broad toed shoes of the time of Henry VIII. No. 1 is copied from the monumental effigy of Katharine, the wife of Sir Thomas Babynton, who died 1543, and is buried in Morley church, near Derby. It is an excellent specimen of the sort of sole preferred by the fashionables of that day. The second cut exhibits a front view of a similarly made shoe; they were formed of leather, but generally the better classes wore them of rich velvet and silk, the various colours of which were exhibited in slashes at the toes, which were most sparingly covered by the velvet of which the shoe was composed. In the curious full-length portrait of the poetical Earl of Surrey, at Hampton Court, he is represented in shoes of red velvet, having bands of a darker tint placed across them diagonally, which bands are decorated with a row of gold ornaments.

During the reign of Edward VI. a sort of shoe with a pointed toe was worn, not unlike the modern one. It was of velvet generally with the upper classes; of leather, with the poorer ones; the former indulged in a series of slashes over the upper leather, which

the others had not. We give here two specimens of these shoes from prints dated 1577 and 1588, and

they will serve to show the sort of form adopted, as well as the varied way in which the slashes of the velvet appeared, and which altered with the wearers taste. Philip Stubbes, the puritanical author of the

'Anatomy of Abuses," 1588 declares that the fashionables then wore "corked shoes, puisnets, pantoffles, and slippers, some of them of black velvet, some of white, some of green, and some of yellow; some of Spanish leather, and some of English, stitched with silk and embroidered with gold and silver all over the foot with gew-gaws innumerable." Rich and expensive shoe-ties were now brought into use, and large sums were lavished upon their decorations.

John Taylor, the water Poet, alludes to the extravag

ance of those who

"Wear a farm in shoe-strings edged with gold,

And spangled garters worth a copy-hold."

The shoe-roses were made of lace, which was as beautiful, costly, and elaborate, as that which composed the ruff for the neck, or ruffles for the wrist. They were elaborately decorated with needlework and gold and silver thread.

During the reign of the first Charles, the boots (which were made of fine Spanish leather, and were of a buff colour) became very large and wide at the top. Indeed, they were so wide at times, as to oblige the wearer to stride much in walking, a habit that was much ridiculed by the satirists of the day. There was a print published during this reign of a dandy in the height of fashion whose legs are "incased in boot-hose tops tied about the middle of the calf, as long as a pair of shirt sleeves, double at the end like a ruff band; the top of his boots very large,

fringed with lace, and turned down as low as his spurs, which jingled like the bells of a morris-dancer as he walked." These boots were made very long in the toe, thus, of this exquisite we are told, "the feet of his boots were two inches too long."

The boot tops at this time were made wide, and were capable of being turned over beneath the knee, which they completely covered when they were uplifted. They were of course made of pliant leather to allow of this," Spanish leather," according to Ben. Jonson.

During the whole of the Commonwealth large boottops of this kind were worn even by the Puritans, they were, however, large only, and not decorated with

E

costly lace. The shoes worn were generally particularly simple in their construction and form, and those who did not wish to be classed among the vain and frivolous, took care to have their toes sharp at the point, as a distinction between themselves and the

graceless gallants," who generally wore theirs very broad.

With the restoration of Charles II. came the large French boot, in which the courtiers of "Louis le grand;" always delighted to exhibit their legs. Of the amplitude of its tops, the woodcut will give an idea, it is copied from one worn by a courtier of Charles's Train, in the engravings illustrative of his Coronation. The boot is decorated with lace all round the upper part, and that portion of the leg which the boot encases, seems fitted easily with pliant leather: over the instep is a broad band of the same material, beneath which the spur was fastened: and the heel is high, and toe broad, of all the boots and shoes then fashionable.

A boot of the end of this reign, forms fig. 7, of our third plate, and is copied from a pair which hang up