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long upturned toe; the top of the boot is of lighter leather, and thus it bears a resemblance to the topboots of a later age, of which it may be considered as the prototype. The other boot, from a print dated 1515, is more curious; the top of the boot is turned down, and the entire centre opens from the top, to the instep, and is drawn together by laces. or ties across the leg, so that it bears considerable resemblance in this point to the Cothurnus of the ancients.

Fashion ran at this time from one extreme to the other, and the shoes which were at one time so long at the toe as to be inconvenient, now became as absurdly broad, and it was made the subject of sumptuary laws to restrain both extremes. Thus Edward IV, enacted that any shoemaker who made for unprivileged persons (the nobility being exempted) any shoes or boots, the toes of which exceeded two inches in length, should forfeit twenty shillings, one noble to be paid to the king, another to the cordwainers of London, and the third to the chamber of London. This only had the effect of widening the toes; and Paradin says that they were then so very broad as to exceed the measure of a good foot. This continued until the reign of Mary, who, by a proclamation, prohibited their being worn wider at the toe than six inches.

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We have here engraved two specimens of these 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 colors 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

one.

The

with a pointed toe was worn, not unlike the modern It was of velvet, generally, with the upper classes ; of leather, with the poorer ones. 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

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dated 1577 and 1588; and they will serve to show the sort of form adopted, as well as the varied in which the slashes of the velvet appeared, and which altered with the wearer's taste. Stubbes, the puritanical author of the "Anatomy of Abuses," 1588, declares that the fashionables then wore "corked shoes, puisnets, pantoffles, and

slippers,

some of

some of them of black velvet, some of white,

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 gewgaws innumerable." Rich and ex

pensive shoe-ties were now brought into use, and large

sums were lavished upon their decorations.

John Taylor, the water poet, alludes to the extravagance 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 color) 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 boot-tops of this kind were worn even by the puritans; they were, however, large only, and not decorated with 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

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