Hats: felts, demi-castors, castors and beavers -revised

Who wore hats

While the questions of when and where hats were worn are not addressed here, almost everyone, male and female, wore a hat or a cap in the seventeenth century. Even boys too young to be breeched could be depicted wearing or holding a hat, as in a 1630s painting in the Colchester collection. How ubiquitous the hat was can be seen in this Hollar engraving of the execution of the earl of Strafford in 1641, the man standing on the pile of blocks who isn’t wearing a hat, has his hat in his hand. Hats were owned at all levels of society from the poorest to the richest, the value, what they were made from and the styles were what changed.

Figure 1: Hat belonging to Hendrik Casimir I, (1612 – 1640). Rijksmuseum. Survival 10

 Values

The cost of the most expensive hats was always a matter of discussion. In the same decade, the 1580s, that Philip Stubbs was complaining that Beaver hats might cost 20, 30 or 40 shillings, the petty chapman William Davies had hats in stock valued at 6d, 8d, 1 shilling, 1s. 6d and 1s 8d. (1) (2) In 1639 the mercer John Bolande in Stockport, a town which has a hat and hat making museum, had over 200 hats in stock, they were at the lower end of the market  ranging from 11d to 4s 2½d per hat. (3) These were probably felt hats using sheep’s wool.

 

Figure 2. Hat in Victoria & Albert Museum. Survival 3

A mid-level hat might be a castor or a demi castor. In 1687 Edward Cooke, a Bristol haberdasher, had coloured castor hats in stock at 5s 6d and 7s per hat. He also had “Sixteene moth-eaten Caisters & felts 12s 0d,” presumably cheap because of the moth. (4 p. 161)

 

At the top end of the market, in 1608, the beaver hat stolen from Edward Savedge, gentleman, was valued at 30 shillings. (5) In 1634 the King, Charles I, paid £6 for a French beaver. (6 p. 89) In 1661 Pepys wrote that “Mr. Holden sent me a bever, which costs me £4-5s-0d. (7) At this at a time Spufford reckoned that the average price of a hat was around 2s 6d. (8)

Much of the value of a hat was in the material used to make it. As Fenner commented, “Your four-shillings Dutch felt shall be converted to a three pound beaver.” (9 p. 33)

 

Figure 3. Hat for Queen Christina's bodyguard 1647. Livrustkammaren, Stockholm. Survival 12

Materials

The art of making felt hats in England appears to be much earlier than originally thought, with evidence of Dutch and Flemish hatmakers in London from the 1430s, forming a strangers’ guild there by the end of the century. (10) When a hatters’ guild was founded in Norwich in 1543 a comment was made that, “they have inventyd and begune the craft of hattes making within the same cite, whiche they can now make as well and as good as ever came owte of France or Flanders or any other realm.” (11)

Generally the cheapest hats were a felt made of sheep’s wool. Different types of felt were available depending on the type of sheep’s wool used and whether it was mixed with other fibres, so we have references as in Fenner, as above, to a Dutch felt. Holme lists the types of hats as: “The Felt, it is made of Sheeps Wooll only,” and going on to list the Castor. the Beaver, the French-felt, the Cordiback Felt, and the Carolina Felt.” (12 p. 129) The hatter Gilbert Lymberge had Spanish felts and estridge felts. (13) Estridge refers to an eastern European wool, described in the 1720 edition of Stow’s Survey of London as “The Estridge Wools, that is the Wools imported from the East Countries, a coarser sort, amounted not to two hundred Weight.”

A step above entirely sheep’s wool felts was the French felt, as Randle Holme described it “between a Felt and a Caster.” Castors and demicastors were usually made of a mixture of fibres. This assumes that a castor hat is not the same as a beaver hat, despite castor being another name for a beaver. By the mid 17^th century there is a differentiation, a 1650 quote in Howell indicates that people might try to pass off “Demicastors for Bevers”. (14) Holme described a castor as “made of Coney [rabbit] Wool, mixt with Polony Wooll”. Polony is Polish wool. There was also a Vigone, which Blount describes as “a kind of Demicaster, or Hat, of late so called, from the fine Wool, which for the most part they are made of, borne by a kinde of sheep of Spain of that name.” (15)

Above the caster is the beaver made, not unsurprisingly, of felted beaver hair. The original beaver hats, as mentioned by Chaucer, came from Russia often via Flanders, but by the end of the sixteenth century European beaver had been hunted almost to extinction. With the discovery of the Americas, Russian beaver was replaced by North American beaver. There are also different levels of quality in the beaver fur itself so imports were separated into parchment beaver (castor sec – dry beaver), or coat beaver (castor gras – greasy beaver) (16)

Figure 4. Cocked hat. 1690s Museum of London. Survival 15

 

Shape

In the 1580s Stubbs, the original grumpy old man, made the following observations on the styles that were around. “Some times they were them sharp on the crowne, pearking up like a sphere, or shafte of a steeple, standing a quarter of a yard above the crowne of their heades; some more, some less, as please the phantasies of their mindes. Othersome be flat and broad on the crowne, like the battlements of a house. Another sort have round crowns, sometimes with one kind of bande, sometime with an other.” (1)

By the 1660s it was Samuel Butler who was taking on Stubbs mantle in his Satire upon our ridiculous imitation of the French, “Sometime whear hats like pyramids, And sometimes flat like pipkin lids: With broad brims, sometimes like umbrellas. And sometimes narrow as Punchinellos.” (17 p. 203)

The range of these styles is reflected in the heights of the crowns of the surviving hats listed below, which are from around 12cm (4.75 inches) (survival 9) to 36cm (14.25 inches) (survival 3) tall. Samuel Pepys, who always had his eye on fashion, wrote in 1663 that, “This day at Mrs. Holden’s I found my new low crowned beaver according to the present fashion made” (7 p. 17th Aug)

A selection of styles, including some worn by foreigners (note the Muscovy merchants in the left hand corner), can be seen by using the zoom to bring up the detail in Hollar’s wonderful 1644 engraving of the Royal Exchange. Here is a nice, but Dutch, man with a large hat with a small brim, c. 1650.

Hats were usually worn with the brim flat but they could be cocked, that is turned up to one side, so we have a 1642 quote of a “A youngster gent, With bever cock't.” (18 p. 26)  This style can be seen in the c.1620 painting of Nathaniel Bacon, and in survivals 6 and 11 below.

It was John Bulwer in 1653 who spoke of the problems involved in wearing a “classic” sugar loaf hat, “Sugar loaf hats which are so mightly affected of late both by men and women, so incommodious for use that every puff of wind deprives us of them. Requiring the employment of one hand to keep them on.” (19 p. 530)

Figure 5. Cocked hat with cockade. Banbury Museum. Survival 16

 

Lining, colours, re-dying and repairs

Hats could be both lined and coloured. In 1608 Prince Henry had “beavers of diverse colours, lined with satin or taffeta 60s a piece.” (20 p. 95) What colour these linings might have been we cannot be sure, but there is a magnificent 1663 effigy to the Somerset family in Brent Knoll church which is painted. John Somerset’s wife is shown wearing a red lined hat.   Most hats are black, there are mentions of grey and very occasionally white hats, but where there are coloured hats the colour is not given. In 1612 the haberdasher Humphrey Ellis had lots of “Cullerd hates” in stock, at prices from 1s 4d to 5s per hat. (21 p. 14) In 1689 the feltmaker Christopher Eastgate, had in stock “four dozen of coloured felts” worth £2 12s. (22) Hats could be lined in the brim and the crown. In 1631 Frewen delivered to Mr Grasners “a color'd fealt, lynd in ye brimes” (23 pp. 24-30)

Hats, like other garments were often repaired and/or re-dyed. In 1631 Frewen charged Edward Bridges for “dying ye bever and mending ye lyning 1s 6d” (23 pp. 24-30) Over the period of his accounts (1646-71) James Master paid out on several occasions for dyeing his hats, for mending or relining and dressing them; for example in 1651, “for new dying my hat and a new lining to it 2s 6d,” and in 1654 “for new laceing and dying my riding hat 5s 6d”. (24 p. 196 & 211) They could also be recut to a new shape, in 1654 the rector Giles Moore paid, “for dressing my old hat & cutting it to fashion 1s 6d” (25 p. 151) When they were no longer of use hats might be cannibalised for other purposes, the whalers in Spitsbergen appear to have cut foot shaped pieces out of their old hats to line the insides of their shoes. (26)

Levels of hat ownership

The rich owned lots of hats, when James I ascended the throne of England in 1603 he purchased twenty beavers hats and, possibly because the court was in mourning for Elizabeth I, seventeen of these hats were black, lined with taffeta and trimmed with black bands and feathers. (27) The middling sort would own several hats, in 1617 Elizabeth Blakeborne had five hats listed in her probate, ranging from her best hat, which she left in her will, to two old hats. (28 p. 47) In 1676 Thomas Smith, who was sacrist at Litchfield Cathedral, owned one new hat and five old ones. (29 p. 254) Hats could be left in wills across the sexes, in 1610 Luke Shirburn leaves to the wife of a friend, “my best hatt, which is faced with velvet and hath a round silke band.” (30 p. 174) Even those near the bottom of the social scale might own more than one hat, in 1613 Roger Eryetaydge, a man whose entire estate was only worth £1 6s 6d owned two hats. (31 p. 239)

Purchase of hats could be affected by the weather, poorer quality hats did not last well, especially in rain, and in this respect the rich fared as badly as the poor. Erik Dahlberg (1625-1703) in his 1656 diary reported that eight days of continuous rain had compelled him to buy five new hats, “all of which have been ruined by the wet.” (32 p. 348)

A Few Survivals

Survival 1 – Museum of London. Late 16^th-early 17^th century. Black silk, velvet hat. https://www.londonmuseum.org.uk/collections/v/object-88423/hat/

Survival 2 -Victoria and Albert Museum. c.1590-1660. A hat and hat box associated with the Cotton family of Etwall Hall, Derbyshire. http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O234640/hat-unknown/

Survival 3 - Victoria and Albert Museum. c.1590-1660. A hat with a very tall, 36 cm, crown. This is the hat that features in Men’s Dress Patterns. (33 pp. 142-4) http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O98558/hat-unknown/

Survival 4 -Victoria and Albert Museum. c.1590-1670. A hat with a lower crown 17cm. This is the hat that features in Seventeenth-Century Women’s Dress Patterns, vol.2. (34 pp. 144-5) http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O357644/hat/

Survival 5 - Pilgrim Hall Museum, Plymouth, MA. c.1615-1640 A hat traditionally association with Mayflower passenger Constance Hopkin https://pilgrimhall.org/ce_17_century.htm

Survival 6 – Vasa Museum, Stockholm. From the ship the Vasa which sank in 1628. https://digitaltmuseum.se/011024618191/hatt

Survival 7- Vasa Museum, Stockholm. From the ship the Vasa which sank in 1628. https://digitaltmuseum.se/021025722569/hatt

Survival 8 - Vasa Museum, Stockholm From the ship the Vasa which sank in 1628. https://digitaltmuseum.se/021025723023/textil

Survival 9 -Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam,  the hat belonging to Ernst Casimir of Nassau-Dietz (1573-1632) He was wearing this hat at the Siege of Roermond when he was killed by a shot to the head.  http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.23323

Survival 10 - Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. A hat belonging to Hendrik Casimir I, (1612 – 1640). Like his cousin Ernst Casimir (survival 6) he was wearing this hat when he was shot. http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.23325

Survival 11 -The Cromwell Museum, Huntingdon. A hat supposedly owned by Oliver Cromwell himself. https://mercuriuspoliticus.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/cromwells-hat.jpg

 Survival 12 - Livrustkammaren, Stockholm. This is a prototype hat proposed in 1647 by Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie for Queen Christina's bodyguard, you can just see the wording written on the brim " Prof Hatt för Drottning Christina Hof Guarde".    http://emuseumplus.lsh.se/eMuseumPlus?service=ExternalInterface&module=literature&objectId=5100&viewType=detailView, There is a hatband and two loops of silk braid to hold plumes, there are also fragments of a pale grey-brown silk braid around the edge, as can be seen in this image http://emuseumplus.lsh.se/eMuseumPlus?service=ExternalInterface&module=literature&objectId=28390&viewType=detailView   Here is the hat seen from underneath where you can see a leather loop. http://emuseumplus.lsh.se/eMuseumPlus?service=ExternalInterface&module=collection&objectId=42735&viewType=detailView

Survival 13 - Livrustkammaren, Stockholm. A view from above of a hat listed in 1671 as being owned by Charles X of Sweden (1622-1660) (19) http://emuseumplus.lsh.se/eMuseumPlus?service=ExternalInterface&module=collection&objectId=67993&viewType=detailView  and the same hat seen sideways on http://emuseumplus.lsh.se/eMuseumPlus?service=ExternalInterface&module=literature&objectId=2599&viewType=detailView

Survival 14- Skokloster Castle,Sweden.  c.1676  and associated with Nils Bielke (1644-1716) and the Battle of Lund. The edge that is cocked up has residues of thread either for fastening up or attaching decoration. There are also the remains of a black silk lining. http://emuseumplus.lsh.se/eMuseumPlus?service=ExternalInterface&module=collection&objectId=34157&viewType=detailView

 Survival 15 – Museum of London. Cocked hat 1696-99. Silk felt with ostrich feather trim. https://www.londonmuseum.org.uk/collections/v/object-88428/hat-tricorne-hat/

Survival 16 - Banbury Museum. Late 17^th century cocked hat.

References

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2. Spufford, Margaret. The great reclothing of rural England: petty chapman and their wares in the seventeenth century. London : Hambledon Press, 1984.

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