17

Top Knots and Lower Sorts: Print and Promiscuous

Consumption in the 1690s
Angela McShane and Clare Backhouse

Introduction

Next to the humble sheet-hornbook (so ephemeral that almost none now
survive), probably the most ubiquitous single genre of print available in
Britain up to 1700 was the broadside ballad, and no study of British printed
images can be complete without some consideration of it.1 Recent years have
witnessed a considerable rise in academic studies focusing on what is called
– slightly misleadingly – ‘cheap print’. Building on seminal work by Bernard
Capp, Margaret Spufford and Tessa Watt, social and cultural historians, literary
scholars, curators and art historians have tapped this resource with enthusiasm.2
However, even enthusiasts still largely eschew any serious examination of the
anonymous, poorly executed, repeatedly used woodcut images displayed in
the most cheaply printed and socially accessible sources, arguing that they
were simply ‘stock’ images that were only loosely connected to the texts they
illustrated.3 This ignores the important fact that both the publishers and buyers
of thousands of illustrated broadside ballads saw the images, old and new,
as a key element in their desirability. At least one prolific late seventeenth-
century writer used woodcut images to signify his authorship.4 Moreover,
the ‘vernacular’ artistry of the illustrated broadside ballad corresponded to a
widespread visual vocabulary in England, which can be seen on a whole range
of decorative objects from plates and tankards to embroidered workboxes and
mirror surrounds. In order to develop further the social and cultural history of
the middling and lower ‘sorts’ of early modern England, we need to explore this
visual vocabulary and all its multivalences, as much as text and speech.5
There is not space here to lay out in detail the history of ballad production over
the seventeenth century, but we should be aware that the traditional narrative
of decline in the broadside ballad trade from the mid century simply does not
match up to the facts.6 Part of the reason for this misunderstanding is that a
tiny (and ever-decreasing) proportion of broadside ballads were entered in the
338 Printed Images in Early Modern Britain

Stationers’ Registers. Few scholars take account of the numerous extant sheets
of the late seventeenth century, large numbers of which are still not listed in
scholarly resources such as ESTC or EEBO. Those that are listed are frequently
incorrectly dated.7 Equally problematic has been the tendency of studies
using ballad material to rely on only one collection, assuming that this will be
sufficiently representative of all the others.8 These misleading but influential
narratives have done ballad studies a major disservice. Though prevailing topics
and tastes changed (less ‘godly ballads’ were produced after 1650, for example)
ballad broadsides were published, and survive in ever-increasing numbers over
the century, irrespective of Puritan revolutions or post-Restoration censorship.
The look of the broadside ballad did change, however, especially after the lapse
of the Licensing Act in 1695, which opened the market to provincial printers.
Publishers dealt with increased competition in the broadside and print trade
by experimenting with new typographical formats and song lengths, but
illustrations continued to be important to the parts of the market with the most
popular appeal.9
The enormous range of subject matter treated by the broadside ballad genre
was described in 1620 by Thomas Middleton as: ‘Fashions, Fictions, Fellonies
[and] Fooleries’.10 Too large to be approached in a single chapter, this case study
(the result of a fruitful collaboration between a historian of popular print and a
historian of dress) aims to show how a serious analysis of both text and image
in broadside ballads can provide new evidence for scholars of early modern
culture. We draw upon an unusually rich seam of cheap literary debate,
published in the 1680s and 1690s, which was sparked off by the development
of a headdress called the ‘top-knot’. The general appearance on the streets of
London and elsewhere of this flamboyant female accessory, made with ribbons
and lace, provoked a flurry of illustrated satirical ballads and pamphlets.
Through a comparative analysis of ‘fashion print’ sources and of broadside
ballads, and by locating the top-knot within the context of the production and
marketing of clothing, we show that ‘high fashion’ could be encountered and
appropriated by the ‘lower sorts’ through cheap printed images, and how
debates over such ‘promiscuous consumption’ – usually associated with the
later ‘luxury debates’ encapsulated in Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees – were
already apparent in the humble broadside ballad of the 1690s.11

Print Sources and Dress History

Dress historians of the seventeenth century rely on ‘text, object and image’ as
a basis for researching the clothing of any class but, as Susan North observes,
problems arise ‘when evidence in one medium is lacking or appears to contradict
that of another’.12 Fictional and non-fictional texts (literary, official or personal)
can suggest who wore or owned what type of garments, what they cost, or what
they signified in certain contexts. John Styles’s important new study of clothing
in the eighteenth century offers a model for how such texts can be exploited.13
 Top Knots and Lower Sorts 339

Surviving articles of dress allow one to examine their materials, construction

and evidence of use as historically worn apparel, but for the seventeenth century
a major gap exists in the availability of such evidence. Extant clothes are rare
(having disintegrated or been recycled since first worn), and museum collections
are biased towards durable or precious fabrics that were preserved by those
who could afford to do so. Finally, images can show how clothes ‘“work” on
the body, and what they signify with regard not just to sex, age and class, but to
status and cultural aspirations’.14 The visual sources of the period pose special
challenges, however, with regard to the clothes of labourers and tradespeople.
While painted portraits survive in large numbers, they are naturally exclusive
to those who could afford to commission or hang one. In addition, although
they often offer lustrous renditions of colourful clothing, portraits can also
mislead, especially after the 1630s, when ‘shimmering, lyrical folds of material,
rather than … a literal copy on canvas’ became an artistic trend.15 Even genre
paintings, as John Styles argues, are ‘rarely portraits of actual individuals,
whose opinions might have influenced the kind of clothes shown and the way
they were portrayed’.16 Indeed, most genre paintings, intended as decorative
pieces for elite interiors, sought either to romanticise or stereotype the poorer
classes, and can be used only with caution. For this reason, printed images are
of especial importance to historians of seventeenth-century dress, though they,
too, have their problems.
The scarcity of object sources and the limitations of evidence from paintings
has hitherto been addressed by looking at French fashion plates, particularly
for the final decades of the century, since England lacked similar prints, and
its high fashion was much influenced by the French in this period (much to
the dismay of many an English commentator). These engravings have received
comparatively little scholarly attention in Britain, although, in her magisterial
work on dress in Stuart England, Aileen Ribeiro uses them to provide ‘a
narrative of fashion lacking in the work of major artists’.17 Valerie Cumming
further suggests that they functioned as ‘an elegant advertisement for the
luxury trades of France’.18 These separates possibly developed from fashion
illustrations for the 1678 Nouveau Mercure Galant, the first periodical to report on
fashion in France, sometimes purporting to depict wearers from the European
nobility and royalty.19
One such French ‘fashion print’, Dame de la plus haute qualité, was engraved
after Jean Dieu de Saint-Jean in 1693. (Fig. 17.1) It highlights sartorial display
by placing an extravagantly dressed woman within an almost bare interior. The
engraving conveys the quality of her clothing by depicting generous yards of
shimmering brocade and swinging metal fringe, the gleam of silk in a lavishly
trained mantua gown and, above all, a four-tiered lace frelange headdress with
voluminous lappets behind the shoulders. This level of detail, which so rarely
appears in contemporary paintings (Kneller portraits are a prime comparison),
makes such prints an invaluable visual source for dress history. In addition,
fashionable accessories, described verbally in contemporary texts, are visually
explicated here: cruches, or curls at the forehead, delicate mouches, or face-
 340 Printed Images in Early Modern Britain

patches, long engageant ruffles at

the sleeves, a fashionable miniature
at the wrist.20 But by comparison
with the principal garments,
these details are depicted with
far less precision: it is the quality
and volume of the textiles which
command attention.
Despite the place accorded
them in histories of seventeenth-
century dress, the original function
of images like this is still unclear
in many respects: while it has
been suggested that tailors and
mercers applied colour and fabrics
to the prints to promote clothing
purchases, at least some ‘dressed’
plates have been shown to have
been decorated more than 150 years
later.21 In addition, while scholars
have considered them principally
as objects of emulation, the variety
of their subjects, which includes the
dress of other countries, and their
wide replication among fashion
engravers, in mezzotints, books
and even chapbooks, complicates
their status.22
Who could or did buy these
prints is also unclear. Their
17.1  After Jean original cost in France is uncertain, but in any case their sale abroad would
Dieu de Saint not necessarily have correlated to their market at home, either in price or
Jean, Dame de la
clientele. The very fact that these prints were imported engravings would
plus haute qualité,
1693, engraving. probably have made them more expensive than anything produced locally or
in woodcut. They became collector’s items in England, bought in quantity by
men like Samuel Pepys to add to libraries of visual knowledge about countries,
people and customs, or bought individually to decorate interiors or simply as
models for drawing.23 It would appear that the precise relation of these prints
to clothing consumption in France, let alone England, must currently remain
at best conjectural.24
English etchings and engravings of the period – such as costume and
topographical plates, book illustrations, engravings of important events
and trade ephemera – tend to portray dress either incidentally (as on
figures that lend scale to architectural images) or as art genres produced for
comparatively wealthy collectors. For example, Wenceslaus Hollar’s etchings
 Top Knots and Lower Sorts 341

of English women’s costume in the 1630s and 1640s were sold as a series of
collectible images for discerning print collectors.25 Marcellus Laroon’s series of
engravings and drawings of street sellers, Cryes of London, Drawn after the life,
was published in 1687 (with eight subsequent editions until 1821) and sold in
1692 for 12 shillings.26 Both these series presented ‘snapshots’ of moments in
English history: the types of people who appeared in them were not the target
audience and nor is it likely that these images functioned as disseminators of
ideas about fashions.
While acknowledging print as an increasingly important element in
disseminating and provoking more widespread knowledge and discussion of
fashions, historians of English fashion have not fully explored the cheapest and
most accessible products of the seventeenth-century print market as a source,
despite their wealth of textual discussion and visual presentation of dress,
and the fact that these were printed images of clothing which tradespeople
could realistically have purchased or emulated.27 More significantly, broadside
ballads explicitly appealed to and engaged with those who had a part to play
in the production of fashion.

Broadside ballads and the ‘top-knot’ debate

Questions of who bought or saw ballads or what influence they had on what
people wore are equally problematic. Thousands of seventeenth-century
broadside ballads have survived only because men of considerable social
standing collected them, such as the scholar Anthony Wood, the gentleman
Narcissus Luttrell, the state official Samuel Pepys and the bookseller John
Bagford. The provenance of thousands of others is now unknown. Moreover,
print can have played only a part in the process of dissemination since people
of all ‘sorts’ were influenced at least as much by what they saw other people
wear as what they read about or saw in pictures.
Setting ballad images in economic or cultural contexts also presents
problems, with little evidence available about the English woodcutter’s trade.
Initials do sometimes appear on specially woodcuts, for example the ‘I.M.’ we
see in Figure 17.3 (below), but little work has been done on identifying these
artists, their sources, or the organisation of the trade.28 By analysing the many
thousands of sheets remaining for the seventeenth century in the context of
what we know about the workings of the ballad market, we can at least deduce
whether woodcuts were new or ‘stock’ and to what extent they were applied
with meaning to texts, rather than in the random fashion often suggested by
commentators. This reveals that specialist ballad publishing businesses, faced
with an increasingly competitive cheap-print market, kept up a good stock of
newly fashioned and fashionable woodcuts for their black-letter ballads and
pamphlet publications.29
The cutters of ballad woodblocks were required to produce or update
engaging, reusable images and probably, like ballad authors, they received a
342 Printed Images in Early Modern Britain

one-off payment and no copyright.30 Images were drawn in a rough style, with
rudimentary body shapes, theatrical-style scenes and easily recognised motifs.
Some ballad woodblocks were commissioned (as, for example, Figs 17.3 and
17.5), especially illustrations for murder ballads and sensational crime stories
which appear to be original, drawn from observation or imagination. Some
woodblocks copied or adapted existing images, such as widely distributed
prints of courtly personalities, for example the Duke of Monmouth or Mary
of Modena. Existing woodblocks were also adapted for different ballads, and
sheets might display a collage of part-images from numerous blocks. The
dress that was incidentally depicted in these woodcuts may also have drawn
upon observation or print sources. They now provide the dress historian
with evidence and help the ballad specialist to establish the earliest date of
ballad editions.
Although establishing an ‘ordinary’ readership for any particular ballad
is difficult, there is ample evidence of ballads being sung and sold within
markets and fairs, on streets, or in taverns and alehouses. Most black-letter
ballad texts were expressly directed at an urban audience of artisans and
tradespeople, including weavers, shoemakers, tinkers, soldiers and sailors.
They were bought and read by men, women and children of all ‘sorts’, in
urban and rural contexts across the country, and they formed part of the highly
decorated domestic and public house interiors of the seventeenth century.31
Ballads became increasingly affordable during the seventeenth century as
incomes rose across the English population.32 They could be bought at a cost
between ½d and 1d throughout the period, although by buying several at a
time you might get seven for 3d. On the other hand, for a rare, subversive
ballad you could pay as much as 6d.33 Ballad sheets could also be viewed for
free if, as was often the case, they were stuck up in public spaces, such as on
alehouse walls or on market posts.
Most ballad authors remained anonymous; doubtless many were
‘professional’ hacks, but some were written by ordinary tradespeople. One
such was the cobbler Richard Rigby, an Irish Protestant immigrant who
augmented his living by writing ballads.34 Indeed, as Thomas Turner pointed
out earlier in the century, the poetry of the working man was possibly more
valued than the professional’s:

the world is ful of thred-bare poets

that liue upon their pen;
But they will write too eloquent,
They are such witty men
But the Tinker with his budget
The beggar with his wallet
And Turner’s turn’d a gallant man
at making of a Ballet.35

Balladeers regularly discussed new styles of dress and ideals of beauty.

Until the later part of the century this explicit commentary was almost
 Top Knots and Lower Sorts 343

always negative, usually in the wake of sermons or sumptuary campaigns.

For example, in 1619 John Chamberlain noted the bishop of London’s call to
his clergy to ‘inveigh bitterly in theyre sermons against the insolencie of our
women, and theyre wearing of broad brimd hats’. In 1620 he commented on
the success of this campaign: ‘Our pulpits ring continually of the insolence
and impudence of women: and to help the matter forward the players have
likewise taken them to taske, and so to[o] the ballades and ballad-singers’.36
In the 1650s Humphrey Crouch had complained at the ‘Riband-cod-pieces,
black-patches, and whatsoever is antick, apish, fantastic, and dishonourable
to a civil government’.37 By the 1670s negative comment focused on overblown
dress and the worrying influence of the French in fashions of all sorts.38 At the
same time, the interests of workers in the clothing trades found an ever louder
voice in ballad print. By the 1680s a veritable battle between shoemakers and
tailors became a particular feature of ballad fare.39
Between 1685 and 1690 a series of at least eight ballads were published
concerning the top-knot: four were produced by the ballad partners, in
matched pairs and displaying specially commissioned woodcuts. Four were
‘unmatched’ pairs from four other publishing houses and just one had a newly
commissioned image. Together the series gave the impression of a ballad
dialogue in which debate waxed hot around the potential moral, social and
economic impact of ‘promiscuous consumption’ that the top-knot presented.
Their tunes reflected popular tastes in theatre music and satire. Five were
set to the ‘Ladies of London’, a popular new court tune by playwright and
court poet Thomas D’Urfey. First published in 1687, the tune had nearly 30
ballads set to it between 1687 and 1689.40 Using the same tune for attack and
response was a common practice and offered considerable scope for ballad
entertainments in alehouses and taverns. The remainder were set to the most
popular satirical tunes of the day, including ‘Touch of the times’ and ‘Let
Cesar live long’.41
Each pair of ballads consisted of one song railing against top-knots and
their wearers and another answering the attacks and defending the fashion.
Drawing upon traditional sartorial moralities, the anti-top-knot ballads as
a group accused top-knot wearers of the ‘pride of excess’. Their criticisms
particularly focused on the large quantities and multi-colours of the ribbons
used, ‘As many as if their heads were milleners shops’, while young women
were reminded that ‘women of old’ had not run after such fripperies and
fashions.42 The scale of their sin was reflected in a spate of monstrous births –
of calves, pigs and foals – reported in the ballad and pamphlet press, complete
with lively illustrations. While these monsters were all reported at convenient
distances from the city, it was claimed the monsters were all to be displayed at
venues in London.43 One comical ballad told how a farmer’s cattle had been put
off ‘bulling’ by the sight of a modish woman in her headdress ‘six stories high’.
Terrified by the sight, the cow gave birth to a calf whose head was formed of
a top-knot ‘like ribbonds full half a yard high’. The farmer bitterly comments
how similar child monsters were only avoided because: ‘for their own parts
344 Printed Images in Early Modern Britain

when ere [young women] approve; / of a young gallant to imbrace his kind
love, / these comoding fashions they straightway layby’.44 Images of young
women in bed with their top-knots on, and their lovers nearby, suggests he
may have been quite wrong about this! 45 Moreover, a 1694 pamphlet claimed
that one Derbyshire child was born ‘with a top-knot and Rowle on its head of
several colours’.46
The Advice to the Maidens of London accused young women of impugning
their reputations by buying fashions they could not pay for: ‘they will have
a top knot / although they have never a Smickitt’. This lack of financial
credit (and decent underwear) had sexual implications: the ballad told how
girls would ‘mortgage their secret treasure’ to get one. The balladeer was
especially concerned that the sartorial distinctions between fashionable ladies
and ordinary young women about the town should be maintained, fearing
that people ‘can scarce know Joan from my Lady’ when ‘Kate the cook-maid
[was] as fine as the rest’. Sneering that ‘every draggl-tayled country girl … if
she can get but a ribbon falal / O then she is wondrous pritty’, the balladeer
exhorted ‘honest women’ to ‘forsake the topknot since they are become so
common amongst Billingsgate women … and wanton misses of the town’,
thus ensuring that ‘Jillian and Dolly will straightways be known / from those
that are better descended’.47
While the anti-top-knot ballad discourse followed long-established
strains of misogynistic attacks on new-fangled fashions, pro-top-knot
ballad arguments were unique in their approach to the subject. They not
only championed the cause of the fashionable young ‘miss’ and her right
to strategic sartorial display; they also spoke for the workers in the ribbon
and retail trades, defending top-knot fashions as making an important
contribution to the home-grown ‘moral’ economy.48
Pro-top-knot balladeers dismissed reports of monstrous births as mere
rumour, and pointed out that young women in their prime were perfectly
entitled to use their own money to dress themselves up like ‘Beautiful
angels’.49 They retorted not only that ‘women of old’ had been ‘as proud in
their way as we’, but that their ruffs were ‘a thousand times dearer’ than top-
knots. Similarly, young men were far more expensively accoutred with ‘knick
knacks’ such as ‘wigg, watch, and rapiers’, gold and silver embroidered
waistcoats and ‘turn-up stockings’.50 Rejecting the idea that women should
dress differently according to class, one ballad argued that the best citizens’
wives were descended from country girls: implying that far from risking a
‘shipwrack of Credit’ – the ruin of both pocket and reputation – fashionable
dress might help young women to advantageous marriages.51 Moreover,
another pointed out, if married women were not as gaudy and gay as young
town misses, ‘who knows but our husbands might soon run astray’.52
Finally, voicing the views of Huguenots’, milliners’ and weavers’ wives,
pro-top-knot balladeers defended the excessive consumption of the top-
knot as an economic virtue, pointing out that ‘all is not sav’d which is put in
the purse’.53 On the one hand, by buying ribbons for their top-knots, young
 Top Knots and Lower Sorts 345

women lubricated the local economy rather than hoarding their wealth
like misers: ‘In Ribbons there’s thousands good livings gain / not only in
suburbs but City’.54 On the other hand, well-dressed women were effective
saleswomen (or as the ballad put it they ‘utter[ed] much ware’) as they
attracted good customers to their husband’s shops: ‘What man would not
have his wife richly attir’d / When as he well knows it enlarges his trade’.55
In one ballad, a weaver declared that the rise of the top-knot fashion had
enabled his hard-pressed trade to survive:

Had it not been for the women indeed

Our trade would have utterly fallen
But by the making of Ribbons and Breed [braid]
It was a great help in our calling.56

As the anonymous 1683 pamphlet Englands Vanity disapprovingly pointed out:

‘There are [those], who believe that superfluity is a necessary evil in a State …
and that men maintain more by their Pride than their charity.’57 Being able to
justify consumption in morally relativist terms was an important element in
developing a ‘consumer revolution’ that could reach beyond the elites, and, as
Paul Slack recently argued, this process was underway long before the much-
heralded luxury debates of the eighteenth century.58 That these arguments
were also being ventriloquised by weavers, shopkeepers and their wives
in the lowly ballad accentuates just how far ‘intellectual’ arguments lagged
behind the quotidian discourses of trade and consumption.

Broadside Ballads and Dress History: Styles and Aspirations

While analysis of ballad texts place the top-knot within a broad contemporary
debate about luxury and trade, ballad images tell their own story – offering
social and sartorial comment at the same time as depicting the styles of
headdress ‘Kate the Cook-maid’ could have worn. One ballad text referred
to the style as ‘French’ and indeed they were said to have originated at Louis
XIV’s court, although they were banned from state occasions. Nevertheless,
top-knots became fashionable in England by the 1680s.59
Although the ‘top-knot’ originally described the highest ribbon bow on a
woman’s head, it became a generic term for numerous styles of textile-based
headdress.60 French fashion plates, such as Saint- Jean’s, show some of the
varieties, from folded ribbons in the 1680s to the towering frelange supported on
‘commode’ wires, and a forward-tilted shape in the late 1690s.61 Studying these
top-knots as objects today is almost impossible: their constituent elements were
easy to recycle and so have almost all disappeared. Perhaps the best surviving
example sits on the head of a late seventeenth-century doll known as ‘Lady
Clapham’. (Fig. 17.2) Her headdress shows how a frelange of linen, lace and
ribbon could be constructed upon wires and worn with the hair covered. ‘Lady
 346 Printed Images in Early Modern Britain

17.2  ‘Lady
Clapham’ doll
and headdress,
1690–1700.
Muslin, silk,
cotton and bobbin
lace supported
on metal wires;
560mm high.
Linen headdress,
painted wood,
wool, human
hair and
textiles; approx
130mm high.

Clapham’s’ wardrobe of doll’s clothing is of such high quality it is thought to

have functioned in similar way to the French fashion plates discussed above
– operating like advertisements, conveying details of fashionable dress for
those with the most lavish budget in the 1690s.62 However, whatever their
relationship to the dissemination of styles among the elites, while ‘fashion
dolls’ and French ‘fashion prints’ usefully show details of headdress considered
inappropriate for painted portraiture, they tell us little about the fashions that
ordinary English tradespeople could have purchased.63
By contrast, ballad images presented to their consumers a multivalent
visual ‘language’ of fashionable dress, representing aspirational styles but also
depicting elements of cheaply available dress. Partly this is achieved through
lack of detail: the absence of colour in prints already removes one signifier of
fashion. But whereas French fashion engravings compensate for this by their
meticulous depiction of textiles, in ballad images, the textiles remain visual
blanks: leaving out details of clothing fabrics allowed their material quality to
remain ambiguous. While ballad images of dress do frequently show a range
of fashionable shapes and accessories, these were more affordable to emulate;
by comparison, the potential economic obstacle of textile quality is left to the
imagination.
This imprecision in the woodcuts was particularly appropriate to the T-
shaped ‘mantua’ gown that was generally worn with a top-knot. Although
considered an informal style, women of all classes wore it.64 Like the frelange, it
was banned from the ceremonious French court, but the English court accepted
them (Queen Mary was even painted in one) and the lack of sumptuary
legislation in England meant that ‘Kate the Cook-Maid’ could wear one too.65
The mantua allowed some ease of body movement, particularly at the arms,
which may have encouraged working women to wear it, but, paradoxically,
the association of this informal fashion with the highly visible, ostentatious
 Top Knots and Lower Sorts 347

shape of the top-knot meant that their descent down the social scale was all too 17.3  Broadside
evident to critics. ballad: The
Maidens
The Advice to the Maidens of London and its reply The Maidens Resolution
Resolution (J.
(Fig. 17.3) were both accompanied by the same woodcut image of a top-knot Blare, between
at the moment of being attached to a woman’s head. Her mantua allows the 1685-9). Pepys
woman to raise her arms to fix the top-knot, while she gazes at her reflection in Ballads, 4, 366.
a large looking-glass before her. The elaborate frame of the mirror also creates a
frame for her body, which emphasises the smooth narrowing line of her bodice.
Over this stiffened torso, the mantua is arranged in pleats and pinned back at
the skirts, revealing her fringed petticoat. Lace lappets hang by her shoulders,
while on the toilet table, a dressing box or ‘casset’ lies open. One final knot, or
bow, of ribbons waits to be pinned with the two that are already in place.66
This image had a great deal to achieve since in one case it was intended
to operate as an image of vanity and in the other as a depiction of acceptable
style. Despite its rich appearance, this ballad scene is emphatically not an
elegant or elevated one. With the hint of painterly draperies by the mirror, the
cartoon-like female figure incongruously recalls a déclassé Venus at her toilet.
The woman must attend to her coiffure without the assistance of a servant,
which her informal mantua gown allows her ease of movement to accomplish.
By contrast, Nicholas Arnoult’s engraving of a similar date, La Coiffeuse, shows
a wealthy lady sitting down at leisure while her headdress is arranged for her
by two attendants.
 348 Printed Images in Early Modern Britain

Indeed, the ballad image conveys

a range of contradictory social
references: while the imposing mirror
seems to hang as a pier-glass between
two large windows in a comfortable
house, the rest of the room is
sparse. In an age when fabrics were
intrinsically valuable, the various
draperies here evoke ease and luxury,
but the woman’s pose suggests effort
and concentration. A metal-fringed
petticoat was a fashionable accessory
(and expensive if of gold or silver)
but, compared with the French
17.4  Detail of fashion plate shown earlier, this petticoat looks plain. Moreover, the top-
broadside ballad: knot ribbons in the woodcut were not only the most fashionable, but also the
The Perjur’d Youth most affordable aspect of the woman’s ensemble. Her arrangement of loops
(P. Brooksby, J.
Deacon, J. Blare, J.
of ribbon, absent from English court portraits (but appearing frequently in
Back, c. 1689-96) cheap print), was far more within reach of tradespeople and servants than the
[woodcut.] Pepys towering layers of expensive lace portrayed in French fashion prints.
Ballads, 3, 376. Another ballad of the same period, The Perjur’d Youth, did not address top-
knot fashions in its text, but its dominating woodcut prominently presents
another affordable version of the style and further contradictory readings.
(Fig. 17.4) The woman’s garments display fashionable accents of dress, while
avoiding qualitative detail: the fringe, folded fan, gloves and patches are all
accoutrements of fashion that could be purchased at low cost, but the fabric of
the mantua and petticoat remain a mystery. The top-knot depicted is a ‘little
Knot of small Ribbon, peeping out’ from under a hood made of linen or silk
(black or white were fashionable), an accessory that was both widely and
cheaply available.67 The moralities of the image are ambiguous. The woodcut
shows a couple standing in what appears to be manicured parkland, though
a horizontal line across the woodcut strongly suggests that the scene may be
in fact a painted backdrop. Balladeers regularly plagiarised popular theatre
songs, extending them from three verses to twelve, and images frequently
referenced stage-like scenes like this one. The couple’s joined hands and
gestures suggest a romantic tryst, and indeed top-knots were considered both
as a potent means of seduction and as payment for sex.68
Even satirical ballads have something to tell about styles of top-knots by
placing the most extreme types on the heads of animals. In 1691 the derisory
Somersetshire Wonder illustrated its text with the image of a calf wearing a
commode or frelange ‘near half a yard high’. (Fig. 17.5) The animal peers
out mournfully from its vaguely suggested rural situation, as if pleading
for release from such frivolous adornment: it wears the most expensive
version of the top-knot, as worn by Saint-Jean’s Dame de la plus haute qualité.
Beyond the means of any cook-maid, costing between three to five pounds,
 Top Knots and Lower Sorts 349

this required imported needle-lace and expensive locks of false hair to 17.5  Broadside
support it.69 In the distance, a little jury of (clergy-?) men appear to critique ballad: The
Somersetshire
the situation, their sobriety expressed, by contrast, in their small plain hats,
Wonder (P.
unfashionably short hair and plain neckbands. Brooksby, J.
The adjacent commonly used, late seventeenth-century image of a Deacon, J.
woman standing in the countryside demonstrates further how the intrinsic Blare, J. Back,
ambiguity of woodcut images could enhance their applicability to a range 1690s). Pepys
Ballads 4, 362.
of ballad texts. The woman wears a mantua with indistinct details at bodice
and sleeves, but with a richly patterned petticoat; her profile is coarse and
the patch on her left cheek looks disproportionately large. Her top-knot
is an unusual shape, possibly unique to ballads and cheap pamphlets,
being apparently tied under the chin instead of being pinned to the hair,
while the fan she holds at her waist may be the recently fashionable
wedge-shaped model, made in imitation of Eastern styles.70 Her petticoat
is of a style described by Evelyn as ‘Knee-high Galoon bottomed’, but not
generally evident in paintings. Galoon, or metal lace, could be expensively
crafted in gold or silver, but copper was a much cheaper option (though it
disintegrated quickly). The woodcut image may have worked at several
levels. On one hand it permitted the beholder at the same time to aspire to
the quality of gold and yet purchase fashion in copper; on the other hand,
seen here on Somersetshire Wonder, it may be intended to satirise older
women wearing ‘young’ styles, as in the explicit visual comparison made
in the Country Lass.
 350 Printed Images in Early Modern Britain

17.6  Detail of
broadside ballad:
The Country Lass,
(P. Brooksby, J.
Deacon, J. Blare, J.
Back, c. 1689-96)
[ballad title and
woodcut images
only] Pepys
Ballads 3, 290.

The London Ladies Vindication carried the same woodcut of the older lady,
beside another portrait-style image of a well-dressed female in a decorated
oval frame. Here, generalised drapery is pulled low around the décolletage,
the ubiquitous pearl necklace circles her neck and a negligent lock of hair falls
past her shoulder. This may be an adaptation of a print or painting of a courtly
beauty, but the printer ‘sexes-up’ the conventional image with enormous black
face-patches, in the shape of a diamond, a crescent moon and two triangles.
Such exaggerated patches are never seen in paintings (and rarely in print),
but here they illustrate what might otherwise seem fantastical contemporary
complaints by commentators such as Hannah Wooley about, ‘those half
Moons, Stars, Coach and Horses, and such like trumpery’.71 Once again we
find that signifiers of wealth and beauty are combined with the depiction of
accessorised and accessible fashion.
Ballad images also placed dress in the social context of its production. In The
Country Lass, for example, the top-knot becomes a visual sign of female social
ambition and sexual currency. (Fig. 17.6) The text tells of young Jenny, who
forsakes ‘Spinning and Carding’ wool in order to sleep with the Squire who,
she hopes, will replace her ‘Russet gown’ and make her a ‘lady’. The ballad
images add comedy to this story: the four-square spinning wheel, with its
connotations of feminine respectability and domestic industry, is juxtaposed
with two ladies standing idle in fashionable clothes, including, of course, top-
knots. However, Jenny’s journey from scorning spinning to wearing top-knots
is visually undercut by the aged face of one of the women. Jenny may have left
the wheel, but she faces the worse fate of becoming an overdressed old bawd.
 Top Knots and Lower Sorts 351

While ballad pictures potentially conveyed many contradictory meanings

for their audiences, they unquestionably presented fashionable headdresses
visually and textually to working women, who could copy them, using
small amounts of ribbon and other inexpensive materials. As was intimated
by The Weavers Complaint, English top-knots could be made using goods that
had been worked within the country. Both ribbon and hoods were products
of the native luxury industry, made by weaving fabrics like ‘ferret’ silk from
low-quality non-filament silk fibres, or by using mixes of less expensive
materials.72 Ribbons worn for show, rather than as internal fastenings, had
indeed been the principal accessory of men’s conspicuous consumption
from the 1650s for about three decades, as the ballad had pointed out.
However, when Charles II instituted a male fashion for coat and vest in 1666,
ribbon gradually left men’s clothing and migrated to women’s, leading to a
downturn in the trade.73 At the same time, production of ribbon increased
and prices fell. In 1675 hand-ribbon-weavers rioted for three days against
the engine-loom, with which a single person could weave up to 24 ribbons
at once, and which had taken hold on the English market. The Weavers’
Company had unsuccessfully attempted to secure a prohibition against
these ‘great looms’ and the immigrant workers that used them in the 1630s,
but after the disorder of 1675, although Parliament ignored the weavers’
petitions against the engine-looms, they promised to reduce imports of
foreign ribbons and lace. After this, engine-looms, and the cheap ribbons
they created, spread still further, producing greater quantities of affordable
ribbon than ever before.74
Would even the minimalist ‘ballad-style’ top-knot have been truly
affordable or accessible to a wide variety of consumers? The style seen in
The Country Lass would have required only one or two yards of ribbon to
create. A brief look at chapmen’s or Old Bailey theft records for this period
shows that ribbons for top-knots could be acquired for as little as 1½d to
3d a yard: that is, just as cheaply as the literature which discussed them.75
Compared with Gregory King’s statistics for the consumption of dress in
1688, it appears that the second poorest stratum of society (that is, those who
might spend almost £1.7.0 on apparel in one year) could buy three penny
ribbons for only 1 per cent of their total clothing expenditure.76 Whether we
call these people ‘lower sort’ or ‘middling sort’, those who could afford a
top-knot comprised the vast majority of the people of England.
Whereas the Royal Exchange and New Exchange were the most fashionable
places to buy accessories and haberdashery in seventeenth-century London,
the rest of England’s population could purchase them from pedlars who
knocked at the door or sold them at local fairs. As Margaret Spufford has
shown, such vendors were highly mobile, selling both cheap literature and
cheap textiles, including second-hand and ready-made garments, to the
poorest of the country.77 Since they accepted credit and exchange payments
too, their wares were even more affordable to poorer consumers. The ballad
images thus point to top-knot styles that were not only affordable and
352 Printed Images in Early Modern Britain

accessible, but also widely available for purchase at the same time as the
ballads themselves, within the same transaction, from the same vendor.

Conclusion

Broadside ballads were the cheapest and most ubiquitous printed products
on the market. They were often written by and directed at tradespeople
and artisans in the fashion trades – the second largest group of workers in
late seventeenth-century London.78 By taking both ballad texts and images
seriously as a source for dress history, we have seen how a fashion originating
in the court of France was not only financially available and geographically
accessible to poorer consumers, but, above all, was visually and verbally
communicated among them. Using a literature that was available to all ‘sorts’
in England has enabled us to steer our focus away from the ‘conspicuous’
to the ‘promiscuous consumption’ of fashion, opening new perspectives on
questions of luxury, novelty and style in quotidian dress. While historians
have already begun to appreciate the importance of ballad texts as sources
for social and cultural history, ballad images have much more to tell us about
the ubiquitous visual vocabularies surrounding the people of early modern
England, a visual archive that will amply repay careful enquiry.

Appendix: The ‘Top-knot’ Ballads

1  Advice to the Maidens of LONDON: To Forsake Their Fantastical TOP-KNOTS

(J. Blare, between 1685 and 1688).
2  The Maidens Resolution; OR, An ANSWER to the ADVICE against TOP-
KNOTS (J. Blare, between 1685 and 1689).
3  The Somersetshire Wonder: BEING A True Relation of a Cow within 8 mile of
Bathe, who brought forth a Calf, with the Likeness of a Womans Head-Dress,
being a COMMODE, near Half a yard high (P. Brooksby, J. Deacon, J. Blare,
J. Back, 1690s).
4  The London Ladies Uindication OF TOP-KNOTS (P. Brooksby, J. Deacon, J.
Blare, J. Back, 1690s).
5  Weavers Request. OR Their Just COMPLAINT against the Rude Rabble, that
revile against the Gentile Mode now in Fashion, (J. Blare, between 1685 and
1688).
6  The Farmers Wife’s Complaint Against the Ladys Commodes and Top-Knots. For
hindring their Cows going a Bulling, (T. Moore, 1690s).
7  The Women and Maidens Vindication OF TOP-KNOTS: At a Parliament Holden
by them near Pimlico. Shewing the great benefit they bring to thousands in City
and Country (J. Gilbertson, between 1685 and 1688).
8  A Fair Warning for PRIDE: By a Foal which is lately said to come into the World
with a Top-Knot on its Head of several Colours (J. Bissel, 1690s).
 Top Knots and Lower Sorts 353

Notes

1 For useful discussion of the varieties of ‘ephemeral’ print, see John Barnard,
‘Introduction’, in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, 1557–1695, ed. John
Barnard, D.F. McKenzie and Maureen Bell (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 3–5, 21–2.
2 Bernard Capp, Astrology and the Popular Press: English Almanacs, 1500–1800
(London, 1979); id., ‘Popular Literature’, in Popular Culture in Seventeenth-century
England, ed. Barry Reay (London, 1985), pp. 198–243; id., The World of John Taylor,
the Water-poet, 1578–1653 (Oxford, 1994); Margaret Spufford, Small Books and
Pleasant Histories: Popular Fiction and Its Readership in Seventeenth-century England
(London, 1981); Tessa Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550–1640 (Cambridge,
1991); Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1999);
Alastair Bellany, The Politics of Court Scandal in Early Modern England: News
Culture and the Overbury Affair, 1603–1660 (Cambridge, 2002); Adam Smyth,
‘Profit and Delight’: Printed Miscellanies in England, 1640–1682 (Detroit, Mich.,
2004); Mark Knights, Representation and Misrepresentation in Later Stuart Britain:
Partisanship and Political Culture (Oxford, 2004); Ian Green, Print and Protestantism
in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2000); Sheila O’Connell, The Popular Print in
England (London, 1999); James A. Knapp, ‘The Bastard Art: Woodcut Illustration
in Sixteenth-century England’, in Printing and Parenting in Early Modern England,
ed. Douglas A. Brooks (Aldershot, 2005), pp. 151–72.
3 See, for example, Natalie Wurzbach, The Rise of the English Street Ballad, 1550–1650
(Cambridge, 1990), p. 9. But see Alexandra Franklin, ‘The Art of Illustration
in Bodleian Broadside Ballads before 1820’, Bodleian Library Record, 17 (2002),
327–52; Patricia Fumerton, ‘Not Home: Alehouses, Ballads, and the Vagrant
Husband in Early Modern England’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies,
32 (2002), 493–518; Angela McShane-Jones, ‘Revealing Mary’, History Today, 54
(2004), 40–46.
4 See Angela McShane, ‘“Ne sutor ultra crepidam”. Political Cobblers and
Broadside Ballads in Late Seventeenth-century England’, in Ballads and
Broadsides, 1500–1800, ed. Patricia Fumerton and Anita Guerrini (Farnham, 2009).
5 See Keith Wrightson, ‘“Sorts of people” in Tudor and Stuart England’, in The
Middling Sort of People: Culture, Society and Politics in England, 1550–1800, ed.
Jonathan Barry and Christopher Brooks (Basingstoke, 1994), pp. 28–51.
6 See McShane, ‘The Gazet in Metre; or The Rhiming Newsmonger: The Broadside
Ballad as Intelligencer. A New Narrative’, in News and Politics in Early Modern
Europe, 1500–1800, ed. Joop W. Koopmans (Leuven, 2005), pp. 131–50.
7 Nicolas K. Kiessling, ‘The Library of Anthony Wood from 1681 to 1999’, Bodleian
Library Record, 16 (1999), pp. 471, 486–7.
8 Spufford, Small Books, p. xix.
9 McShane, ‘Typography Matters: The Branding of Ballads and the Gelding of
Curates in Stuart England’, in Book Trade Connections from the Seventeenth to the
Twentieth Centuries, ed. John Hinks and Catherine Armstrong (New Castle, Del.
and London, 2008), pp. 19–44; Barry McKay, ‘Cumbrian Chapbook Cuts: Some
Sources and Other Versions’, in The Reach of Print: Making, Selling and Using
Books, ed. Peter Isaac and Barry McKay (Winchester and New Castle, Del., 1998),
pp. 65–84.
10 Thomas Middleton and William Rowley, A Courtly Masque: The Deuice Called, The
World Tost At Tennis (London, 1620), p. 6.
354 Printed Images in Early Modern Britain

11 Luxury in the Eighteenth Century: Debates, Desires and Delectable Goods, ed. Maxine
Berg and Elizabeth Eger (London, 2003).
12 Susan North, ‘Conference Report: Fashion and Clothing in Late Medieval
Europe’, Textile History, 38 (May 2007), 106–8, at p. 106.
13 John Styles, The Dress of the People: Everyday Fashion in Eighteenth-century England
(New Haven, Conn. and London, 2007).
14 Aileen Ribeiro, ‘Re-fashioning Art: Some Visual Approaches to the Study of the
History of Dress,’ Fashion Theory, 2 (1998), 315–26, at p. 320.
15 Valerie Cumming, A Visual History of Costume: The Seventeenth Century (Oxford,
1984), p. 12.
16 Styles, Dress of the People, p. 334.
17 Aileen Ribeiro, Fashion and Fiction: Dress in Art and Literature in Stuart England
(New Haven, Conn. and London, 2005), p. 19.
18 Valerie Cumming, Understanding Fashion History (Oxford, 2004), p. 89.
19 Marianne Grivel, Le Commerce de l’estampe à Paris au XVIIe siècle (Geneva, 1986),
p. 144.
20 John or Mary Evelyn, The Fop Dictionary (London, 1690), p. 17; Diana Scarisbrick,
Jewellery from Renaissance to Art Déco, 1540–1940 (Tokyo, 2003), pp. 270–71.
21 Jane Rutherston, ‘Fashion and the Luxury Goods Market under Louis XIV’,
unpublished MA dissertation (V&A/Royal College of Art, 1996).
22 For example, four fashion engravings by Saint-Jean illustrate Teatro Belgico by
Gregorio Leti (Amsterdam, 1690).
23 Pepys bought ‘prints for my wife to draw by this winter’ on 7 November 1666:
The Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. Robert Latham and William Matthews (11 vols,
London, 1970–83), vol. 7, p. 359; Tooker’s 1675 catalogue described prints for
decorating ‘cabinets, dressing-boxes, powder-boxes, baskets, screens & c.’,
quoted in Anthony Griffiths, The Print in Stuart Britain, 1603–1689 (London,
1998), p. 29.
24 Raymond Gaudriault, La Gravure de mode féminine en France (Paris, 1983), p. 17;
Grivel, Commerce de l’estampe, pp. 144, 261.
25 For example Ornatus Muliebris Anglicanum. Griffiths, Print, p. 20.
26 Sean Shesgreen, The Criers and Hawkers of London: Engravings and Drawings by
Marcellus Laroon (Aldershot, 1990); Cumming, Fashion History, p. 89.
27 Janet Arnold commends woodcuts as costume sources, for example in The
Handbook of Costume (London, 1973), p. 53; Christopher Breward briefly
discusses early modern woodcuts within a historical survey of dress history in
The Culture of Fashion (Manchester, 1995), pp. 92–8.
28 For close analysis of some known woodcutters, see Malcolm Jones, ‘English
Broadsides – I’, Print Quarterly, 18 (2001), 149–63.
29 McShane-Jones, ‘Revealing Mary’.
30 McShane, ‘Ballads and Broadsides from the Beginnings of Print to 1660’, in
The Oxford History of Popular Print Culture, Britain and Ireland to 1660, ed. Joad
Raymond (Oxford, 2009).
 Top Knots and Lower Sorts 355

31 Watt, Cheap Print, ch. 5; Tara Hamling, ‘To See or Not to See? The Presence of
Religious Imagery in the Protestant Household’, Art History, 30 (2007), 170–97;
Juliet Fleming, Graffiti and the Writing Arts of Early Modern England (London, 2001);
Sandra Clark, ‘The Broadside Ballad and the Woman’s Voice’, in Debating Gender
in Early Modern England, 1500–1700, ed. Cristina Malcolmson and Mihoko Suzuki
(New York, 2002), pp. 103–20.
32 Keith Wrightson, Earthly Necessities: Economic Lives in Early Modern Britain (New
Haven, Conn. and London, 2000); Gregory Clark, ‘The Long March of History:
Farm Wages, Population and Economic Growth, England, 1209–1869’, Economic
History Review, 60 (2007), 97–135.
33 See Angela McShane Jones, ‘Rime and Reason: The Political World of the English
Broadside Ballad, 1640–1689’, unpublished PhD thesis (University of Warwick,
2004), pp. 81–2.
34 See McShane, ‘Political Cobblers’.
35 Thomas Turner, Turners Dish of Lentten stuffe (London, n.d.).
36 McShane Jones, ‘Rime and Reason’, p. 45.
37 Humfrey Crouch, The Downfall of Pride (London, [1650s?]).
38 See Ribeiro, Dress and Morality (Oxford, 1986), pp. 74–94; McShane, ‘A
Resounding Silence? Huguenots and Broadside Ballads in Seventeenth-century
England’, Proceedings of the Huguenot Society, 28 (2007), 616–18.
39 See, for example, The VOICE of FAME: OR, THE TAYLOR’s GLORY: Giving an
Historical Account of many Kings, Princes, Dukes, Lords, Bishops, Earls, Knights,
and Gentlemen, &c., that have been of this Noble and Honourable Profession (London,
1690s) and The Shooe-maker’s Triumph: BEING A Song in Praise of the Gentle-Craft,
shewing how Royal Princes, Sons of Kings, Lords, and great Commanders, have been
Shooe-makers of old, to the Honour of this ancient Trade (London, 1695).
40 Claude M. Simpson, The British Broadside Ballad and Its Music (New Brunswick,
NJ, 1966), pp. 421–3.
41 Simpson, pp. 434–7; for satirical and political uses of ballad tunes, see McShane,
‘Rime and Reason’, pp. 164–234.
42 App. 1; App. 8.
43 App. 2; App. 8; App. 6; see also The Vanity of Female Pride (London, 1691).
44 App. 6.
45 Histoir dun Boulanger, qui a este autrepart qu’ailleurs ([?], 1690s).
46 G. Y., An Account of a Child born at Furbick in Darbyshire [etc] (London, 1694).
47 App. 1; App. 8.
48 We here refer to the sense of communal responsibility as elucidated in the
following key articles: E.P. Thompson, ‘The Moral Economy of the English
Crowd in the Eighteenth Century’, Past & Present, 50 (1971), 76–136, and John
Walter and Keith Wrightson, ‘Dearth and the Social Order in Early Modern
England’, in Rebellion, Popular Protest and the Social Order in Early Modern
England, ed. Paul Slack (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 108–28. There is a growing
literature dealing with issues of early modern gender, consumption and satire,
predominantly focused on the eighteenth century. See Will Fisher, Materialising
Gender (Cambridge, 2006); James Grantham Turner, ‘“News from the New
356 Printed Images in Early Modern Britain

Exchange”: Commodity, Erotic Fantasy and the Female Entrepreneur’, The

Consumption of Culture, 1600–1800, ed. Ann Bermingham and John Brewer
(London, 1995), pp. 419–39; Beverly Lemire, The Business of Everyday Life:
Gender, Practice and Social Politics in England, c.1600–1900 (Manchester, 2005);
Linda Levy Peck, Consuming Splendour: Society and Culture in Seventeenth-
century England (Cambridge, 2005); The Sex of Things: Gender and Consumption
in Historical Perspective, ed. Victoria de Grazia (Berkeley, Calif., 1996); E.J. Clery,
The Feminization Debate in Eighteenth-century England: Literature, Commerce and
Luxury (London, 2004); Gender, Taste and Material Culture in Britain and North
America, 1700–1830, ed. John Styles and Amanda Vickery (New Haven, Conn.
and London, 2006).
49 App. 4; App. 2.
50 App. 2; App. 4.
51 App. 2.
52 App. 4.
53 App. 4.
54 App. 7.
55 App. 4.
56 App. 7; App. 5.
57 Englands vanity (London, 1683).
58 Paul Slack, ‘The Politics of Consumption and England’s Happiness in the Later
Seventeenth Century’, English Historical Review, 122 (2007), 609–31.
59 ‘[S]o call’d from Mademoiselle de Fontange, one of the French King’s Mistresses,
who first wore it’, Evelyn, Fop Dictionary, p. 18; Diana de Marly, ‘The Vocabulary
of the Female Headdress, 1678–1713’, Waffen und Kostuumkunde (1975b), 61–70, at
p. 67; App. 6.
60 See de Marly, ‘Vocabulary’, p. 67.
61 For example engravings after Jean Dieu de Saint-Jean, Femme de Qualité en
Sultane (1688) and Femme de Qualité en Dishabille d’Hyver (1694); and Anon.,
Charlotte Landgrave..Reyne de Dannemarc (n.d).
62 Cumming, Fashion History, p. 51.
63 Headdresses were believed to be too ephemeral to be committed to portraiture.
De Marly, ‘Vocabulary’, p. 67.
64 Randle Holme described the Mantua as ‘a kind of loose Garment without
and stiffe Bodies under them’, fashionable from 1676, The Academy of Armory
(Chester, 1688), vol. 3, book 2, p. 19.
65 For a rare depiction of a frelange and mantua in paint, see Jan van der Vaart’s
portrait of Mary II of 1688 at Audley End.
66 Evelyn, Fop Dictionary, p. 16.
67 Evelyn, Fop Dictionary, p. 20. Contemporary inventories note these hoods, see
Spufford, The Great Reclothing of Rural England: Petty Chapmen and Their Wares in
the Seventeenth Century (London, 1984); Laroon’s street sellers also wear them.
 Top Knots and Lower Sorts 357

68 See The West Country Wedding (London, n.d.) and The London Lasses Lamentation
(London, n.d.).
69 See thefts of needle-lace headdresses in Old Bailey Proceedings Online, May 1691,
t16910527-6 and April 1693, t16930426-82.
70 Folding paper fans cost 2d each in 1698. Avril Hart and Emma Taylor, Fans
(London, 1998), p. 39.
71 Hannah Wooley, The Gentlewomans Companion (London, 1673), p. 57.
72 Natalie Rothstein, ‘Silk in the Early Modern Period’, The Cambridge History of
Early Modern Textiles, ed. David Jenkins (Cambridge, 2003), p. 544.
73 David Kuchta, The Three-piece Suit and Modern Masculinity (Berkeley, Calif. and
Los Angeles, 2002), pp. 125–30.
74 Alfred Plummer, The London Weavers’ Company, 1600–1970 (London and Boston,
Mass., 1972), pp. 164–6.
75 In the 1690s ribbons could cost between 1½d a yard and 3d a yard, Spufford,
The Great Reclothing, p. 166; OBP, February 1697, t16970224–55; narrow-working
industries expanded across England between 1640 and 1690; Eric Kerridge,
Textile Manufactures in Early Modern England (Manchester, 1985), p. 198.
76 Negley Harte, ‘The Economics of Clothing in the Late Seventeenth Century’,
Textile History, 22 (1991), 277–96; Margaret Spufford, ‘The Cost of Apparel in
Seventeenth-century England and the Accuracy of Gregory King’, Economic
History Review 53 (2000), 677–705.
77 Spufford, The Great Reclothing, pp. 21, 43–54.
78 Peter Earle, A City Full of People: Men and Women of London, 1650–1750 (London,
1994), pp. 115–17.