book being inoperative, no fresh law was enacted, embracing the whole subject of dress, till the third year of Edward IV. After the troubles in Richard the Second's reign, an act was passed, forbidding husbandmen and labourers to wear sword, buckler, or dagger, but this was not so much in restraint of extravagance as a police regulation, being tantamount to an order for the disarming of those who had lately been so troublesome and formidable. A statute of the 20 Richard II. also particularized those who only might wear another's livery, but this too was rather meant to put a stop to those Capulet and Montagu faction disturbances, which were so rife among the followers of the English noblemen.

The 3 Edward IV., c. 5, recites, "Item prayen the Commons in the said Parliament assembled to our said sovereign lord the king to reduce to his gracious remembrance that in the time of his noble progenitors divers ordinances and statutes were made in this realm of England for the apparel and array of the Commons of the said realm, as well of men as of women, so that none of them ought to use nor wear any inordinate and excessive apparel, but only according to their degrees, which statutes and ordinances notwithstanding, for default of punishment and putting them in due execution, the Commons of the said realm, as well men as women, have worn and daily do wear excessive and inordinate array and apparel, to the great displeasure of God and impoverishing of this realm of England, and to the enriching of other strange realms and countries to the final destruction of the husbandry of the said realm." It is then ordered that no knight under the degree of a lord, nor his wife or child, shall "wear any manner cloth of gold, or any courses wrought with gold, or any furr of sables," under a penalty of £20. No knight bachelor, nor his wife, to wear cloth of velvet upon velvet," except such knights as be of the Order of the Garter; and none but a lord to wear purple silk, under a penalty of £10.

2. No esquire or gentleman under the degree of a knight to wear any "velvet, satin branched, nor any counterfeit cloth of silk resembling to the same, or any courses wrought like to velvet or to satin branched, or any furr of ermine."

3. No man having less than £40 a year to wear any "furr of martrons (Funes), letuse [pure gray or pure myniver]."

4. No widow having less than £40 a year to wear any "coverchief whereof the price of a plite shall exceed the sum of iij shillings, four pence.'

5. Persons with less than forty shillings a year were not to wear any "fustian, bustian, nor fustian of Naples, scarlet cloth in grain, nor no furr, but black or white lamb." Yeomen were

forbidden to use "any bolsters or stuffing of wool, cotton, or cadas, or any stuffing in his doublet, but only lining according to the same. Servants also were not to wear cloth which

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cost more than "two shillings the broad yard."

6. "And because that coverchiefs daily brought into the realm do induce great charge and cost in the same, and in effect in waste," it is forbidden to sell within the kingdom "any laun, niefles, umple, or any other manner of coverchiefs whereof the plite shall exceed ten shillings."

In order to promote the use of a dress which should be in the popular opinion more decent, and which should not involve the objections pointed out by the critics in "The Persone's Tale," and in the various political poems that have been quoted, at the same time that perfect liberty to do as they liked was reserved to the persons most likely to offend, it was ordered by this statute that no person under the degree of a lord should wear any goun, jacket, or cloak, "unless it be of such length that the same may cover his privy members and buttocks," nor wear "any shoes or boots having pikes passing the length of two inches."

In the year 1482 the previous sumptuary laws were repealed, and the 3 Edward IV., c. 5 was re-enacted with greater stringency, the reason given in the preamble being that, through excess and wastefulness of apparel, the "said realm was fallen into great misery and poverty, and like to fall into more greater, unless the remedy therefor be sooner."

It is needless to adduce the evidence of writers and chroniclers of the time to show that male and female vanity managed to evade the law, though it were never so stringent. There was a difficulty about bringing the delinquents coram judice, none but the ill-natured, or the pedantic, or the crotchety, would inform against them, and magistrates, unless they were of the same kidney with the prosecntors, would be slow to punish what was, after all, but the harmless expression of a vanity that was shared by judge and prisoner alike. As a matter of fact, the law was continuously disregarded, as in the nature of things it must have been; and though Empson and Dudley doubtless drew some of the fines, with which they enriched their master's treasury, out of the pockets of the dandified, and those who got themselves up regardless of costfollowing the example set them by their master in the case of the Earl of Oxford and his liveries-the administrators of the law generally winked at the struttings of the jays who decked themselves in peacock's feathers.

Henry the Eighth, however, in the first year of his reign, tried his hand at a statute which was meant to carry out the objects attempted in vain by the acts of his predecessors, and

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his doing so was quite in keeping with the rest of his domestic policy, which strove to give him a power and domination that should be felt in every relation, no matter how trifling or how personal. 1 Henry VIII., c. 14, "An Act agaynst wearing of costly apparell," forbad any but the king and his family to wear cloth of gold, of purple colour, or of silk of the same. None less than a duke might wear any cloth of gold of tissue; none less than an earl might wear sables; and none less than a baron might wear cloth of gold or silver, or "tynsen satten," or silk or cloth mixed or embroidered with gold or silver. None less than a lord or knight of the garter might wear woollen cloth made out of the kingdom, or wear any velvet of "the colour of crymesyn or blewe;" none less than a knight (excepting some of the royal servants and the judges) might wear velvets and furs; "nor no person (might) use or wear satten or damaske in their doblett, nor sylke or chamlett in their gowens or cootes, not having for life £20 a year in lands;" no one "under the degree of a gentleman" might wear foreign fur"; no servant was to be dressed in cloth that cost more than twenty pence a yard. Knights only might wear guarded and pinched (pleated) shirts of linen cloth."

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vants in husbandry were not to have cloth of which the piece was more than ten pence a yard. This statute was not to apply to women, ambassadors, heralds, players in interludes, nor to soldiers.

In the sixth year of Henry another and more stringent law was passed, which, having been found insufficient, was repealed, and re-enacted more thoroughly in the following year. The preamble of this statute recites, that "Forasmuch as the grette and costly array and apparel used within this realm contrary to good statutes thereof made, hath been the occasion of great impoverishing of divers of the king's subjects, and provoked divers of them to rob and to do extortion, and other unlawful deeds, to maintain thereby their costly array." In the 24 Henry VIII., another sumptuary law was passed, by which the costume of everybody was regulated, as it was supposed, definitely; and it did suffice, as far as any law could suffice, till the reign of Philip and Mary, in the first year of whose reign was passed "An Acte for the Reformãcon of Excesse in Apparaile," by which the restraints on dress were made less comprehensive, though imprisonment was added to fine as a means of enforcing compliance with such orders as were retained. There was also a clause not unworthy the sex of the sovereign who assented to the law :-" Provided also that women maye weare in their cappes, hattes, gyrdells, and hoodes as they or any of them might use and weare lawfully before the making of this Act." An Act of Elizabeth, intended, it is imagined, to

check unthrift, declared that any one who sold foreign apparel to persons having less than £3000 a year in land or fees, except for ready money, should lose the price of the same, no matter how it might have been secured.

By the 13 Eliz., c. 19, the last of the sumptuary laws, it would seem that though caps had been at one time a general article of attire, they had gone greatly out of fashion, causing thereby a grievous falling off in the cap-making business. This business seems to have been powerful enough to procure, as did the button-makers at a later date, special legislation in its favour. The above-named Act recites the evils that have arisen from the decay of the cap-making trade by the disuse of caps, and requires that every one above six years of age, except ladies, peers, and those who have twenty marks a year out of land, or who have "borne any office of worship in any city, borough, town, hamlet, or shire," shall wear " upon the Sabothe and Holy Daye one cappe of woll knytt, thicked, and dressed in England," or be fined three shillings and four pence a day. This act was, however, repealed in the thirty-ninth year of the queen.

These various laws regulating the kind and quality of the apparel which men of all sorts and their belongings might wear, continued to be in existence, if not in operation, till the advent of James the First to the throne. By the 1 James I., c. 25, they were repealed, and folks were left to follow the bent of their own fancy, being bounded only by the same restraints as kept them from entering into any other extravagance. Not any attempt has since been made to revive sumptuary laws, though so late as the seventh year of George I. an Act was passed "to preserve and encourage the woollen and silk manufactures of this kingdom, and for more effectually employing the poor by prohibiting the use and wear of all printed, painted, stained, or dyed callicoes in apparel or household stuff, furniture or otherwise," excepting only "such callicoes as shall be dyed all blue." In the same session was passed the famous Act which prohibited the use of any buttons made of cloth, serge, or other stuffs, the object being to keep up the monopoly which workers in silk and mohair had established.

THE GRAVE-MOUNDS OF DERBYSHIRE, AND
THEIR CONTENTS.

BY LLEWELLYNN JEWITT, F.S.A., ETC., ETC.

THE ancient grave-mounds of Derbyshire lie, for the most part, scattered over the wild, mountainous, and beautiful district known as the High Peak-a district occupying nearly one-half of the county, and containing within its limits many towns, villages, and other places of extreme interest. It it true that here and there a grave-mound exists in the southern or lowland portion of the county, but, as a rule, they may be almost said to be peculiar, and confined, to the northern, or hilly, district, where in some parts they are very abundant. Indeed, there are districts where there is scarcely a hill, even in that land where,

"Hills upon hills,

Mountains on mountains rise,"

where a barrow does not exist or is not known to have existed. In passing along the old high road, for instance, over Middleton Moor by way of Arbor-Low,* Parcelly Hay, High Needham, Earl Sterndale, and Brier-Low, to Buxton, or along the high roads by way of Winster, Hartington or Newhaven, the practised eye has no difficulty in resting on the forms of grave-mounds on the summits of the different hills or mountains whose outlines stand out clear and distinct against the sky.

The situations chosen for the burial of the dead by the early inhabitants of Derbyshire were, in many instances, grand in the extreme. Formed on the tops of the highest hills, or on lower but equally imposing positions, the grave-mounds commanded a glorious prospect of hill and dale, wood and water, rock and meadow, of many miles in extent, on every side, stretching out as far as the eye could reach, while they themselves could be seen from afar off in every direction by the tribes who had raised them, while engaged either in hunting or in their other pursuits.

In Derbyshire the grave-mounds are called "Lows" or "Barrows;" Low being so very usual a term in the district that wherever met with, it may be taken as a sure indication of a barrow now existing or having once existed at the spot. As a proof of this, it will only be necessary to say that at about two hundred places in Derbyshire alone, and at about half that

Of this stone circle, the next in importance to Stonehenge, an account will be given in a future number.