In ancient Britain, from the earliest time to the arrival of the Saxons, A.D. 450, we can find no mention made of ladies’ head-dress, and but little is mentioned until about 1066, and even at this date not any style existed, although Anglo-Saxon females of all ranks wore a veil, or long piece of linen or silk wrapped around the head and neck. This part of their dress was exceedingly unbecoming, perhaps partly owing to the want of skill in the artists, and this head-dress was seldom worn except when they went from home (see figures on preceding page), as the hair itself was cherished and ornamented with as much attention as in modern times.
In an Anglo-Saxon poem the heroine is called, “The maid of the Creator with twisted locks.”
About this time the fashions began to travel northward from Italy, through Paris to London, and caps, hats, and bonnets of various and fantastic shapes were introduced.
Report of fashions in proud Italy, Whose manners still our tardy, apish nation Limps after, in base imitation.
In England, artificial flowers were unknown till the reign of Edward III., A.D. 1041.
Artificial flowers, those beautiful imitations of the “stars of the earth,” are brought to such perfection that they almost rival the blossoms they are intended to imitate.
In France, during the reign of Charles VIII., in 1483, it is recorded that head-dresses were lowered considerably; but in the portrait of Mary of Burgundy, we find that she still wore the favorite towering cap that had been fashionable for two hundred years before her time, with the veil hanging to the ground and a square piece lying upon the neck and shoulders.
It is a hard thing to say, but the women might have carried the Gothic building, this steeple head-dress, much higher had it not been for a famous monk, Thomas Conects by name, who attacked it with great zeal and resolution.
This holy man travelled around to preach down this monstrous style, and succeeded so well, that, as the magicians sacrificed their books to the flames upon the preaching of an Apostle, so many of the women threw down their head-dresses in the middle of his sermon, and made a bonfire of them within sight of the pulpit. He was so renowned, as well for the sanctity of his life as his manner of preaching, that he would often have twenty thousand people at a time to listen to him. The men placed themselves on one side of the pulpit and the women on the other, and the latter appeared (to use the similitude of an ingenious writer) like a forest of cedars with their heads reaching to the clouds, but, like snails in a fright, drew their horns in, to shoot them out again as soon as the danger was gone.