England in the Days of Old Author:William Andrews Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: wearing muff in bygone times was worn by men J- as well as women. Several writers state that it was introduced into England in the reign of Charles II., but t... more »his is not correct, for, although it is not of great antiquity, it can certainly be traced back to a much earlier period. Moat probably it reached us from France, und when it came into fashion it was small in size. The earliest representation of a muff that has come under our notice occurs in a drawing by Gaspar Rutz (1598) of an English lady, and she wears it pendant from her girdle. A few years later in the wardrobe accounts of Prince Henry of Wales, a charge is made for embroidering two muffs. The entries occur in 1608, and are as follow :—" One of cloth of silver, embroidered with purles, plates, and Venice twists of silver and gold; the other of black satten, embroidered with black silk and bugles, viz., for one £7, the other 60s." Muffs were usually ornamented with bunches of gay ribbons, or some other decorations,and were generally hung round the neck with ribbons. Several poems and plays of the olden time contain references to men using muffs. One of the earliest, if not the first, to mention a man wearing a muff, occurs in an epistle by Samuel Rowlands, written about 1600. It is as follows :— " Behold a most accomplished cavalier That the world's ape of fashion doth appear, Walking the streets his humour to disclose, In the French doublet and the German hose. The muffes, cloak, Spanish hat, Toledo blade, Italian ruff, a shoe right Spanish mode." A ballad, describing the frost fair on the Thames in the winter of 1683-4, mentions amongst those present:— " A spark of the Bar with his cane and his muff." In course of time the muff was increased in size, until it was very large. Dryden, in the epilog...« less