard-trapped skins and threw off their well-perspired and greased beaver coats and exchanged them for such valuable Dutch wares as knives, scissors, beads, and jews'-harps, or even a few pints of quickly vanishing rum, instead of solid Dutch guilders or substantial Dutch blankets. And even before these strategic Dutch citizens could corral and fleece them, the incoming fur-bearers had to run as insinuating a gantlet of boschloopers, bush-runners, drummers, or "broakers," who sallied out on the narrow Indian paths to buy the coveted furs even before they were brought into Fort Orange. Much legislation ensued. Scout-buying was prohibited. Citizens were forbidden "to addresse to speak to the wilden of trading," or to entice them to "traffique," or to harbor them over night. Indian houses to lodge the trappers were built just outside the gate, where the dickering would be public. These were built by rates collected from all "Christian dealers" in furs. But Indian paths were many, and the water-ways were unpatrolled, and kitchen doors could be slyly opened in the dusk; so the government, in spite of laws and shelter-houses, did not get all the beaver skins. Too many were eager for the lucrative and irregular trade; agricultural pursuits were alarmingly neglected; other communities became rivals, and the beavers soon were exterminated from the valley of the Hudson, and by 1660 the Fort Orange trade was sadly diminished. The governor of Canada had an itching palm, and lured the Indians--and beaver skins--to Montreal. Thus "impaired by French wiles," scarce nine thousand peltries came in 1687 to Fort Orange. With a few fluttering rallies until Revolutionary times the fur trade of Albany became extinct; it passed from both Dutch and French, and was dominated by the Hudson Bay Fur Company. So clear a description of the fur of the beaver and the use of the pelt was given by Adriaen van der Donck, who lived at Fort Orange from the year 1641 to 1646, and traded for years with the Indians, that it is well to give his exact words:--
One notion about beaver must be told. Its great popularity for many years arose, it is conjectured, from its original use as a cap for curative purposes. Such a beaver cap would "unfeignedly" recover to a man his hearing, and stimulate his memory to a wonder, especially if the "oil of castor" was rubbed in his hair.
Elihu Yale.The beaver hat was for centuries a choice and costly article of dress; it went through many bizarre forms. On the head of Henry IV of France and Navarre, as made known in his portrait, is a hat which effectually destroys all possibility of dignity. It is a bell-crowned stove-pipe, of the precise shape worn later by coachmen and by dandies about the years 1820 to 1830. It is worn very much over one royal ear, like the hat of a well-set-up, self-important coachman of the palmy days of English coaching, and gives an air of absurd modernity and cockney importance to the picture of a king of great dignity. The hat worn by James I, ere he was King of England, is shown here. It is funnier than any seen for years in a comic opera. The hat worn by Francis Bacon is a plain felt, greatly in contrast with his rich laced triple ruff and cuffs and embroidered garments. That of Thomas Cecil here varies slightly. Two very singular shapings of the plain hat may be seen, one A good hat was very expensive, and important enough to be left among bequests in a will. They were borrowed and hired for many years, and even down to the time of Queen Anne we find the rent of a subscription hat to be £;2 6s. per annum! The hiring out of a hat does not seem strange when hiring out clothes was a regular business with tailors. The wife of a person of low estate hired a gown of Queen Elizabeth's to be married in. Tailor Thomas Gylles complained of the Yeoman of the queen's wardrobe for suffering this. He writes, "The copper cloth of gold gowns which were made last, and another, were sent into the country for the marriage of Lord Montague." The bequest of half-worn garments was highly regarded. On the very day of Darnley's funeral, Mary Queen of Scots gave his clothes to Bothwell, who sent them to his tailor to be refitted. The tailor, bold with the riot and disorder of the time, returned them with the impudent message that "the duds of dead men were given to the hangman." The duds of men who were hanged were given to the hangman almost as long as hangings took place. A poor New England girl, hanged for the murder of her child, went to the scaffold in her meanest attire, and taunted the executioner that he would get but a poor suit of clothes from her. The last woman hanged in Massachusetts wore a white satin gown, which I expect the sheriff's daughter much revelled in the following winter at dancing-parties.
Thomas Cecil.Old Philip Stubbes has given us a wonderful description of English head-gear:--
Notwithstanding this list of Stubbes, it is very curious to note that in general the shape of the real beaver hat remained the same as long as it was worn uncocked.
Cornelius Steinwyck.The hat was worn much more constantly within-doors than in the present day. Pepys states that they were worn in church; even the preacher wore his hat. Hats were removed in the presence of royalty. An hereditary honor and privilege granted to one of my ancestors was that he might wear his hat before the king. It is somewhat difficult to find out the exact date when the wearing of hats by men within-doors ceased to be fashionable and became distinctly low bred. We can turn to contemporary art. In 1707 at a grand banquet given in France to the Spanish Embassy, a ceremonious state affair with the women in magnificent full-dress, the men seated at the table and in the presence of royalty wore their cocked hats--so much for courtly France. This wearing of the hat in church, at table, and elsewhere that seems now strange to us, was largely as an emblem of dignity and authority. Miss Moore in the Caldwell Papers writes of her grandfather:--
That the covering of the head in church still has a significance on important occasions, is shown by a rubric from the "Form and Order" for the Coronation of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra; this provides that the king remains uncovered during the saying of the Litany and the beginning of the Communion Service, but when the sermon begun that he should put on his "Cap of crimson velvet turned up with Ermine, and so continue," to the end of the discourse. Hatbands were just as important for men's hats as women's--especially during the years of the reign of James I. Endymion Porter had his wife's diamond necklace to wear on his hat in Spain. It probably looked like paste beside the gorgeousness of the Duke of Buckingham, who had "the Mirror of France," a great diamond, the finest in England, "to wear alone in your hat with a little blacke feather," so the king wrote him. A more curious hat ornament was a glove.
Hat with a Glove as a Favor.This handsome hat is from a portrait of George, Earl of Cumberland. It has a woman's glove as a favor. This is said to have been a gift of Queen Elizabeth after his prowess in a tournament. He always wore this glove on state occasions. Gloves were worn on a hat in three meanings: as a memorial of a dead friend, as a favor of a mistress, or as a mark of challenge. A pretty laced or tasselled handkerchief was also a favor and was worn like a cockade. An excellent representation of the Cavalier hat may be seen on the figure of Oliver Cromwell (here), which shows him dismissing Parliament. Cornelius Steinwyck's flat-leafed hat has no feather. The steeple-crowned hat of both men and women was in vogue in the second half of the seventeenth century in both England and America, at the time when the witchcraft tragedies came to a culmination. The long scarlet cloak was worn at the same date. It is evident that the conventional witch of to-day, an old woman in scarlet cloak and steeple-crowned hat, is a relic of that day. Through the striking circumstances and the striking dress was struck off a figurative type which is for all time. William Kempe of "Duxburrow" in 1641 left hats, hat-boxes, rich hatbands, bone laces, leather hat-cases; also ten "capps." Hats were also made of cloth. In the tailor's bill of work done for Jonathan Corwin of Salem, in 1679, we read "To making a Broadcloth Hatt 14s. To making 2 hatts &; 2 jackets for your two sonnes 19s." In 1672 an association of Massachusetts hatters asked privileges and protection from the colonial government to aid and encourage American manufacture, but they were refused until they made better hats. Shortly after, however, the exportation of raccoon fur to England was forbidden, or taxed, as it was found to be useful in the home manufacture of hats. The eighteenth century saw many and varied forms of the cocked hat; the nineteenth returned to a straight crown and brim. The description of these will be given in the due course of the narrative of this book.
|
|
